Economic Roots of Political Conflict: The Case of Sri Lanka

Escalation of political conflict in many developing countries and their impact on
economic development has been a topical issue in recent development literature. The
overwhelming emphasis on ‘ethnic conflicts’ in this literature has, however, precluded
looking at political conflict in the wider context of the development process, going beyond
the ethnic dimension. In particular, because of the preoccupation with the ethnic roots as
the prime source of these conflicts, reverse causation running from economic policy to
political conflict has been virtually ignored in the debate. The purpose of this paper is to
redress this gap through an in-depth case study of the ‘twin political conflict’ in Sri
Lanka¾the Tamil separatist war in the North and the Sinhala youth uprising in the
South¾with emphasis on its economic roots. The findings suggest that fundamental
contradictions in the national development policy throughout the post independence era
were in the heart of the country’s twin political conflict.