Collective Violence and Group Solidarity: Evidence from a Feuding Society

Author(s): Roger V. Gould

Source: American Sociological Review, Vol. 64, No. 3 (Jun., 1999), pp. 356-380
Published by: American Sociological Association
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 COLLECTIVE VIOLENCE AND GROUP SOLIDARITY:
EVIDENCE FROM A FEUDING SOCIETY*

Roger V. Gould
University of Chicago

Sociological explanations of group conflict usually presuppose that the vari-

ous factors that breed hostility between collectivities also generate internal
solidarity. Outside of the protest literature, studies of conflict therefore pay
little attention to the collective-action problem facing groups in contention,
and therefore overestimate the likelihood of group conflict: Intergroup
struggle is implicitly regarded as a sufficient condition for group participa-
tion in violent conflict. Examination of nineteenth-century court documents
from Corsica, a society known for its tradition of collectivist feuding, shows
that violent incidents typically did not involve groups. The group character
of violence-in the form of collaborative use of lethal force and inclusion of
disputants' kin-was conditional on collective contention having occurred
before violence began. This and other empirical patterns support the view
that collective violence occurs when group action fails to convince an ad-
versary to back down. The failure to prevent escalation calls the group's
solidarity into question, compelling members to demonstrate that they are
able to overcome their collective-action problem.

O utside the area of political and social
protest, sociological research on
group conflict has had little to say about the
collective-action dilemma faced by groups in
conflict. Studies of the origins of racial, eth-
nic, nationalist, familistic, sectarian, or tribal
conflict ordinarily adopt the supraindividual
focus characteristic of sociology as a disci-
pline: The issue of interest is typically not
how groups overcome internal obstacles to
collective action but rather why members of
* seated hatreds based on past atrocities, cul-
Direct correspondence to Roger V. Gould,
Departmentof Sociology, University of Chicago,
1126 East 59th Street, Chicago IL 60637
(rgouldl@midway.uchicago.edu). Research for
this article was done in part while the author was
a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the
Behavioral Sciences. I gratefully acknowledge
the financial support of the Harry Frank
Guggenheim Foundation and the National Sci-
ence Foundation (SBR-9617880). Jim Fearon,
Roberto Fernandez, Nancy Hewitt, Victor Nee,
Gerry Suttles, and participants in the Social Or-
ganization of Competition Workshop and the
Workshop on Comparative Politics and Histori-
cal Sociology at the University of Chicago of-
fered helpful comments, as did the ASR Editor
and reviewers. Thanks also go to Tori Lawless
and Genevieve Zubrzycki for research assistance.
distinct social groups see their interests as
conflicting in the first place. Research on
youth gangs and criminal organizations, for
instance, typically tries to explain violent
confrontations among such groups in terms
of ethnic rivalry, competition over turf, or
struggles over control of illegal markets
(Black 1983; Janni 1972; Jankowski 1991;
Reuter 1983; Short and Strodtbeck 1965;
Suttles 1967). Similarly, studies of ethnic
warfare often trace such conflicts to deep-
tural differences, or competition for territory
or resources (Horowitz 1985; LeVine and
Campbell 1972; Olzak 1992).
Because such accounts reason back from
conflict to the factors that are believed to
produce it, the transition from group interest
to group action is often treated either implic-
itly as unproblematic,or explicitly as a func-
tional response to conflict. Classic theoreti-
cal statements (Coser 1956; Simmel [1923]
1955) have usually portrayedintergroupten-
sion as a basic source of internal solidarity.
More concretely, writers on youth gangs of-
ten argue that fighting between gangs builds
internal cohesion (Jankowski 1991:88;
Suttles 1967). Because group action is not

356 American Sociological Review, 1999, Vol. 64 (June:356-380)

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COLLECTIVE VIOLENCE AND GROUP SOLIDARITY
seen as an anomaly from this perspective,
studies of intergroup conflict concentrate on
the sources of tension rather than on how
collections of people manage to mobilize in
response to such tensions (but see Olzak
1992).1 Reasoning about group conflict typi-
cally occurs as follows: a significant con-
frontation is observed-say, a gang war or a
riot-in which people express and act on
their hostility in terms of a salient group
boundary. Analysts of the event note that
members of the two groups compete for ma-
terial benefits, residential space, or some
other valued resource. This preexisting com-
petition (or mere hatred, or cultural misun-
derstanding, or whatever factor turns out to
be the basis for hostility) therefore "ex-
plains" the violent outburst (e.g., see
Baldassare 1995).
Violent social confrontations attractatten-
tion in proportion to their scale and severity,
making it easy to disregard those conflicts
that remain limited to a few persons, or never
escalate to violence at all. Yet these lesser
conflicts are generally far more common
than are conflicts that eventuate in signifi-
cant mobilization. (Laitin and Fearon [1996]
show, for example, that only a small propor-
tion of ethnic disputes lead to war). Thus,
extant accounts of group conflict do theirjob
too well: They make sense of the cases in
which preexisting competition coincides
with violent clashes between rival groups,
but are unable to explain why most confron-
tations do not lead to outbreaksof group vio-
lence. Studying only those instances in
which tension generates group conflict leads
to an underestimation of the obstacles to
group unity-and, as I shall show, of the im-
portant part these obstacles play in the tra-
jectory of conflict.
I propose and test the argumentthat group
violence occurs because groups are plagued
1 The usual debates are of two kinds. One is
whether the dimension of difference under study
is fundamental or reducible to some other social
process, as when materialist accounts of conflict
portray racism or ethnic identification as ideo-
logical instruments for economic exploitation
(Hechter 1975). The other debate treats group dis-
tinctions as at least socially real (that is, not mere
mystifications), and asks what exogenous factors
trigger an upsurge in conflict (Olzak 1992; Ross
1986).
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357
by the tension between collective interest
and individual interest, and because partici-
pants in conflict are conscious of this ten-
sion. In the course of a dispute, individuals
call on allies as a way of demonstrating to
their adversaries that they are not alone. But
because people on both sides know that the
other side's solidarity may unravel if the dis-
pute intensifies, some of the time they will
refuse to back down. The resulting escalation
pits group against group rather than indi-
vidual against individual, because allies of
the original disputants must now show-to
themselves, to adversaries, and to wit-
nesses-that their display of solidarity was
not hollow. Expressions of group solidarity
are therefore double-edged: They may suc-
ceed in forestalling escalation, but if they fail
to do so they intensify the violence that oc-
curs. The general awareness among contend-
ers that putatively solidary groups may fail
to act together contributes to the likelihood
of escalation to violence, and to the extent of
the harm that ensues.
The format of this article is as follows:
After a general theoretical discussion of
group conflict, I argue that incidents of col-
lective violence are demonstrations of soli-
darity by groups whose cohesiveness has
been cast into doubt by their failure to per-
suade adversaries to back down. I derive
empirical implications of this argument and
test them using data on violence in Corsica.
In particular, I analyze the relationship be-
tween group participation in violence and
the characteristics of those disputes leading
to violence. Finally, I show that the empiri-
cal findings are best understood from a per-
spective that (1) views group violence as an
instance of collective action in which there
is a tension between group and individual
interests; and (2) focuses on how this ten-
sion influences the behavior of disputants
and their associates.
ACCOUNTING FOR GROUP
CONFLICT
No social process has attracted more theo-
retical attention than that of conflict among
human groups. Nevertheless, attempts to ex-
plain group conflict continually return to
three themes that can be termed interest,
identity, and social organization.
358
Accounts emphasizing interest observe
that human communities value resources like
territory,capital, and access to markets, and
that at times they compete with other com-
munities for the use of these resources.2
Group conflict, ranging from exclusion to
war, occurs when migration, subsistence cri-
ses, or shifts in relative group strength per-
suade one community to encroach on
another's resources or to preempt encroach-
ment by the other (Oberschall 1978; Olzak
1983, 1992; Simmel [1923] 1955). Individu-
alist versions of the interest argument assert
that the very existence of such communities
results from the benefits their members de-
rive from belonging. In other words, the
Hobbesian problem of conflict between
groups arises only because it has been solved
within groups (Elster 1989; Hardin 1995).
Identity argumentsconcentrate on the idea
that human beings are sometimes prone to
see themselves and others as instantiationsof
categories (e.g., worker, Methodist, Uzbek,
Southerner, woman) rather than as unique
and autonomous persons (Hogg and Abrams
1988; Sherif 1966; Tajfel 1970; Turner and
Giles 1981). In one version of this perspec-
tive, the need for self-esteem leads people to
attach positive value to the categories to
which they belong and negative value to cat-
egories that do not apply to them (Hogg and
Abrams 1988; Tajfel 1974). More generally,
group membership may be constitutive of
personal identity even though groups are
conventionally thought to be aggregations of
persons. With regard to ethnicity and race,
identity-based explanations attributeconflict
to deep cultural differences (or beliefs about
such differences) that foster misunderstand-
ing, hostility, and resentment, often indepen-
dently of any material basis for competition
(Horowitz 1985; Kaplan 1993; LeVine and
Campbell 1972).
Finally, argumentsthat invoke the concept
of social organization draw attention to the
norms and relationships that bind people into
groups. This emphasis is prevalent in studies
of societies with weak or nonexistent states,
in which feuding is particularlycommon. In
such societies, the absence or ineffectiveness
of state peacekeeping institutions obliges
2 Although I refer to three kinds of accounts,
most writers incorporate elements of each.
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AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW
people to organize themselves for mutual de-
fense, most often in the form of kinship
groups. In the typical social-organization ac-
count of feuding societies, disputes are in-
trinsically collective because the institutional
order obliges members of a kinship group to
regard offenses against any member as of-
fenses against all. Moreover, it is the
offender's entire group, rather than the indi-
vidual offender, that bears responsibility.3
The standardresponse to an injury,therefore,
is either a comparableinjury inflicted on any
member of the offender's clan, or a collec-
tive payment to the victim's clan (Black-
Michaud 1975; Boehm 1987; Campbell
1964; Evans-Pritchard 1940; Fortes 1945;
Gluckman 1955; Hasluck 1954; Miller 1990;
Peters 1967; Unsal 1990). Group conflict
thus emerges deterministically from the web
of relationships governing social life, even
when the triggering event involves just two
individuals.
It is the literature on traditional feuding
societies that most often invokes social or-
ganization as the key factor in group conflict,
but variants of the argument also appear in
research on contemporaryWestern societies,
especially in connection with ethnic conflict,
organized crime, and urban gang warfare
(Bourgois 1995; Gambetta 1988, 1993;
Jankowski 1991). Although the routinized
mechanisms for conducting feuds that are
thought to characterize stateless societies
typically do not exist in urban industrial set-
tings, the relationships that bind people into
groups are nevertheless seen to make most
conflicts collective, at least in principle.
3 Interest-based accounts make a superficially
similar point in that they concentrate on conflict
over resources held collectively, such as territory.
The difference is that the social relationships that
underlie group loyalty in social-organization ac-
counts do so independently of shared material in-
terests. Imagine that the inhabitants of a river-
front town collaborate to shore up the levee dur-
ing a flood. An interest-centered explanation
would assert that the effort is collective because
the levee will protect the whole town; a social-
organization account, however, would expect col-
laboration even if only a few houses were threat-
ened, because the town-dwellers care about each
other's safety. However, both arguments pay in-
sufficient attention to the public-goods problem
inherent in such a situation.
COLLECTIVE VIOLENCE AND GROUP SOLIDARITY
All three factors-group interest, group
identity, and social organization-underlie
the processes that are believed to make hu-
man existence, and thus the conflicts that
pervade it, collective. When all three factors
are present, we should expect most disputes
across group boundaries, even those that be-
gin within dyads, to become group conflicts.
Thus, from the standpoint of the extant per-
spective on social conflict, it is surprising
when individual disputes in collectivist set-
tingsfail to turn into group disputes. More-
over, if people in such contexts have little
choice about whether to see any given dis-
pute as collective, the slightest altercation
between any two persons from distinct
groups would lead to a potentially devastat-
ing group war. This threat would make vio-
lent disputes rare: If group interests domi-
nated social life, minor dyadic conflict
would inevitably lead to mutually disastrous
collective conflict, leading people to avoid
conflict more assiduously than they do in
individualistic societies.4 However, the ex-
isting evidence overwhelmingly suggests
that there is more rather than less interper-
sonal violence in societies inhabited by self-
protecting corporate groups (Black 1983;
Blok 1974; Brown 1986; Chagnon 1983;
Given 1977; Otterbein 1968; Otterbein and
Otterbein 1965; Ross 1986). Either people
in such societies are remarkablyand self-de-
structively imprudent,or collectivism is less
than complete.
The most straightforwardsolution to this
theoretical puzzle lies in recognizing that
group solidarity is imperfect: Even when
members of a lineage, tribe, or ethnic group
have common interests, customs that distin-
guish them symbolically from other groups,
and social ties rooted in kinship or resi- 5Although this argument is about strategic ac-
dence, they also have individual interests tion, it does not presuppose that people are ratio-
that set them apart from fellow group mem- nal egoists: The core concept here is solidarity,
4 The threat of mutually destructive conflict
does in fact appear to push groups into negoti-
ated settlements, though these are often unsuc-
cessful (Boehm 1987; Evans-Pritchard 1940;
Gluckman 1955; Wilson 1988). But the cultural
availability of dispute resolution procedures is
unlikely to be a sufficiently secure escape route
to eliminate the threatof group war. The most dif-
ficult problem facing competing groups in this
situation is the fact that neither side wants to ap-
pear eager to settle.
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359
bers. The tension between group welfare
and individual welfare is starkest when
group solidarity entails risking one's life:
All members benefit if the group acts col-
lectively in defense of its shared interests,
but even moderately sensible members
might hesitate before joining a possibly fa-
tal fray. Given that disputants know this, ex-
pressions of group solidarity in the midst of
a dispute may avert conflict escalation, but
only if people are convinced that the expres-
sions are sincere.
To summarize: Individuals benefit from
group life in part because membership of-
fers protection against predation (along with
more peaceable advantages, including affec-
tion and the pooling of economic risk). Pro-
tection against outsiders, however, is only
as good as the perceived solidarity of the
group, and the perception is contingent on
solidary behavior. Expressions of support
for one member by fellow group members
can convince an outsider not to act aggres-
sively against the threatened member as
long as the support is seen as genuine: If
members of a kinship group support each
other in verbal disputes with others but con-
sistently fail to sustain this support when
disputes escalate to physical or lethal force,
then their verbal behavior will not dissuade
adversaries from escalating. Unless groups
have a reputation for following through on
solidarity expressed prior to violent conflict,
such expressions of solidarity constitute
"cheap talk" (Farrell and Rabin 1996; Gib-
bons 1992), will not convey information
about what will happen after escalation, and
therefore will have no deterrentvalue.5
by which I mean individuals' willingness to sac-
rifice narrow self-interest for collective interests.
Even egoists will find it rational to cooperate if
they are likely to meet again and they value the
future heavily enough. But in cases in which co-
operating carries a significant risk of death, these
conditions are difficult to meet. Accordingly, co-
operation in high-risk situations probably de-
pends on genuine mutual caring: An individual
deciding to risk death to save another most likely
views the other's welfare as substitutable for his
or her own.
360 AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW

