Abstract
Natural resources can create state-based and other conflicts through several causal mechanisms. Debate, however, has remained silent on forms of conflict, especially why violent or peaceful collective action occurs. Combining the literatures on nonviolent- and armed conflict with work on the resource–conflict link, we developed a number of hypotheses on how resources affect the conditions under which collective actors such as ethnic groups remain dormant, voice grievances peacefully or engage in violent rebellion. A grid-cell analysis of ethnic groups in Africa largely confirmed our expectation on the effect of resources. Resource deposits increased the risk that violent conflict would occur; the effect was reversed and ethnic groups become dormant when groups living in resource regions were politically included. We also found some evidence that lootable resources fuel violent but not peaceful conflict. However, the non-resource context best explained the difference between violent and nonviolent conflict. Democracy, political exclusion and geography such as distance from capital and transborder ethnic kin were key in explaining why violent and not peaceful protest emerged. Future research should dig deeper into mechanisms of how resources affect forms of conflict and should further study non-resource conditions that can have functionally equivalent effects.
Highlights
Many studies show that natural resources can negatively affect producing states by increasing corruption, economic problems, and violent conflict
Model 3 introduces the effect of resource production conditional on political power access to investigate H2, and Model 4 focusses on the effect of lootable resources on dissident collective action in order to test H3
A grid-cell analysis of Africa that centred on ethnic groups suggests that the logic of nonviolent and violent conflict differs substantially
Summary
Many studies show that natural resources can negatively affect producing states by increasing corruption, economic problems, and violent conflict (see e.g., Hunziker and Cederman, 2017; Le Billon, 2012; Ross, 2012;). With regards to conflict onset, empirical outcomes vary In cases such as Angola, Colombia, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) or Nigeria, armed conflict over natural resources has claimed thousands of lives (Le Billon, 2012; Uppsala Conflict Data Programme (UCDP) Conflict Encyclopedia, 2017). Local ethnic and other groups more often than not protested mining peacefully in Bolivia and Peru (Mähler and Pierskalla, 2014). In a third group of cases, largely under the radar of international media coverage, local groups suffered negative side-effects as a consequence of extraction without any visible mobilization. In these cases ‘dogs did not bark’ nor did they ‘bite’, but remained ‘asleep’.1. In these cases ‘dogs did not bark’ nor did they ‘bite’, but remained ‘asleep’.1 How can we explain these differences? Why do (wo)men or, ethnic groups rebel (Gurr, 1970, 2000), and by what means? Under what circumstances do ethnic groups take up arms against the state, when do they voice resource-related grievances in nonviolent manners, and when do they remain dormant?
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