Wealth and Rebellion: A Dualistic Perspective on Income Level and Revolutions

In the field of civil war studies, there is a consensus that the risk of war decreases as income increases. Nevertheless, such consensus has not been reached in the field of civil resistance and unarmed revolutions. This research demonstrates that there are two contradictory trends in economic development that explain the insignificance of the linear effect of income level, which has been replicated many times by other authors. On the one hand, economic development increases the resources required by the state to prevent illegal displacement and makes revolt costly for potential rebels. Conversely, economic development facilitates the growth of infrastructure and resources for civil resistance, which in turn politicizes society and increases the demand for political rights and participation. Consequently, the probability of unarmed revolutions is lower in low-income and high-income countries, while in middle-income countries the risks of unarmed revolution are at their highest. This assertion can be operationalized as an inverted "U-shaped" relationship between GDP per capita (and modernization in general as was proposed by Huntington) and the probability of onset of unarmed revolution. Utilizing two independent datasets to define revolutions and employing distinct methodological strategies, I have identified robust support for the inverted “U-shaped” relationship between income level and the probability of unarmed revolutions. In other words, initially, the probability of an unarmed revolution increases with income level, reaching a peak at a certain point in GDP per capita. This provides a novel perspective on the phenomenon of the middle-income trap. While the risk of civil war declines with income growth, it experiences a significant increase at the stage between low-income and middle-income.