Group violence

Violent resolution (P)

contention I
Group/contention
/ Group . 1 One-on-one violence
(1 -p3)

Nonviolent resolution
(1- p1)
Disputes Group violence

Violent resolution (P4)

One-on-one violence
One-on-one ()2

contention (1 4)
Nonviolent resolution
(1 - P2)

Core hypotheses and relevant empirical tests:

(1) Pi < P2 (see Table 2, comparison of assault with lethal violence);
(2) p3 > p4 (see Tables 3-6, association of group violence with prior group contention).

Figure 1. Schematic Representation of Dispute Trajectories

Note: Dots show the endpoints of each trajectory; p represents the probability that the dispute has the
specified character, conditional on reaching the branch in question. For example, Pi represents the probabil-
ity that the dispute will end in violence, conditional on contention having been collective prior to violence.
Similarly, p4 represents the probability of group violence, conditional on the dispute's having involved one-
on-one contention prior to violence and having ended in violence. Note that it is not necessary to have
information on incidents ending in nonviolent resolution to test hypotheses regarding the relative sizes of p3
and p4.

EMPIRICAL IMPLICATIONS portion of disputes falling into the group

contention branch and ending violently that
Two core predictions and two subsidiary include collective violence. Likewise, p4 is
predictions follow from my argument. The the proportion of disputes falling into the
core predictions are illustrated in Figure 1, one-on-one contention branch and ending
which represents the trajectory of conflict as violently that include collective violence.
a tree of outcomes. All conflicts begin as Dots indicate the possible endpoints of the
nonviolent disputes, some of which involve process (i.e., points at which there are no
group contention (upper branch), while oth- furtherbranches).
ers involve only one-on-one contention Suppose there are 100 disputes starting at
(lower branch). For each of these main the root of the tree. If 40 include group con-
branches in the tree, there are two further tention, and 18 of those lead to violence, then
branches: peaceful resolution and violent Pi = 18/40 = .45. If 9 of those 18 violent inci-
resolution. Finally, there are two sub- dents include group violence, thenp3 = 9/18
branches of those disputes that proceed to = .50. This leaves 60 disputes in the one-on-
violent resolution: Some involve one-on-one one contention branch. If 40 of these lead to
violence and some involve collective vio- violence and 20 are resolved peacefully, then
lence. In Figure 1, Pi represents the propor- P2 = 40/60 = .67. If group violence occurs in
tion of disputes in the upper main branch 10 of the 40 incidents that involve one-on-
(those involving group contention) that end one-contention and end in violence, then p4
in violence; P2 represents the proportion of = 10/40 = .25.
disputes in the lower main branch (one-on- The first core prediction is that disputes
one contention) that end in violence. At the involving group contention escalate to lethal
next branching stage, P3 represents the pro- violence less frequently than do disputes in-

