Civil Conflict Onset Research Articles

Calendar versus Analysis Time: Reanalyzing the Relationship between Humanitarian Aid and Civil Conflict Duration

Abstract Previous work in International Studies Quarterly shows higher levels of humanitarian aid prolong civil conflicts. It also finds, among conflict–years in which aid is received, that this conflict-prolonging effect is more acute in insurgency-based civil conflicts, albeit with weaker supporting evidence. However, I show this work accidentally generated its conflict duration variable incorrectly, with the duration measuring time since January 1, 1960, not time since civil conflict onset. The duration values also exclude the first at-risk day for the first observation in each conflict, which drops true one-day durations from the estimation sample. I rerun the original analysis with the corrected duration coding and find evidence that supports the opposite of the author's main hypothesis: higher levels of humanitarian aid either have no effect on or shorten civil conflict duration. Additionally, the weak evidence for the author's second hypothesis mostly disappears, depending on the conflict's duration.

Unholy alignment and boomerang civil conflicts: Examining how conflicts beget conflicts through external states support for rebels

ABSTRACT This paper focuses on external state support for rebel movements by developing an analytical tool to explain how external support for rebels leads to civil conflict onset and intensification in the target state and how conflict reverses to the sponsoring state, engendering conflict diffusion and continuation. I present a two-fold argument that a cooperative relationship between external states and rebels triggers the remote causes of civil conflict, translating latent grievances into manifest conflict in the target state. Further, the resulting conflict has a boomerang effect. It has the potential to reverse to the sponsoring state. I do this by using a case studies method – cooperative relationships of governments of Sudan and Chad with each other’s rebels vis-à-vis Sudan Civil War (2000–2005) and Chad Civil War (2005–2010) – to provide a detailed explanation of the framework and its hypotheses. The explanations I offer here may help us understand some African conflict dynamics for us to take some recent developments, for example, in the Great Lakes, more seriously.

Costly Concessions, Internally Divided Movements, and Strategic Repression: A Movement-Level Analysis

Abstract Is government repression of self-determination (SD) movements affected by the internal structure of the movements? This article investigates the relation between internal fragmentation of SD movements and state repression. While internal fragmentation of domestic challengers is well-documented in conflict studies, its effect on state repression is largely overlooked by the extant literature. Here, I argue that inter-faction competition and disagreements within an internally divided movement constrain the government's ability to negotiate concessions in a way that can satisfy all the actors involved, engendering incentives to repress the movement. I expect that the degree to which this mechanism operates depends on the extent to which the movement is internally fragmented. The findings show that higher degrees of within-movement fragmentation are positively associated with higher levels of repression, and this effect is greater in the presence of active violent militants but smaller in the presence of one or a few dominant faction(s). This study sheds light on the mechanisms that drive repression over SD disputes, which often lead to escalation of violence and civil conflict onset. A deeper understanding of these mechanisms can help with the development of early warning systems and conflict prevention in the political practice of national and international organizations.

Identifying Patterns in the Structural Drivers of Intrastate Conflict

AbstractQuantitative methods have been used to: (1) better predict civil conflict onset; and (2) understand causal mechanisms to inform policy intervention and theory. However, an exploration of individual conflict onset cases illustrates great variation in the characteristics describing the outbreak of civil war, suggesting that there is not one single set of factors that lead to intrastate war. In this article, we use descriptive statistics to explore persistent clusters in the drivers of civil war onset, finding evidence that some arrangements of structural drivers cluster robustly across multiple model specifications (such as young, poorly developed states with anocratic regimes). Additionally, we find that approximately one-fifth of onset cases cannot be neatly clustered across models, suggesting that these cases are difficult to predict and multiple methods for understanding civil conflict onset (and state failure more generally) may be necessary.

Beyond ethnicity: historical states and modern conflict

Historical states, be they sprawling empires or nominal vassal states, can make lasting impressions on the territories they once governed. We argue that more historical states located within the borders of modern states increase the chance of civil conflict because they (1) created networks useful for insurgency, (2) were symbols of past sovereignty, (3) generated modern ethnic groups that activated dynamics of ethnic inclusion and exclusion, and (4) resisted western colonialism. Using new global data on historical statehood, we find a robust positive association between more historical states inside a modern state and the rate of civil conflict onset between 1946 and 2019. This relationship is not driven by common explanations of state formation that also drive conflict such as the number of ethnic groups, population density, colonialism, levels of historical warfare, or other region-specific factors. We also find that historical states are more likely to be conflict inducing when they are located far from the capital and in poorer countries. Our study points to unexplored channels linking past statehood to modern-day conflict that are independent of ethno-nationalist conflict and open possibilities for a new research agenda linking past statehood to modern-day conflict outcomes.

