Foreign Economic Liberalization and Peace: The Case of Sub-Saharan Africa

Abstract

A typical adage of the globalization literature is that foreign economic liberalization undermines the social fabric of developing countries. This article examines this claim for the sub-Saharan African countries and thus the continent that experienced both low economic growth and a high incidence of armed conflict during the 1990s. Our results yield support for the assertion that economic openness durably pacifies countries once the restructuring of the economy is over. We can, however, not reject the possibility that the distributional consequences of foreign economic liberalization increase the risk of civil war during the implementation of the reform measures. We contrast this ‘distributional’ model with alternative explanations such as the role of the International Monetary Fund and the level of democracy. A comparative case study on Guinea and Guinea-Bissau lends some illustrative evidence to the claim that compensating the losers of globalization can pacify intrastate relations.