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COLLECTIVE VIOLENCE AND GROUP SOLIDARITY
volving one-on-one contention; in terms of
the outcome tree,P1 < P2. This prediction fol-
lows directly from the proposition that group
contention discourages escalation: If demon-
strations of solidarity in a dispute increase
the likelihood that the adversary will back
down, then disputes involving only one-on-
one contention should be overrepresented
among those that end in violence. If demon-
strations of solidarity have no deterrent
value, then disputes involving group conten-
tion will end in violence about as often as
disputes involving only one-on-one conten-
tion, implying Pi = P2. (Because the total
number of disputes that do not escalate to le-
thal violence is unknown, I rely on data con-
cerning a subset of such disputes-those that
led only to nonlethal physical assault.)
The second core prediction is that, among
those disputes that escalate to violence, col-
lective violence is more likely if group con-
tention occurs prior to escalation (i.e., in Fig-
ure 1,p3 > p4). When group members act col-
lectively in the early stages of a dispute, they
communicate to their adversarytheir willing-
ness to act collectively at the next, more dan-
gerous, stage. If escalation to violence occurs
anyway, group action at this stage is more
likely than in cases in which conflict at the
first stage is one-on-one: The previolence as-
sertion of group loyalty, combined with the
failure of this assertion to forestall escala-
tion, casts doubt on the group's reputation
for solidarity. Disputes involving only one-
on-one contention before escalation likewise
are more likely to remain one-on-one if vio-
lence occurs, because associates of the two
disputants have implicitly declined to treat
the conflict as collective.6 In short, among
disputes that eventually turn violent, group
action prior to violence is positively corre-
lated with group participation in violence.
This prediction requires a careful test be-
cause there is a simpler explanation if group
contention prior to escalation is associated
only with a higher likelihood of collabora-
tion in the use of violence. It is natural to
expect that, if two people join forces in the
nonviolent stage of a dispute, the same two
people will act together in employing lethal
6 A disputant's kin might, for instance, decline
to express support because they view his or her
claim as trivial, illegitimate, or futile.
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361
force. Consequently, one might predict a
correlation between group contention and
group violence even if group contention has
no value as a deterrent.I therefore provide a
furthertest of the prediction that p3 > p4, US-
ing violence that includes nondisputants-
termed "generalized violence"-as an addi-
tional indicator of the collective characterof
violence. If group action early in a dispute
is a promise to act in concert if the situation
worsens, escalation of conflict obliges all
available group members-not just those
who have already acted-to live up to the
promise. Therefore, when group contention
makes an issue of reputations for solidarity,
previously uninvolved members become in-
volved in violence at a higher rate than
when contention has remained one-on-one.
In other words, the inclusion of nondispu-
tants in violent conflict is not an automatic
consequence of escalation, but is a contin-
gent response to group contention in the
previolence stage. Thus, the proposition that
p3 > p4 implies that group contention prior
to escalation is associated not only with a
higher likelihood of collaborative violence,
but also with a higher likelihood that vio-
lence will include previously uninvolved as-
sociates of the disputants.
The first subsidiary prediction is that the
likelihood of both types of collective vio-
lence-collaborative and generalized-is
higher in situations in which reputations for
solidarity matter the most. For example, if
kin groups act collectively in conflicts be-
cause doing so enhances the value of expres-
sions of solidarity in future encounters, col-
laborative violence should occur most often
between disputants with a high likelihood of
future interaction. Consequently, group vio-
lence is particularlylikely when participants
on opposing sides of a conflict are already
acquainted and thus have reason to believe
they will face one another again.
The second subsidiary prediction is that
group participationin violence is rarerwhen
the boundariesbetween opposing sides in the
conflict are unclear. In particular,in societ-
ies organized principally by kinship, con-
flicts pitting kin against one another should
lead less often to group violence, net of other
factors, than conflicts in which the opposing
sides have no kin connections. When a dis-
pute divides two members of a given family
362
or clan, the potential allies of one party are
also potential allies of the other, so any dem-
onstration of solidarity with one side is off-
set by a commensurate show of distance
from the other side. Collective violence in
conflicts among kin therefore conveys no in-
formation about overall group solidarity, and
accordingly should occur less often in such
conflicts than in conflicts between nonkin.7
Unobserved Disputes
The hypothesis that p3 exceeds p4 can be
tested directly by observing only those dis-
putes that became violent, because the out-
come of interest (group violence versus one-
on-one violence) is defined exclusively in
terms of this subset of disputes.8 However,
the best test of the hypothesis thatP2 exceeds
Pi requires comprehensive information about
all disputes, not just those that turn violent:
Looking only at disputes that end violently,
it is impossible to determine pi and P2 be-
cause the denominator (total disputes) has
not been evaluated. The data employed in
this study come primarily from criminal tri-
als in which the charge was murder or at-
tempted murder; these trials tell us nothing
about the two subbranches in Figure 1 la-
beled "nonviolent resolution."
A partial test of this hypothesis can be per-
formed, however, by comparing disputes that
escalated to lethal violence (murder and at-
tempted murder) with disputes involving
only nonlethal physical aggression (assault
7 The availability of third parties with kin ties
to both disputants should also reduce the overall
likelihood of escalation, as Gluckman (1955) sug-
gests. However, because I do not have detailed
information about disputes that end peacefully, I
make no predictions about the relative likelihood
of violence for disputes between kin.
8 Consider the following analogy. Suppose we
want to know whether drinking coffee at home in
the morning makes workers more productive, and
we have information on (1) productivity on all
days a sample of workers came to work, and (2)
whether they drankcoffee on each of those days.
We could ask whether coffee consumption in-
creased their productivity without knowing any-
thing about those days when they did not come to
work. Only if we wanted to know something
about the impact of coffee consumption on com-
ing to work at all would we need additional data
on nonwork days.
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AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW
and battery). Assaults are disputes that were
"resolved" with a level of contention (e.g.,
use of fists) that was sufficiently intense to
provoke legal intervention, but was consid-
erably less intense than employment of lethal
force. If the claim that group contention de-
ters escalation to violence holds for disputes
in general, it should also hold for the subset
of disputes in which contention includes
physical but nonlethal aggression. Compar-
ing the amount of group action in these inci-
dents of intermediate intensity with the
amount of group action in lethal incidents
amounts to a conservative comparison of P2
and pi Stated simply, if the deterrence hy-
pothesis is correct, then there must be more
group action in disputes that end with low-
level violence than in those that lead to le-
thal violence. (See Appendix A for a formal
derivation of this prediction.)
DATA SOURCES AND METHODS
Corsica is a Mediterranean island that has
been part of France almost continuously
since its cession by Genoa in the late eigh-
teenth century. Throughout the nineteenth
century it was a department(the basic politi-
cal unit of France since the Revolution of
1789), with representation in the National
Assembly and the same local political insti-
tutions as other departments. Linguistically,
Corsica is closer to Italy than to France (the
Corsican language is a dialect of Italian,
though most inhabitants also speak French),
and is similar in several respects to other
Mediterranean islands like Sicily and
Sardinia. Corsica's economy has always
been principally agrarian and pastoral (al-
though tourism has become increasingly im-
portant in the second half of the twentieth
century), with the land divided between
sheep-grazing and the cultivation of various
crops such as figs, olives, and cereals.
Nineteenth-centuryCorsica closely fits the
profile of what many anthropologists would
call an "honor society" (Abu-Lughod 1986;
Blok 1981; Bourdieu 1966; Campbell 1964;
Gilmore 1987; Peristiany 1966; Pitt-Rivers
1966; Schneider 1971; Wikan 1984; Wyatt-
Brown 1982). Family groups played a major
role in all aspects of social life, and group
prestige depended heavily on the chastity of
female members (a prerequisite for advanta-
COLLECTIVE VIOLENCE AND GROUP SOLIDARITY
geous marriages) in conjunction with male
members' reputation for the capacity to de-
fend the group's interest through violence
(Albitreccia 1942; Busquet [1920] 1990;
Marcaggi [1932] 1966; Pomponi 1979;
Versini 1964; Wilson 1988). Although now
used in numerous languages, the word ven-
detta was originally Corsican.
The honor tradition, combined with the
fact that most Corsican men carried both
firearmsand knives, produced an exceptional
amount of violence throughout the 1800s.
The annual homicide rate ranged from 17 to
80 per 100,000 inhabitants during this pe-
riod, whereas for France as a whole the rate
was consistently less than 1 per 100,000. In
comparison, most contemporaryWestern so-
cieties experience homicide rates under 2 per
100,000, while the largest U.S. cities have
rates ranging roughly from 10 to 60 per
100,000 (U.S. Bureau of the Census 1996).
Information on violent conflict is drawn
from the records of the Cour d'Assises (court
of assizes) of Bastia, which handled all cases
of murder, attempted murder, and man-
slaughter (along with other felonies such as
extortion, fraud, and perjury) for the depart-
ment of Corsica. Because of confidentiality
restrictions, the most recent year for which
data are available is 1893. Full transcriptsof
the trials no longer exist, but elaborate sum-
maries of each case are preserved by the
Ministry of Justice. Each summary contains
detailed information on the defendantss, a
narrativeof the events leading up to the inci-
dent, including past conflicts between the in-
volved parties, and the outcome of the trial.
Yearly caseloads varied roughly between 30
and 100 throughout the nineteenth century.
Although most of the cases handled by the
Bastia court pertained to murder or at-
tempted murder, some involved burglary,
fraud, perjury,or rape. Only cases involving
the use of potentially lethal force (i.e., a fire-
arm, cutting instrument, and in one case a
beating with a heavy rock) were included in
this study.
In addition to 1893, all cases in 1851-1852
and in 1865 were selected from the archival
inventory, furnishing data covering a range
of historical and political contexts. Every
case involving lethal or potentially lethal
violence from these three periods was in-
cluded in the sample, regardless of whether
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363
the incident led to a fatality or injury.
Twenty-eight cases were dropped because
the summariesprovided insufficient informa-
tion or because there was some doubt about
the details of the incident. The resulting data
set includes a total of 221 violent incidents,
with 174 cases from 1851-1852, 32 cases
from 1865, and 15 cases from 1893.9
The disputes featured in these data are
typical of those leading to homicidal vio-
lence anywhere, although tinged with the
character of a pastoral/agrarian society
where honor plays a key role. Corsicans of
the period killed one another over card
games, insults, property damage, boundary
disputes, and verbal insults, but also, about
10 percent of the time, in revenge for past
killings, and another 10 percent of the time
over refusals to marry a "compromised"
woman. 10
Validityof Trial Documents
There are two potential obstacles to the va-
lidity of court documents as sources of data
on conflict and violence. First, the docu-
ments could give a misleading picture of ac-
tual violence through selection of nontypical
cases. If a large number of violent incidents
failed to lead to a trial (e.g., for lack of evi-
dence) and if these incidents differed system-
atically from those that appear in the data,
then generalizations from court data to vio-
lent incidents overall might not be justified.
A second difficulty is that facts about the in-
cidents themselves may have been distorted
in the trials. If accounts given in the trial
summaries describe what happened in a sys-
tematically biased way, it would be unrea-
sonable to draw inferences about actual vio-
lence from these data.
Available evidence indicates that selection
bias is not a major problem because, for vio-
lent incidents, attritionfrom the initial inves-
tigation stage to the trial was moderate to
low-indeed lower in Corsica than in the rest
9 The total number for 1893 is smaller partly
because violent conflict steadily declined during
the nineteenth century, but also because data from
the last court session in 1893 are not available.
10 Several of the attacks of the latter sort were
carried out by the women themselves, not by male
family members-although it was more common
for brothers of dishonored women to do so.
364
Table 1. Retention and Attrition of Criminal Investigations in the Department of Corsica and France,
1858 to 1860
Criminal
Investigations
Disposition of Cases Initiated
Corsica
Cases remaining 311
Cases dropped 0 81
Percent remaining 100
France
Cases remaining 24,684
Cases dropped 0 11,428
Percent remaining 100
Source: France, Ministere de la Justice (1859, 1860, 1861).
of France for the same period. The French
criminal justice system, like other European
systems, depended (and still depends) prin-
cipally on the reportof an investigating mag-
istrate (juge d'instruction) in determining
whether a felony complaint should lead to an
indictment. Prosecutors sent misdemeanor
complaints directly to lower courts and re-
ferred all felony complaints they deemed
genuine to a magistrate, whose role re-
sembled that of the prosecutor in the Anglo-
American system but with greater authority.
Following an investigation, which typically
included witness interviews and evidence-
gathering, the magistrate would either dis-
miss the case or recommend an indictment
before a grandjury (chambre d'accusation).
The grand jury would in turn either uphold
or reject the recommendation. The main
source of attrition for felonies, then, was the
decision by an investigating magistrate not
to proceed. Rejection of indictments by the
grand jury was a significant but more lim-
ited source of attrition.
Drawing on annual reports of the French
Ministry of Justice from 1858 through 1860,
Table 1 gives the numbers of criminal inves-
tigations initiated by magistrates in Corsica
and France, and shows the percentages re-
maining in the courts at each stage of the
process. Total attritionfrom initial investiga-
tion to indictment was a little less than one-
half in France overall, and slightly less than
one-third for Corsica.'" Because these fig-
I Not all indictments led to a trial, notably be-
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AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW
Indictments Indictments
Recommended Upheld
by Magistrate by Grand Jury
230 215
15
74 69
13,256 12,660
596
54 51
ures cover all felonies in aggregate, they set
a conservative lower bound on the retention
rate for homicides and attemptedhomicides,
which were almost certainly prosecuted more
often than such crimes as burglaryand fraud.
It seems reasonable to infer that about three-
fourths of investigations of lethal violence
eventuated in a trial. As a result, the differ-
ences between selected incidents and those
that do not appear in the data would have to
be large to seriously bias the findings.12
Two factors help to account for the higher
retention rate in Corsica as compared with
the rest of France. In the first place, Corsica
was an island with a well-defined, stable, and
small population (roughly 200,000), making
cause suspects sometimes died in custody. (Sus-
pects not in custody were tried in absentia, gen-
erating a trial document even when suspects had
evaded arrest.) However, the annual figures show
that over 95 percent of indictments led to a trial
within 12 months.
12 The most likely candidates for underrepre-
sentation in the data are incidents with no victims
and incidents in which all participants in a con-
flict killed one another. A census of crimes
known to the police in Corsica for 1898 included
no case of the latter type (Archives Nationales,
Series F7 12850). To check whether underrepre-
sentation of victimless incidents affected the find-
ings, I reran the analyses reported in this paper
after assigning a weight to each case inversely
proportional to the number of casualties (10 per-
cent of the incidents involved no casualties). The
estimates were within one decimal point of those
reported here, indicating at most only minor dis-
tortion because of this type of selection bias.
COLLECTIVE VIOLENCE AND GROUP SOLIDARITY
it easier to identify suspects there than, for
instance, in large cities on the mainland. In-
deed, only 1 in 12 discontinued investiga-
tions were dropped because no suspects
could be found, compared with 1 in 9 for
France as a whole. Second, investigations
were unusually aggressive in Corsica be-
cause the central authoritieswere determined
to suppress violence in a region they re-
garded as troublesome and backward (Bindi
1991; Culioli 1990; France, Ministere de la
Justice 1860, 1882; Marcaggi [1932] 1966;
Wilson 1988). In their quarterly reports to
the Minister of Justice in Paris, magistrates
in Corsica continually referred to the effect
they hoped their activities would have on the
"mores"of this ratherun-French society.
This tension between the legal-rational
customs of the French state and Corsican tra-
ditions for dealing with conflict is central to
the second validity issue-the accuracy of
trial summaries' accounts of what happened.
Given disagreementbetween state authorities
and the inhabitants about what constituted
acceptable behavior, defendants and wit-
nesses sometimes tried to mislead the court
about the circumstances surroundingviolent
conflict. For example, after shooting and
wounding the local priest at Bastiano in
1852, Michele Taddei testified that he had
been angry because the priest was having an
affair with his wife. Prosecutors maintained
that he had simply been trying to rob the
priest and that the story of the affair was a
ruse to gain sympathy from the jury. He was
convicted, but the jury granted the excuse of
'provocation.'
Clearly, some testimony was false, and
some Corsicans saw the courts as an alien
justice system to be manipulated when pos-
sible with the aid of deception and indig-
enous juries. It would be wise, however, not
to exaggerate the ease with which such non-
cooperation could divert the court from dis-
covering who did what. In the first place,
prosecutors relied on testimony from numer-
ous eyewitnesses and from opposing sides in
each incident.13 When interested parties did
13 A reviewer suggested that police and pros-
ecutors might have faced general noncooperation
from witnesses. In perusing over 20 years of court
documents, I have uncovered no complaints to
this effect on the part of court officers.
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365
try to hide the truth, they did so in ways that
served their competing purposes. Accounts
given by defendants, complainants, and third
parties therefore diverged often enough (e.g.,
regarding who drew a weapon first) to dispel
any illusions about collective defiance of the
court. Neither magistrates nor lawyers ex-
pected to hear completely honest statements
from principals or from witnesses who may
have been their associates. The trial process
therefore incorporatedthe testimony of up to
three dozen witnesses (averaging 20 for in-
vestigations and 12 for trials).
Second, the court usually had recourse to
forensic evidence concerning the size and
shape of knife wounds, the angle of entry and
exit for gunshot wounds, the position of vic-
tims' bodies, and gunpowder traces on re-
cently used weapons. This evidence was par-
ticularly important when, for instance, a de-
fendant claimed that only his brother had
used his weapon. Finally, prosecutors took
pains to demonstrate to witnesses and to
Corsicans in general that they did not take
false testimony lightly-between 1851 and
1860, nearly 50 perjurycases appearedin the
docket of the Bastia assize court (France,
Ministere de la Justice 1882).
No court is infallible, particularlyin cases
with few witnesses, but it seems likely that
for the majority of the trials used in this pa-
per the variables of interest correspond to
what actually happened. Local customs ex-
erted influence on the judicial process not so
much in establishing facts as in deciding the
verdict and sentence-Corsican juries ac-
quitted defendants over 50 percent more of-
ten than did juries in the rest of France. Even
after convictions, magistrates frequently la-
mented what they viewed as unwarranted
jury indulgence, including grants of extenu-
ating circumstances and recognition of mur-
ders as "excusable."14 The clash between the
traditional and modern justice systems ap-
pears to have played itself out in the applica-
14 One of the most common such acts was to
admit the existence of "provocation" for a mur-
der defendant who had been insulted verbally.
Judges interpreted"provocation"to mean that the
victim had physically assaulted the defendant or
somehow made a physical confrontation unavoid-
able. Extension of the term to include insults
clearly reflected the importance of honor to
Corsican jurors.
366 AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW

