Beyond fallacies: violent conflicts globally and in muslim countries

Abstract

This article explores the relationship between key economic development indicators and the occurrence of violent civil conflicts. It examines public policy failures and mistakes which link with onset of conflicts. Two sets of 160 countries are included to empirically analyse the determinants of conflicts. This analysis extends to two distinctive subsets of Muslim countries. The paper establishes that the classification procedure of violent conflicts matters—varying classifications offer dissimilar values to similar predictors. Here, our conclusions are contrary to the much emphasized ‘greed motivation’ to rebel, which dismisses strong linkages of ‘grievances’ like low income, economic development failures and political repression with intrastate violent conflicts. The paper also infers limitations in country level data—which cross-country studies employ—income and unemployment data are non-reflective of conflict regions and of horizontal inequalities. We stress region and country specific research.