Mac Ginty (2006:69): “Academic debate on conflict causation has crystallised around two main themes: greed and grievance. The greed thesis stresses economic predation as the chief cause and maintenance factor in civil war, while grievance explanations concentrate on a wide category of other factors ranging from identity, religion and group claims to unmet status needs.” Most arguments are over which takes priority, not the mutually exclusive importance of one or the other.
Mac Ginty (2006:70): “The thesis encourages a cautious approach to explanations of conflict based on ethnic superiority, identity claims and historical grievances. These explanations may be cynically promoted by political entrepreneurs who use them to mobilise support, but they provide an unreliable guide to ‘true’ economic motivations.” Sees the benefits of the greed thesis as coming from its emphasis on rationality rather than normative judgements about actors and causes, and its supposed predictive capacity.
Mac Ginty (2006:71): Sees grievance as covering a broad array of explanations, of which he highlights ideology, ethnicity, human needs, inter-group competition. Of these, ideology gets notable limited treatment by comparison.
Mac Ginty (2006:73-74): Human need explanations focus on the need to belong and other psychological, social, cultural and economic wants that must be satisfied.
Mac Ginty (2006:74-75): Inter-group competition theories are compatible with human need ones. People seek to categorise and organise their social environments, which leads to in-groups that are viewed positively and outgroups that are viewed negatively. When this categorisation occurs in settings with deep social divisions, it can lead to conflict.