tion of penalties ratherthan in the establish- acted preemptively if they anticipated that a
ment of factual details. new person would join in violence. This vari-
Despite these considerations, it is still pos-
able permits a more stringent test of my ar-
sible that the trial documents systematically gument because the only relevance a previ-
distort some of the relevant measures. I re- ously uninvolved person has is that he or she
is tied in some way to one of the disputants;
visit this issue later, and discuss its implica-
tions for interpretingthe results (see the sec-by definition, a nondisputant has taken no
tion entitled "Competing Interpretations" action that might invite violence or indicate
following the results section). an intention to participate in it. Inclusion of
nondisputants in violence is a stark indica-
tion that what may have begun as a one-on-
Outcome Measures one dispute has become a group conflict in
The outcome of interest-whether violence the eyes of at least one person.16 Naturally,it
has a group character or one-on-one charac- is logically possible, given the two defini-
ter-has two dimensions, termed collabora- tions, for generalization to occur indepen-
tive violence and generalized violence. Any dently of whether collaborative violence oc-
incident in which more than one person on curs. Empirically, however, collaborative
one side of a dispute employed lethal force violence and generalized violence are posi-
(fired a weapon, lunged at someone with a tively associated, reinforcing their interpre-
knife or sharpinstrument,or wielded a heavy tation as alternate measures of the collective
object at a person's head) was coded as an nature of violence. Like collaborative vio-
instance of collaborative violence. Violence lence, generalized violence is a dichotomous
was also considered collaborative when one measure, with 1 corresponding to inclusion
person audibly encouraged another to use a of a new person in violence.
weapon, furnished someone with a weapon
that the latter then used, or arranged for a
thirdparty to attack an adversary.(Five cases Independent Measures
involving the latter sort of activity-essen- The relevant independent measures for the
tially contract killing-appear in the data.) analysis are (1) whether group contention
The rationale for including these more indi- occurred prior to the first use of lethal force;
rect forms of group action is that individuals (2) whether disputants knew one another
who participatein these ways materially con- prior to the dispute; (3) whether there was a
tribute to violence, and in so doing bear kin connection between opposing sides in the
some of the risk both of counter-violence and incident; and (4) whether disputants be-
prosecution.15 The measure for collaborative longed to groups with a history of conflict or
violence is dichotomous; a value of 1 indi- competition.
cates collaborative violence, and 0 indicates Group contention. I noted any behavior
one-on-one violence. mentioned in the trial summarythat occurred
Generalized violence reflects whether the prior to the outbreak of violence and could
incident included at least one person-either clearly be construed as taking sides in a dis-
as a user of violence or as a target of vio-
lence-who had not previously taken any ac- 16 There are two cases in the data of an injury
tion, verbal or physical, in the dispute. New to someone completely unconnected to any of the
targets are treated the same way as new ac- disputants, and a third case of a person missing
tors in coding because disputantsmight have his target and injuring his own brother.In a fourth
incident, the assailant intended to kill his adver-
sary as he slept, but instead killed the man's in-
15 The choice to treat verbal encouragement as fant son in the bed next to him. The first three
equivalent to actual use of lethal force was moti- cases were coded as if the target was a disputant
vated mainly by the fact that formal legal systems because the trial clearly established in each case
have consistently treated such behavior as com- that the gunshot was aimed at one of the dispu-
plicity in homicide. Verbal encouragement in- tants ratherthan at the bystander. The fourth case
creases the likelihood that violence will occur, in was coded as generalized violence because it was
part because it persuades the assailant that he or obvious to the killer that the child was in the line
she has an ally. of fire.

