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List of contents
1. Introduction; 2. The meaning of predation; 3. Domination, manhunting and conflictual costs and benefits; 4. Rational conflict theory, paradox of war and strategic manhunting; 5. Appropriation, violent enforcement and transaction costs; 6. Appropriation, the state space and the economics of escape; 7. Predatory nature of the state and democracy; Epilogue.
About the author
Mehrdad Vahabi is Associate Professor at the University of Paris VIII and associate member of Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne (CES). His interests include political economy, economics of conflict, institutional economics, post-socialist transition and comparative economics. He is the author of The Political Economy of Destructive Power (2004) and has published in many peer journals including Public Choice, the Cambridge Journal of Economics, the American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Bulletin of Economic Research, Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, the Canadian Journal of Development Studies, Louvain Economic Review and Revue d'économie politique.
Summary
Conflict theory presents a growing interest in understanding the economic costs and benefits of conflicts. Mehrdad Vahabi analyses conflict theory through one type of conflict in particular: manhunting, or predation, in which a dominant power hunts down prey, and the goal of the prey is to escape and thus survive.
Additional text
'Some books appear quite surprising, disturbing or even pretty far from what economists can expect. This is particularly the case when authors look beyond traditional methodology in order to challenge existing research agendas. Nevertheless, few of such books provide a true renewal of thought. Mehrdad Vahabi's The Political Economy of Predation: Manhunting and the Economics of Escape belongs to such category. This book represents an ambitious and disturbing work, but in a positive way. It really provides new perspectives of research agenda with regard to the place of violence as an intrinsic feature of human interactions.' Renaud Bellais, Defence and Peace Economics
