Guns and Butter? Fighting Violence with the Promise of Development

Arbeitspapier

There is growing awareness that development-oriented government policies may be an important counterinsurgency strategy, but existing papers are usually unable to disentangle various mechanisms. Using a regression-discontinuity design, we analyze the impact of one of the world's largest anti-poverty programs, India's NREGS, on the intensity of Maoist conflict. We find short-run increases of insurgency-related violence, police-initiated attacks, and insurgent attacks on civilians. We discuss how these results relate to established theories in the literature. The main mechanism consistent with the empirical patterns is that NREGS induces civilians to share more information with the state, improving police effectiveness.

Object Details

• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: IZA Discussion Papers ; No. 9160

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft ; Crisis Management ; National Government Expenditures and Welfare Programs ; National Security and War ; Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty: Government Programs; Provision and Effects of Welfare Programs
• Subject: public works program ; National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme ; NREGA ; NREGS ; India ; regression discontinuity design ; terrorism ; Naxalites ; Maoists ; conflict ; insurgency ; civil war

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Khanna, Gaurav ; Zimmermann, Laura V
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA)
• (where): Bonn
• (when): 2015

Further information

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/114025
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:43 AM CET