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COLLECTIVE VIOLENCE AND GROUP SOLIDARITY
pute.17 If more than one person on one side of
a dispute had engaged in such behavior at any
point before the first use of violence, the dis-
pute was recorded as involving group con-
tention. For example, in one case from 1852,
two youths from the town of Bastelica were
arguing over a cap one had taken from the
other. The elder brothers of the two inter-
vened on behalf of their respective relatives,
leading ultimately to a stabbing of one by the
other. This event was coded as involving
group contention (multiple disputantson both
sides) but one-on-one violence (at most one
person on each side employing lethal force).
Disputes were exhaustively classified as
involving (1) purely one-on-one contention
prior to violence or (2) group contention
prior to violence (multiple persons on at least
one side against one or more persons on the
other).18 Actions that qualified as taking
sides include voicing an opinion in favor of
one party, insulting someone, issuing a de-
mand, threatening some future action, strik-
ing someone with a hand or stick, seizing
contested property, and filing a legal com-
plaint. Actions not coded as taking a side in-
cluded attempting to calm someone down,
restraining someone engaged in a fistfight,
informing one person about the actions of
another, and arranging for a meeting to re-
solve differences.
Prior tie. Disputants were coded as know-
ing one another either if the trial summary
made it clear that this was so or if they lived
in the same village. Because most communi-
ties had populations of only a few hundred,it
would have been nearly impossible for resi-
dents of the same village not to be acquainted.
For residents of different communities, the
threshold for inferring a social tie was low:
Disputants were coded as knowing one an-
other if they had had business dealings, had
been drinking or gambling together at the
time of the incident, if they were engaged in
a sexual rivalry,or if the documentmentioned
past interactions of any sort. Any tie between
17 Given this criterion, it was not necessary for
two people to be members of the same kinship
group for group action to occur. In all but a few
cases, however, only relatives acted together in
the previolence phase of disputes. The same was
true of violence itself.
18 No disputes involving more than two sides
appeared in the data.
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367
any two individuals on opposite sides of a
dispute sufficed to qualify the dispute as oc-
curring between acquaintances.
Kin tie between disputants. Disputants
were coded as connected by kinship only if
specific reference to a kin tie appearedin the
trial summary. Shared surname was not suf-
ficient to establish kinship, given the consid-
erable number of villages in Corsica with
only one or two family names.19 Initially,
consanguineous relationships were distin-
guished from relationships by marriage
(Daly and Wilson 1988), but these were com-
bined when investigation failed to reveal a
difference in their associations with the de-
pendent variables. By construction, when op-
posing sides were coded as tied by kinship,
they could not be coded as unacquainted.
Diffuse group conflict. In Corsican com-
munities, as in many other face-to-face set-
tings, recurrent conflict between the same
sets of people was common, and such con-
flict was often institutionalized in the form of
political factions (Albitreccia 1942; Pomponi
1979; Versini 1964; Wilson 1988). Trial sum-
maries contain frequent references to a his-
tory of conflictual (though not necessarily
violent) relations between kin groups, or be-
tween a particular family and an individual
with whom they were on bad terms. Because
new disputes occurring against the back-
ground of group conflict would be more
likely to lead to group violence, diffuse group
conflict was included as an indicatorvariable.
Associations between group contention and
the two outcome variables are thus estimated
net of a background situation favoring col-
laborative or generalized violence.
Controls
Vendetta. Twenty-six of the 221 incidents
were vendettas-murders or attempted mur-
ders in retaliation for past killings. The
analyses include an indicator variable for
such incidents because of the high likelihood
that these incidents would exhibit a different
19 As in many small and isolated societies,
Corsicans could in principle establish some kin
connection with almost any other inhabitant of
the island. This meant that only third-degree and
closer relationships were customarily recognized
(Lenclud 1979; Wilson 1988).
368
pattern from that of disputes in which vio-
lence occurred for the first time. In particu-
lar, use of violence by a previously un-
involved individual was common in vendet-
tas (39 percent of vendettas, as contrasted
with 22 percent of other incidents).20
Presence of other group members. Col-
laborative violence and generalized violence
were more likely when two or more mem-
bers of a kin group were physically present
at the moment violence began, simply be-
cause multiple group members were avail-
able either as actors or as targets. The regres-
sion models initially included a term for the
presence of multiple persons on one side of
the dispute and another for group presence
on both sides. Various specifications showed
that group presence was associated with a
higher likelihood of collaborative violence
and generalized violence whether group
presence was mutual or asymmetric, but
principally in the former case. Hence, the
models reportedhere control for group pres-
ence on both sides.
Female disputant. In light of the central-
ity to Corsican society of male dominance
within families and of female sexual purity,
disputes involving only men and disputes in-
volving at least one woman might have dif-
fered in the degree to which group solidarity
was activated. In particular,spousal violence
(of which there are several cases in the data)
is a strong a priori candidate for a more dy-
adic outcome. Therefore, I include an indi-
cator variable reflecting involvement of a
woman as disputant, user of violence, or tar-
get of violence.
Intervention by third party. Many inci-
dents of violence occurred after bystanders
tried to separate disputants or, in the case of
more drawn-out conflicts, after local no-
tables attempted to work out a compromise.
Intervention of this kind could reduce the
likelihood of collaborative violence or gen-
eralized violence, if only because occasion-
ally it delayed escalation and gave people an
opportunity to disperse. Thus, an indicator
20 Why some violent confrontations led to ven-
dettas but most did not will be the subject of fu-
ture investigation. Contrary to conventional no-
tions, the data for the nineteenth century suggest
that fewer than 10 percent of homicides resulted
in subsequent revenge killings.
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AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW
variable is included that reflects whether any
third party intervened prior to the first use of
violence.
Sample year. The data come from three
distinct time points rather than from a ran-
dom sample of incidents across the whole
period. Two indicator variables (one for 1865
and one for 1893) are included in the multi-
variate analysis to allow for possible differ-
ences over time in the base rate of collabora-
tive violence and generalized violence and
for empirical associations between time
point and the other independent variables.
Coding Reliability
The documents employed in this study are
narrativesconcerning a diverse set of events
whose details varied from one case to the
next. Classifying each incident therefore re-
quires interpretation by a coder, creating a
risk of interratervariation in coding even if
the concepts underlying each variable are
clear. To determine whether the data and
classification scheme afforded an acceptable
level of reliability, I provided an assistant
with a sample of 37 court summaries (every
sixth case) and a description of the concepts
(group contention, involvement of non-
disputants, and so on) used in the study. The
percent agreement between my coding and
that of the assistant (from 85 to 97 percent
for the key variables) suggests that the trial
summaries provide sufficiently clear infor-
mation for substantial agreement regarding
values on the core variables.
RESULTS
Table 2 tests the prediction that group con-
tention deters escalation (pi < P2) by com-
paring the amount of collaboration in lethal
violence and in nonlethal violence in Corsica
at two points in the mid-to-late nineteenth
century. Data on France as a whole (includ-
ing Corsica) are included as a reference. The
number of participants per incident can be
interpreted as an index of the level of col-
laboration in the two kinds of conflict: If
all incidents involved a single assailant, the
value of this index would be unity. Note first
that Corsica, with less than 1 percent of the
population of France, accounted for one-
tenth of the homicides in the nation for the
COLLECTIVE VIOLENCE AND GROUP SOLIDARITY 369

Table 2. Level of Collaboration in Violence by Type of Violence (Nonlethal/Lethal) and Year: Corsica
and France, 1858 to 1860 and 1882 to 1885

Total Total Participants

Type of Violence and Date Incidentsa Participants per Incident
Assault and Battery
Corsica
1858-1860 1,111 1,728 1.56
1882-1885 2,065 3,211 1.55
France
1858-1860 40,092 55,036 1.37
1882-1885 84,196 112,232 1.33

Murder and Attempted Murder'

Corsica
1858-1860 87 117 1.34
1882-1885 167 210 1.26
France
1858-1860 826 971 1.18
1882-1885 1,673 2,044 1.22
Source: France,Ministerede la Justice (1859, 1860, 1861, 1882, 1883, 1884, 1886).
a
Refers to those incidentsclearedwith an arrest(i.e., those incidentsfor which at least one assailantwas
identified).
b Combines
premeditatedand unpremeditatedmurder(assassinat and meurtre).Negligent homicides are
excluded.

