Head for the Hills? Rough Terrain, State Capacity, and Civil War Onset

Abstract

This article expands on the conventional discourse relating rough terrain – mountainous terrain and noncontiguous territory – to civil war onset. In addition to their direct effects on the strategic and tactical logic of insurgency, I argue these factors affect state capacity, as measured by tax capacity, and exert an indirect effect through this channel. Because tax capacity proxies bureaucratic and administrative capacity as well as material resources, it conditions the decision to rebel more than military capacity per se. I find a negative relationship between mountainous terrain and to a lesser extent, noncontiguous territory, and state capacity. Subsequently, I find tax capacity is strongly and negatively associated with civil war onset, though this relationship appears only with longer than conventional temporal lags. The cumulative (direct + indirect effects mediated by state capacity) of rough terrain is roughly 45 per cent larger than its direct effect.