Elise Must graduated in Industrial Economics from the Norwegian University of Technology and Science (NTNU) in 1999. After two years in the telecommunication business she joined Norsk Hydro in 2001. She has held various analyst and management positions, including Head of Strategy and Industry Analysis at the Head Office, where she was responsible for Hydro’s overall portfolio strategy as well as macro, price and industry analysis.
She graduated with an MSc in Global Politics from the London School of Economics and Political Science in 2005, and finalized a Master of Research in Political Science at the same institution in June 2012. Following a year of maternity leave she was upgraded to PhD status in September 2013.
Thesis
When does inequality cause conflict? The role of perceptions
Does inequality lead to conflict? This question has attracted the attention of prominent scholars at least since the time of Aristotle. The frequent assumption that unequal distribution somehow fuels rebellion has resulted in a vast amount of theoretical as well as empirical work. Unfortunately, results remain mixed. Despite countless qualitative studies stating that inequality is a major reason for conflict outbreak, quantitative studies have struggled to establish a firm relationship between the two.
A major limitation of these quantitative studies has been their use of individual measures of inequality. It is minority groups or collectives of individuals who rebel, not the whole population, nor individuals. Emerging studies now confirm an association between group inequality and conflict. Promising as these studies are, they are nevertheless limited by their use of objective measures. People act on inequalities that are perceived as unjust, and such perceptions are not captured by commonly used proxies such as the Gini coefficient, or by any official income statistics. In fact, existing data reveals a correlation between objective and perceived group inequality ranging from 15 to 30 per cent, making the use of objective inequality as a proxy for perceived inequality too crude. Hence, the first key contribution of this PhD will be to analyze the effect of perceived group inequalities on mobilization. Furthermore, recognizing the importance of perceptions naturally begs the question of what forms them. A second key contribution will be to directly test mechanisms in the causal chain, seeking to answer the question: when and how does objective group inequalities translate into perceived group inequalities and become a mobilization resource? This latter aspect will be investigated particularly given the presence of large natural resources.
The PhD takes a mixed methods approach with cross-country repeated cross-sectional analyses as well as a case study of Tanzania and its newly discovered gas wealth.
Supervisor: Dr Paul Mitchell|
Research interests
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Group identity
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Inequality
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Perceptions
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Conflict
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Natural Resources
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Tanzania
Publications
Must, Elise (2013) ‘Perceptions, Horizontal Inequalities and Conflict Outbreak: A Global Comparison’. Working Paper Draft presented at the annual MPSA conference, Chicago, USA
Contact
Email: E.Must@lse.ac.uk|