years covered in the table. Similarly, nonle-
thal forms of violent conflict appear to have
been more common in Corsica than in France
as a whole, though the gap was smaller:
Corsica's annual assault rate for this period
was 1.8 per 1,000, as contrasted with .4 per
thousand for France as a whole.
My central claim is that group action dis-
courages escalation to violence by convey-
ing a message that violence will be collec-
tive. For this assertion to be correct, group
action must be more common in disputes that
do not escalate to lethal force than in those
that do. Taking data for assault and battery
as an indicator of the characterof contention
prior to lethal violence, Table 2 suggests that
the rate of group involvement in these inci-
dents- 1.55 actors per assault-was indeed
considerably higher than for homicides, for
which the rate was 1.26 actors per incident.
Moreover, the difference is greater,both pro-
portionally and absolutely, for Corsica than
for France as a whole.21 This is the expected
pattern if group contention constitutes a
show of solidarity-and hence a threat of
group violence-in relatively collectivist so-
cieties accustomed to violent conflict.
Tables 3 and 4 present percentage distri-
butions of the two group violence measures
(collaborative violence and generalized vio-
lence), disaggregated by the pattern of
previolence contention. The marginal totals
in Table 3 show that of the 221 incidents, 24
percent (53 incidents) involved collaborative
violence. (Recall that collaboration included
verbal encouragementor furnishing someone
with a weapon.) Thus three out of four inci-
dents involved at most one assailant on each
side of the conflict. Similarly, the marginal
totals in Table 4 reveal that generalization of
violence to nondisputants was considerably
rarer than incidents in which violence was
restricted to disputants. This was especially
true of violence directed against individuals
who had not actively taken sides in the con-
flict-30 cases (16 if vendettas are excluded)

21 Using the data for Corsican homicides tried 1852, 1865, and 1893), the comparable figure is
during the years covered in this study (i.e., 185 1- 1.31.

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370
Table 3. Percentage Distribution of Types of
Violence (One-on-One/Collaborative)
by Type of Prior Contention: Corsica,
1851-1852, 1865, and 1893
Type of Prior
Contention
Type of Violence One-on-One Group
One-on-oneviolence 90.2 63.9
Collaborativeviolence 9.8 36.1
Total percent 100.0 100.0
Numberof cases 102 119
Note: X2 = 20.89, d.f. = 1; p < .001.
ended with someone using lethal force
against at least one nondisputant, and only
22 cases (10 not counting vendettas) began
this way. Fifty cases involved a nondisputant
as a user of violence, and in 43 of those cases
the violence was initiated by the non-
disputant. Thus, generalization of the latter
type was not a response to escalation, but an
inherent element of escalation.
The bivariate analysis demonstrates that
both collaborative violence and generalized
violence were significantly more likely (p <
.001 in each case) when at least one side had
acted collectively in the previolence stage of
the dispute.22Moreover, the difference was
substantively large: Collaborative violence
was nearly four times more common follow-
ing group contention than following one-on-
one contention, and generalized violence was
more than twice as likely following group
contention as compared with one-on-one
contention. The result in Table 4 is especially
stark because the definition of the variable
and the coding procedures were biased
against this finding-the more people de-
fined as disputants prior to violence, the
fewer candidates there are for generalized
violence. Consequently, if the null hypoth-
22 The association appears to be additive in the
sense that group violence was more likely when
groups had been active on both sides than when
only one side had acted collectively; but the num-
ber of cases is too limited for this result to be sta-
tistically reliable. To preserve statistical power,
the analyses combine these two conditions into a
single category that reflects group contention on
one or both sides.
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Table 4. Percentage Distribution of Types of
Violence (Disputants Only/Generalized)
by Type of Prior Contention: Corsica,
1851-1852,1865, and 1893
Type of Prior
Contention
Total Type of Violence One-on-One Group Total
76.0 Violence involving 82.4 60.5 70.6
only disputants
24.0
Generalizedviolence 17.6 39.5 29.4
100.0 Total percent 100.0 100.0 100.1
221 Numberof cases 102 119 221
Note: X2 - 12.63, d.f. = 1; p < .001.
esis of no relationship were true, the ob-
served association between group contention
and generalized violence would be negative.
Multivariate Analyses
The logistic regression results in Tables 5
and 6 test whether the bivariate correlation
between group contention and the two indi-
cators of group violence (collaborative vio-
lence and generalized violence) persists af-
ter controlling for a variety of other factors.
These regression models also include coeffi-
cient estimates for the subsidiary hypothesis
of an association between group violence and
preexisting social connections between dis-
putants.
Table 5 shows, across a variety of specifi-
cations, that group contention prior to vio-
lence was associated with a significantly
higher rate of collaborative violence. Trans-
forming the point estimate from Model 6 into
an odds ratio (e1 36= 3.90) reproducesthe bi-
variate result that, net of other factors, the
odds of collaborative violence (conditional
on violence occurring) were close to four
times greater when group contention oc-
curred prior to escalation. The presence of
two groups and diffuse group conflict were
also significantly associated with collabora-
tive violence at similar levels. After these
background conditions are controlled, group
contention prior to violence continues to
show a strong association with the dependent
variable. Thus, even in situations where dis-
putants were already predisposed to see con-
flicts as collective, expressions of solidarity
COLLECTIVE VIOLENCE AND GROUP SOLIDARITY 371

Table 5. Coefficients from the Logistic Regression of Collaborative Violence on Selected Indepen-
dent Variables: Corsica, 1851-1852, 1865, and 1893

Independent Variable Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 4 Model 5 Model 6

Group contention 1.65** 1.66** 1.75** 1.57** 1.34** 1.36

prior to violence (.38) (.38) (.40) (.40) (.42) (.42)
Kin tie linking -.26 -.18 -.18 -.15 -.14
disputants (.42) (.43) (.45) (.46) (.47)
No prior tie between -.49 -.55 -.24 -.44 -.41
disputants (.51) (.52) (.53) (.55) (.55)
Female disputant -.43 -.38 -.39 -.47
(.38) (.39) (.40) (.41)
Diffuse group conflict 1.20* 1.03* 1.00*
prior to dispute (.48) (.50) (.51)
Vendetta -.21 .03 -.07
(.61) (.62) (.64)
Two groups - 1.15** 1.26**
physically present (.44) (.46)
Third-party - - -.50
intervention (.44)
1865 - - .01
(.51)
1893 - - .20
(.79)

Constant -2.22 -2.10 -2.05 -2.26 -2.31 -2.17

-2 log-likelihood 221.13 219.95 218.61 210.45 203.57 202.08
Improvement x2 22.36** 23.54** 24.87** 33.03 39.92** 41.40
Degrees of freedom 1 3 4 6 7 10

Note: N = 221. Numbers in parentheses are standard errors.

<.05 ** < .01 (two-tailed tests)

prior to violence made a difference in the an association may reflect a confounding of

outcome. several phenomena. Several cases involving
The estimates for preexisting kin ties be- women were attacks on wives by their hus-
tween disputants are consistently negative, bands, who invariably committed such acts
alone; others were attacks on men who had
as expected, but the coefficients are not sig-
nificant. (This is also true for absence of refused to marrywomen with whom they had
any prior tie.) Thus, these data show no evi-had sexual relationships. Because the latter
dence of a different rate of collaborative incidents often involved violence by more
violence for conflicts between kin compared than one family member, the two incident
with conflicts between nonkin. The result is types correlate with collaborative violence in
unchanged when consanguineous relation- opposite directions.
ships are distinguished from ties through Results for generalized violence, presented
marriage. in Table 6, largely parallel those for collabo-
There were no observable differences in rative violence. The odds that a nondisputant
odds of collaborative violence between ven- would become involved as either a user or a
dettas and other conflicts, across sample target of violence were between two and
years, or between incidents in which a third three times greater when group contention
party intervened and those in which none occurred prior to the first use of lethal force.
did. Nor is there an association between the As with collaborative violence, the presence
odds of collaborative violence and involve- of two groups and diffuse group conflict
ment of a woman in disputes. The absence of prior to the dispute were associated with

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372 AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW

Table 6. Coefficients from the Logistic Regression of Generalized Violence on Selected Independent
Variables: Corsica, 1851-1852, 1865, and 1893

Independent Variable Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 4 Model 5 Model 6

Group contention 1.11 ** 1.13** 1.17** 1.12** .86* .87*

prior to violence (.32) (.33) (.34) (.40) (.43) (.43)
Kin tie linking -.87* -.83 -.63 -.63 -.60
disputants (.42) (1.15) (.49) (.50) (.51)
No prior tie between -.93 -.95 -.46 -.66 -.67
disputants (.50) (.50) (.57) (.59) (.58)
Female disputant -.19 -.06 -.22 -.20
(.36) (.41) (.42) (.43)
Diffuse group conflict 1.59** 1.43** 1.43**
prior to dispute (.48) (.50) (.50)
Vendetta 2- 2.43** 2.52** 2.517*
(.74) (.75) (.76)
Two groups 1.42** 1.41**
physically present (.51) (.51)
Third-party -.95* -.91*
intervention (.45) (.46)
1865 -.28
(.55)
1893 .21
(.81)

Constant -1.54 -1.27 -1.24 -2.02 -1.76 -1.76

-2 log-likelihood 254.74 247.53 247.25 194.60 183.85 183.48
Improvement x2 13.02* 20.24** 20.51* 73.16* 83.92** 84.28**
Degrees of freedom 1 3 4 6 8 10

Note: N = 221. Numbers in parentheses are standard errors.

