Riots and Rebellion: State, Society and the Geography of Conflict in India

This article argues that different types of politically motivated violence in South Asia are associated with different forms of governance and relationships between society and the state. This variation in local governance in turn is the product of unevenness in state formation across the political geography of India. It classifies conflict events in India in 2015 and 2016 into conceptual categories of sovereignty-neutral and sovereignty-challenging, theoretically reflecting the commonsense distinction between riots and rebellion. It presents evidence that different categories of state-society regimes at the district level are associated with different patterns of sovereignty-neutral and -challenging violence. It finds that urban-adjacent hegemonic state-society regimes are associated with high levels of sovereignty-neutral violence, revised state-society regimes with traditionally restrained state capacity are associated with high levels of sovereignty-challenging violence, and fragmented and accommodative regimes in the agrarian hinterland are associated with intermediary positions in both categories.