Shock Absorption and Mass Violence in Extractive Political Orders

Why do extractive regimes sometimes organise mass violence against populations on which they depend? This article proposes a structural account within the predatory state framework. Extraction is limited by costs that rise with intensity. These limits leave resources in the hands of households and sustain assurance systems that prevent households from falling below subsistence thresholds. Together, private reserves and assurance systems constitute a buffer. When the buffer is depleted and an acute shock arrives, a critical mass of the population crosses compliance thresholds, becoming a structural threat to the extractive stratum. The article argues that this configuration — depleted buffer, acute shock, mass threshold-crossing — constitutes a structural pathway along which mass violence becomes overwhelmingly probable. Which form the violence takes depends on pre-existing conditions, particularly the internal structure of the stratum. The article develops the mechanism, engages adjacent literatures, and uses Soviet grain procurement in 1928–1933 as a plausibility probe. The contribution is conceptual: a bridge between the predatory state tradition and the literatures on genocide, civil war, and war.