*p < .05 **p < .01 (two-tailed tests)

fourfold increases in the odds of generalized
violence. There is some indication that gen-
eralized violence was more likely when dis-
putantsknew one anotherthan when they did
not, and less likely when they were related
by kinship. Again, however, these relation-
ships are statistically weak-particularly af-
ter controlling for diffuse group conflict,
which is correlated negatively with kin con-
nection and positively (by construction) with
prior acquaintance.
Table 6 echoes the previous finding for
disputes involving women in that such dis-
putes were comparableto others in frequency
of generalized violence. Two other results
distinguish the findings for generalized vio-
lence from those for collaborative violence.
First, vendettas were far more likely than
other conflicts to include nondisputants ei-
ther as users or targets of violence, primarily
because the assailant in a vendetta was by
definition distinct from the original victim.
Second, incidents in which third parties in-
tervened prior to the first use of lethal force
generalized to new group members signifi-
cantly less often than did incidents in which
no intervention occurred. Evidently prior in-
tervention did not prevent collaborative vio-
lence conditional on escalation to violence
(though it may well have prevented escala-
tion itself), but it did shield nondisputants
from being drawn in.
SUMMARY
Analysis of violent incidents in nineteenth-
century Corsica reveals that two types of
group violence-collaborative use of lethal
force and generalization of violence to
nondisputants-was systematically related to
prior patterns of contention and to the type
of social connection between adversaries.

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COLLECTIVE VIOLENCE AND GROUP SOLIDARITY
Specifically, if contention in the previolence
stage was collective on one or both sides of
a dispute, then it was considerably more
likely that use of lethal force also would be
either collaborative or generalized to non-
disputants (or both). This relationship ob-
tained even after other relevant circum-
stances, such as the physical presence of po-
tential allies or a history of contention be-
tween disputants' families, were taken into
account. Evidence suggests that violence ex-
tended to nondisputantssomewhat less often
when disputants were strangers or were tied
by kinship, but the association of these fac-
tors with generalized violence is hard to dis-
tinguish from the impact of background
group conflict, with which both are corre-
lated. This result implies that kin ties be-
tween disputants may discourage collective
violence over the long term by preventing
disputes from solidifying into permanent
hostility, but may have less influence on
short-termpatterns of escalation.
Several other considerations may shed
light on the unpredictedfinding that kin con-
nections between disputants did not, net of
other factors, reduce the odds of collabora-
tive or generalized violence.23 First, kin con-
nections may have prevented disputes from
becoming violent, even if they did not affect
the form violence took in those instances that
did escalate. Second, feuding families in
Corsica occasionally tried to make peace by
contractinga marriage.Marriageas a method
of dispute resolution is institutionalized in
many societies (and, of course, was a well-
known tool of foreign policy among Euro-
pean monarchies). As a result, kinship some-
times paralleled underlying bases for con-
flict, making it harder to observe its damp-
ening effect on group violence. Third, it
seems likely that some differences might be
observed if the analysis distinguished
nuclear family connections from second-de-
gree and more distant relationships. For ex-
ample, the data include no cases of two
brothers attacking a third brother, although
there are cases of lethal violence between
two brothers and cases of generalized and
23 In one instance of intrafamily violence, a pair
of brothers attacked their sister's husband for try-
ing to evict their father from his room in the mar-
ried couple's home.
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373
collaborative violence between cousins.
When pairs of individuals within nuclear
families fought, the fact that nondisputants
were closely tied to both sides may have ef-
fectively disqualified them from inclusion,
even though this pattern did not hold for ex-
tended families.
Competing Interpretations
One alternativeinterpretationis that the find-
ings are artifacts of the data-collection pro-
cedure, principally because the data are fil-
tered through the judicial process. Trial
documents may fail to accurately reflect
what happened. Deception, manipulation,
and simple lack of evidence may have made
it difficult for prosecutors,juries, and judges
to ascertain the details of violent incidents.
This is a significant issue in contexts in
which the formal justice system is perceived
as external to indigenous norms, which was
the case for some Corsicans during the pe-
riod studied. Occasionally, for instance, pros-
ecutors uncovered evidence of secret peace
treaties in which a killer's family agreed to
banish him and in return the victim's family
agreed not to testify-though our knowledge
of such agreements shows that they did not
necessarily succeed (e.g., see Archives
Nationales, BB20 146/1, trials of Lorenzo
Moreschi and Matteo Versini).
The danger in using court documents to re-
construct actual events is not that they are
not always accurate-measurement error is
always present-but ratherthat they may be
systematically inaccurate in ways that bias
the relevant coefficient estimates. This
would be the case, for example, if the com-
ponent of the error term resulting from un-
measuredevidence distortion were correlated
with the variable measuring group conten-
tion. There are no external validity checks to
establish whether this occurred, but an inter-
nal check is available. The interval between
the date of the incident and the trial date re-
flects in part the difficulty police and pros-
ecutors faced in gathering evidence and ap-
prehending suspects. Trials occurred later if
suspects evaded arrestand were usually post-
poned if a key witness failed to appear or if
the prosecutor uncovered evidence of private
efforts to influence testimony. These kinds of
behavior would also interfere with fact-gath-
374
ering, so factual distortion in trial summaries
should be associated with this time interval.
To test whether such distortion was system-
atically related to the variables of interest, I
compared the mean intervals in months
across the values of the two dependent vari-
ables and the key independent variable; I
found no statistically significant differences.
For collaborative violence, the average dif-
ference was 2.1 months (12.8 versus 14.9; t
= .57); for generalized violence, the differ-
ence in intervals was 3.1 months (12.4 ver-
sus 15.5; t = .90); and for group contention,
the difference was 2.4 months (12.0 versus
14.4; t = .45). Because there is no evidence
that the key measures are systematically re-
lated to the proxy for factual distortion, I in-
fer that the interpretationof the results as ar-
tifacts is less persuasive than the substantive
interpretation.
A second competing interpretationis that
the dependent and independent variables are
measuring the same thing, making the deter-
rence account superfluous. If two people
have acted together prior to violence, one
might reasonably predict their joint partici-
pation in violence. But this interpretationcan
explain only the finding for collaborative
violence; even if it were accepted, the fact
that contention prior to escalation was also
correlated with generalization to nondis-
putants would require a separate account. In
fact, if the reason for the first result were that
persons engaged at one stage were also en-
gaged at the next stage, group contention
would be negatively rather than positively
associated with generalized violence-each
additional person involved in conflict prior
to violence would mean one less nondis-
putant available for inclusion in violence.
Viewing collaborative violence and general-
ized violence as demonstrations of group
solidarity accounts for both observed rela-
tionships and for their persistence after con-
trolling for backgroundconditions that might
account for the effect of group contention.
DISCUSSION AND EXTENSIONS
The idea of the group as an entity indepen-
dent of its individual members is founda-
tional to sociology. For many sociologists,
the priority of the social group relative to the
individual is an article of faith-a paradig-
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AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW
matic assumption that delineates what kinds
of arguments qualify as sociological, rather
than a proposition subject to modification in
the face of empirical evidence. Individualist
accounts of behavior (i.e., explanations of
social phenomena as aggregations of autono-
mous individual decisions) are seen either as
the preserve of other disciplines (usually
psychology or economics) or as heretical if
proffered within sociology. All three of the
theoretical descent groups in sociology-the
functionalist, conflict, and institutional ap-
proaches-favor society-level or group-level
accounts over individualist accounts, inas-
much as they couch explanations in terms of
value systems, class structures, organiza-
tional practices and forms, and so forth.
Against this disciplinary grain, recent stud-
ies of collective action have concentrated on
the social dilemma inherent in cooperative
social behavior-namely, the incentive for
each individual to let others make an effort
from which all will benefit (Chong 1991;
Hardin 1982; Macy 1991, 1993; Marwell,
Oliver, and Prahl 1988; Oliver and Marwell
1993). Observing that people nonetheless act
collectively, even in situations where doing
so incurs significant risks, sociologists have
painstakingly documented the processes by
which groups manage to solve their free-
rider problems. Chief among these are two
mechanisms that generate solidarity and
hence voluntary subordination of individual
interests to group interests: social influence,
mediated by strong personal relationships,
through which people influence one another
to act cooperatively (Fernandez and
McAdam 1988; Gould 1991, 1993; McAdam
1986; McAdam and Paulsen 1993), and the
construction of interpretive frameworks, es-
pecially those involving collective identities,
which enable people to see themselves as oc-
cupying similar social positions and sharing
a common fate (Ansell 1997; Calhoun 1995;
Fantasia 1988; Gould 1995; McAdam 1982;
Melucci 1989; Taylor and Whittier 1992).24
24 Even those who have most vehemently criti-
cized the rationalist acr unt of collective action
have typically done so by outlining how people
overcome the free-rider problem. In so doing,
they help answer a question that would not have
been posed but for the "overly" rationalistic for-
mulation of the issue.
COLLECTIVE VIOLENCE AND GROUP SOLIDARITY
These views on collective action have been
most thoroughly developed and explored in
the area of social protest, but the problem
they address seems to be common to all
forms of group conflict. Any confrontation
between collections of people-whether the
boundary dividing them is one of class,
ethnicity, neighborhood, clan, race, gender,
or religion-involves the possibility that
group action will not occur because behavior
is dominated by individualistic motives. Yet
rarely do social scientists writing outside the
protest literature discuss the significance of
this obstacle to group violence. The purpose
of this study has been to document the way
the collective-action problem influences the
outcome of group conflict. I have tried to
show that groups use demonstrationsof soli-
darity to forestall escalation, but that such
demonstrations make violence worse when
escalation does occur-that is, when adver-
saries are unconvinced.
In contexts in which the state's role in
dispute resolution is weak, people are more
likely to protect their interests with deadly
force, either aggressively, defensively, or
preemptively. This pattern has been widely
documented in traditional societies and in
marginalized urban communities in the con-
temporaryindustrialized world. In such situ-
ations, group membership has enormous
value in that it constitutes a mutual-defense
pact. It is surely more than twice as risky to
attack two solidary individuals than a single
person, even for multiple assailants.25 Un-
fortunately, the promise of mutual defense,
even if expressed in the course of a dispute,
is not ironclad and thus does not always
convince the other side to back down. The
reason is that someone who joins in vio-
lence may enhance a family's reputation for
solidarity, but may not live to reap any of
the reward. Faced with the choice between
action that benefits the group but bears
deadly risk, and inaction that fails to help
the group but affords a better chance for in-
25 From this standpoint, vendettas are simply
an extension of the mutual-defense pact. The (collaboration and generalized violence) oc-
threat of vengeance tells potential assailants that
adversaries are not socially alone, even if they are
physically alone. In practice, however, the threat the adversaries had a history (and thus a
of retaliation is not entirely credible, despite ro- probable future) of group contention, a situ-
mantic images to the contrary:Most homicides in ation that enhanced the importance of group-
Corsica were not avenged.
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375
dividual survival, some people will select
inaction.
Because everyone involved in a dispute
knows all of this, the knowledge that an ad-
versary has potential allies, some of whom
may be present, cannot always prevent esca-
lation. Expressions of mutual support by kin
are a way of raising the stakes: Making soli-
darity explicit before violence occurs (in the
hope that this will avert violence) commits
group members to act collectively if the
conflict does escalate. Group action before
escalation, in short, reduces the likelihood
of escalation at the price of intensified vio-
lence for those disputes that do escalate.
And because collective contention high-
lights group-level reputations for solidar-
ity-not just the aggregate of individual
reputations for bravery-even nondisputants
are implicated in such cases. Thus, family
members who have not engaged in conten-
tion may nonetheless feel compelled to join
in violence-or become targets because
they are expected to join-if group action
has preceded escalation. They will not al-
ways do so, but they do so more often when
the solidarity of their kin group is explicitly
at stake, both in their own eyes and in the
eyes of others.
The Corsican data exhibit several of the
patternspredicted by this account. First, even
in a society notable for its collectivist social
organization, the transition from individual
to group conflict was hardly automatic. In
fact, one-on-one violence was the norm. Sec-
ond, group action was more common in con-
flicts that did not escalate to lethal violence
(as measured by prosecutions for assault and
battery) than in those that did. Third, among
those that did escalate, violence was much
more likely to be collective when at least one
side in a dispute had acted as a group prior
to escalation, thereby making their cohesive-
ness a salient issue: Group contention prior
to escalation was associated with higher rates
of collaborative violence and with higher
rates of violence involving nondisputants.
Finally, both types of collective violence
curred more frequently in conflicts in which
level reputations for solidarity.
376
Although the evidence I present comes
from a single setting, the argumentis stated
in terms sufficiently abstractto invite empiri-
cal verification in other domains. Indeed, the
ways in which Corsica was special (and to
some degree remains so) enhance, ratherthan
undermine, the broader relevance of my ar-
gument about the communicative role of
group contention. My analysis is a conserva-
tive test of the argumentbecause Corsica, like
other feuding societies, was a classical locus
for group conflict. Thus, the finding that vio-
lence was only contingently collective carries
special significance. If group action in high-
risk situations was problematic in a clan so-
ciety, then it must be at least as difficult for
groups in individualistic societies to credibly
assert and act on their solidarity.
I propose that the mechanism operating in
Corsican conflicts is a specific instance of a
fairly general process. There are numerous
situations in which the social dilemma inher-
ent in collective action-especially risky col-
lective action-weakens the shield of mutual
protection that groups purport to offer their
members. Because solidarity-by which I
mean the willingness of individuals to act as
if the interests of fellow group members are
indistinguishable from their own-is observ-
able only in its results, people engaged in
conflict can never be certain that the solidar-
ity their groups have exhibited can be sus-
tained at a more intense level of struggle.
Urban gangs, for instance, judge their rela-
tive strength not only in numbers but also on
the more elusive dimension of cohesiveness
(Jankowski 1991; Shakur 1993; Short and
Strodtbeck 1965; Suttles 1967). Thus, youth
gang members and professional gangsters
talk almost obsessively about the intense loy-
alty they feel for one anotherand persistently
apply the rhetoric of kinship to what are in
fact voluntary relationships (Gambetta 1993;
lanni 1972; Jankowski 1991; Maas 1968;
Salerno and Rivele 1990; Thompson 1967).
It is likely that, if cohesion in such groups
were as strong as members say, they would
not need to talk about it quite so often.
The same issue faces protesters and gov-
ernment forces during civil disturbances:
Neither troops nor civilians know whetherci-
vilians will risk injury or death for one an-
other if the troops open fire, and neither side
knows if troops will supporteach other if pro-
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AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW
testers turnout to be willing to confront a vol-
ley of bullets. Much of the time one side (usu-
ally the protesters)retreatsbecause the threat
of escalation is persuasive, but violence
sometimes occurs because someone gambles
that the other side's solidarity will falter. In a
less contentious setting, leaders of firms or
public agencies occasionally find that dis-
missal of a critic hurts their own legitimacy
when, contraryto expectation, othermembers
of the organizationresign in protest.
As a counterpointto this dynamic, authori-
tarian regimes never miss an opportunity to
publicize the betrayals they induce among
dissidents through bribes, threats, or other
means corrosive of solidarity. Even when
these betrayals are invented, the possibility
that they are not weakens the mutual trust on
which dissident groups depend. The House
Un-American Activities Committee operated
in this way in its efforts to undermine not
only the public image, but also the internal
cohesion, of American Communism.
The principal insight in this account is that
it is the fragility of group solidarity, not its
strength, that leads to the intensification of
conflict. People try to prevent escalation by
asserting, implicitly or explicitly, that they
will act collectively if escalation occurs. The
credibility of this assertion lies in the fact
that groups, like individuals, have to live up
to their claims if these claims are to have any
value in the future. But because some uncer-
tainty always remains ex ante, escalation
nonetheless takes place some of the time. At
this point, group members either must act as
they promised they would or face even more
challenges in the future and more insecurity
about their ability to meet those challenges.
Delivering on the promise of mutual support
may well be what people engaged in con-
flicts are talking about when they say they
are defending their group's honor.
Roger V. Gould is Associate Professor of Sociol-
ogy at the University of Chicago, and Editor of
the American Journal of Sociology. He does re-
search on social networks and social conflict in
both historical and contemporarysettings. Recent
publications include two articles on the Whiskey
Rebellion of 1794 and a book (Insurgent Identi-
ties, University of Chicago Press, 1995) on ur-
ban uprisings in France. He is currently complet-
ing a book manuscript on violence, revenge, and
group conflict.
COLLECTIVE VIOLENCE AND GROUP SOLIDARITY 377

