At the point of independence in 1948, Sri Lanka was projected to be a success story in the developing world. However, in July 1983 a violent ethnic conflict which pitted the Sinhalese against the Tamils began, and did not come to an end until 2009. This conflict led to nearly 50,000 combatant deaths and approximately 40,000 civilian deaths, as well as almost 1 million internally-displaced refugees and to the permanent migration abroad of nearly 130,000 civilians. With a focus on Sri Lanka, this book explores the political economy of ethnic conflict, and examines how rival political leaders are able to convince their ethnic group members to follow them into violent conflict. Specifically, it looks at how political leaders can influence and utilize changes in the level of economic liberalization in order to mobilize members of a certain ethnic group, and in the case of Sri Lanka, shows how ethnic mobilization drives can turn violent when minority ethnic groups are economically marginalized by the decisions that the majority ethnic group leaders make in order to stay in power. Taking a political economy approach to the conflict in Sri Lanka, this book is unique in its historical analysis and provides a longitudinal view of the evolution of both Tamil and Sinhalese ethnic drives. As such, this interdisciplinary study will be of interest to policy makers as well as academics in the field of South Asian studies, political science, sociology, development studies, political economy and security studies.

In Ordering Violence, Paul Staniland advances a broad approach to armed politics—bringing together governments, insurgents, militias, and armed political parties in a shared framework—to argue that governments' perception of the ideological threats posed by armed groups drive their responses and interactions. Staniland combines a unique new dataset of state-group armed orders in India, Pakistan, Burma/Myanmar, and Sri Lanka with detailed case studies from the region to explore when and how this model of threat perception provides insight into patterns of repression, collusion, and mutual neglect across nearly seven decades. Instead of straightforwardly responding to the material or organizational power of armed groups, Staniland finds, regimes assess how a group's politics align with their own ideological projects. Explaining, for example, why governments often use extreme repression against weak groups even while working with or tolerating more powerful armed actors, Ordering Violence provides a comprehensive overview of South Asia's complex armed politics, embedded within an analytical framework that can also speak broadly beyond the subcontinent.

This book is the revised version of his doctoral thesis on Political Violence in the Third World: A Case Study of Sri Lanka: 1971-1987 . It is a systematic, empirical study of the left-wing insurrection by the Janatha Vimkuthi Peramuna (JVP) in April 1971 and the ethnic insurrection by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) up to the Indo Sri Lanka Accord of 1987. This is an in-depth study regarding a crucial phase of the on-going political violence in Sri Lanka. The book emphasizes that the root cause for the Political Violence in Sri Lanka is not only confined to ethnic groups but also on socio-economic basis too. The study explores the socio-economic and political background that paved the way to the origin and development of underground movements, the genesis of ideologies, the strategies and tactics adopted leading to the escalation of political violence. This book will therefore, serve as a core reading material to understand the political violence in Sri Lanka. Consequently, it will serve as a very useful authentic reference material for the students of political science and policy makers concerned in search of a sustainable consensus and compromise for setting the political violence in Sri Lanka. Contents: - List of Tables Abbreviations Foreword Preface Introduction Theories on Political Violence: An Analytical Framework Preconditions of Political Violence in Sri Lanka: The 1971 Insurrection Precondition of Tamil Guerrilla Warfare Origin, Development and Form of Guerrilla Organisations Ideologies, Strategies, and Programmes Pattern of Political Violence: 1971-1987 Conclusion Appendices Bibliography Index. The Title 'Political Violence In Sri Lanka written/authored/edited by Gamini Samaranayake', published in the year 2008. The ISBN 9788121210034 is assigned to the Hardcover version of this title. This book has total of pp. 432 (Pages). The publisher of this title is Gyan Publishing House. This Book is in English. The subjec

Social, political, economic and constitutional developments are considered as well as the evolution of science and arts in the development process. This is in accordance with the Sri Lankan tradition of seeing the world as a connected whole."--BOOK JACKET.

Focusing on the work of Sri Lankan legislators, this book offers a model of representation in examining parliamentary systems, especially those found in the Third World. It explores an important part of legislators' responsibilities as the country seeks to decentralize its development planning.