Wars, Revolutions and Coups, and the Absence of Peace Across the World

Abstract

This chapter documents the applicability of the parasite-stress theory of values to the frequencies of occurrences of the major types of within-nation intergroup conflict across contemporary countries: civil wars, non-state wars (intrastate wars in which warring groups do not include the government of the state), and coups and revolutions. Collectivist values of people promote interdependence with, and loyalty toward, in-group members (ethnocentrism) and goals, and antagonism toward out-group members (xenophobia) and goals. Host–parasite antagonistic coevolutionary races produce variation among regions in the specificity of immune defenses and of parasites. According to the parasite-stress theory, the collectivist values of ethnocentrism and xenophobia are defenses against novel infectious diseases harbored in out-groups and to which local people are not adapted. From this, we proposed that high parasite stresses and associated collectivist values, then, promote all the major types of within-region civil conflict. As predicted, based on this, the frequency of civil wars, non-state wars, and coups and revolutions are associated positively with parasite stress and collectivism across countries of the world; peacefulness shows the predicted negative relationships with parasite stress and collectivism. These findings indicate that occurrences of civil conflicts would be reduced by reducing parasite stress and associated collectivist values. The parasite-stress theory of values provides a general causal model of intergroup conflict. The American Civil War is revisited in light of this general model. We provide evidence, too, that the parasite-stress theory of values applies to coalitional conflict characteristic of team sports.