Appendix A. Derivation of the Prediction that Disputes Ending in Low-Level Violence Are Charac-
terized by Higher Levels of Group Action Than Are Disputes Ending in Lethal Violence

The proposition that nonviolent group contention laboratory,m, as in nonviolent contention,the total
deters escalation to violence (in terms of Figure 1, numberof participantsin violence, a,, is given by
the hypothesis that Pi < P2) logically implies that a P n
there is less group action in lethal conflict than in = + 2
nonlethal contention. For simplicity, assume that r n
group action occurs only on one side of a dispute, +[P1 P(P3) + P2 1P4)] 2
whether for group contention prior to violence or Rearranginggives
collaboration in violence itself. (The argument is a = P [1 + p3 (m i)f-+ p2[1 + p4 (nl 1)]--
easily extended to cases in which group contention 2 2
can occur on both sides.) The phrase"numberof ac- Dividing by the total numberof disputes that es-
tors"thereforerefers to the numberon only one side calate to violence, given in expression A-2, yields
of each dispute. the following expression for the average numberof
Assume there are n disputes, half of which in- participantsper violent incident:
volve one-on-one contention and half of which in-
clude group contention (the assumption of equal P1[ + p3(m - )] + P2[1 + p4(n - 1)]
numberscan be relaxed without changing the out-
come). Assume furtherthat the expected numberof +P2
actorscollaboratingin an instance of group conten- As Pi approachesP2 from below, the upper bound
tion is m, where m is an integergreaterthanor equal for this expressionis
to 2. It follows that the numberof actorsparticipat-
ing in contention(call this numbera,) is given by P2[2 + (p3 + p4)(m - 1)]

a ,=(m+1)n (A-1) 2P2

2 which simplifies to
In other words, there is one actor participatingin
each of the n12 one-on-one disputes, and m actors (p3 + p4)m + [2 - (p3 + P4)] (A-3)
(on average)in each of the n12 disputesthatinvolve 2
groupcontention.
Now, by definition of Pi and P2. the numberof From equationA-1, the average numberof partici-
disputesthatescalate to violence is equal to pants in nonviolentcontentionis given by

(P1 +P2)2
as ml(A-4)
(A-2)
2' n 2
and, by definition of p3 and p4, the total numberof Because by definitionin is at least 2, the value of
disputesthatescalate and involve collaborativevio-expression A-3 is less than (m + 1)/2 as long as
lence is p3 + p4 is less than 1. Thus, as long as collaborative
violence is not more probableoverall than one-on-
(P1P3 + P2P4>- one violence, Pi < P2 implies thatthe numberof par-
2 ticipants per incident of nonlethal contention ex-
Assumingthateach incident involving collabora- ceeds the numberper incident of lethal contention.
tive violence has the same expected numberof col- Q.E.D.

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