Understanding the Framework of Civil Conflicts and External Support for Insurgents in Africa South of the Sahara

Abstract Since independence in Africa south of the Sahara, deadly internal conflicts have wracked the region more than any other in the world. Some of these conflicts transcended national boundaries because external states became involved in supporting rebel movements. The purpose of this paper is to contribute to an understanding of this international dimension of civil conflict. It develops a framework—unholy alignment, referring to the cooperative relationship between states and rebels—to examine how external support leads to the onset and intensification of civil conflict. I argue that external state support augments rebels’ capabilities to intensify violent demands that threaten the target government. I use data from secondary sources through historical process tracing and observation of congruence, and the case studies method, to explore three instances of Rwanda’s cooperative relations with rebels between 1994 and 1999, to show how they shaped civil wars in the DRC.

Economic shocks and militant formation

A prominent debate in the civil war literature asks whether commodity price shocks incentivize fighting, but existing analyses find inconsistent results. This paper shows these results arise, in part, because research conflates the decision to form a militant campaign with the start of civil conflict. Using original data on 973 militant groups, I sequentially disaggregate between civil conflict onset and the earlier stage of militant mobilization. I use fixed effect regression methods to test for indirect and interaction effects that could obscure the shock-civil conflict relationship. First, I estimate the effect of export commodity price shocks on mobilization onset. Second, I re-examine the shock-civil conflict relationship conditioning on the number of militant groups mobilizing at the time of the shock. The results show economic shocks indirectly increase the risk of civil conflict by driving militant formation. Disaggregating these stages of militant activity advances research about two-stage conflict processes as well as the indirect causes of violence.

Do Major-Power Interventions Encourage the Onset of Civil Conflict? A Structural Analysis

What is the impact of major-power intervention on civil-war onset? A considerable hurdle to answering this question is gauging expectations about future intervention on the eve of conflict. We tackle this challenge by developing a unified theoretical and empirical model of civil-war onset and subsequent intervention. Our model allows for strategic interdependence among interveners, and our empirical strategy enables estimation of intervention expectations from equilibrium behavior. We fit the model to civil war and intervention data from the second half of the twentieth century and find that major-power intervention is primarily characterized by strategic complementarities—for example, cost sharing among allies or competition for control among rivals—rather than free-riding incentives. Through counterfactual experiments, we show that commitments to decreased intervention would raise the risk of civil war worldwide, whereas increased intervention would have little effect. Our results suggest that coordination among major powers is maximally deterring civil conflict.

Natural Resources and Civil Conflict: The Role of Military Expenditures

Military expenditures significantly affect the relationship between the risk of civil conflict outbreak and natural resources. We show that a significant positive effect of natural resource rents on the risk of civil conflict outbreak is limited to countries with low military expenditures. In countries with high military expenditures, there is no significant effect of natural resource rents on civil conflict onset. An important message is thus that a conflict resource curse is absent in countries with sufficiently large military expenditures.

From Claims to Violence: Signaling, Outbidding, and Escalation in Ethnic Conflict.

Do radical political demands increase the risk of ethnic civil conflict? And why do ethnic movements make radical demands in the first place? We contend that when movements are fragmented, individual organizations use far-reaching claims relative to the status quo to attract attention from the government, boost intra-organizational discipline, and outbid rivals. Yet, such radical claims also increase the risk of conflict escalation. We test our arguments at both the ethnic group and organizational levels, using a new dataset on ethno-political organizations and their political demands. Our results show that the scope of demands increases the more organizations exist within an ethnic movement and that radical demands increase the risk of civil conflict onset. This effect is specific to the dyadic government-movement interaction, irrespective of other ethnic groups in the country. Moreover, at the organizational level, radicalization in demands increases the likelihood that an organization becomes engaged in civil conflict.

Culture, Economic Shocks and Conflict: Does trust moderate the effect of price shocks on conflict?

This paper documents an important channel through which culture may affect conflict. We examine a panel of developing countries over fifty years and use price shocks to extractive commodities as an exogenous variation in the country’s economic outlook. We find that these price shocks are less likely to result in the onset of civil war and conflict in countries that have higher levels of trust. However, we also find that trust does not moderate price shocks’ effect on the cessation of conflict. Our study provides new empirical evidence on the interdependence of economic shocks and culture on conflict.

How and how much does expert error matter? Implications for quantitative peace research

Expert-coded datasets provide scholars with otherwise unavailable data on important concepts. However, expert coders vary in their reliability and scale perception, potentially resulting in substantial measurement error. These concerns are acute in expert coding of key concepts for peace research. Here I examine (1) the implications of these concerns for applied statistical analyses, and (2) the degree to which different modeling strategies ameliorate them. Specifically, I simulate expert-coded country-year data with different forms of error and then regress civil conflict onset on these data, using five different modeling strategies. Three of these strategies involve regressing conflict onset on point estimate aggregations of the simulated data: the mean and median over expert codings, and the posterior median from a latent variable model. The remaining two strategies incorporate measurement error from the latent variable model into the regression process by using multiple imputation and a structural equation model. Analyses indicate that expert-coded data are relatively robust: across simulations, almost all modeling strategies yield regression results roughly in line with the assumed true relationship between the expert-coded concept and outcome. However, the introduction of measurement error to expert-coded data generally results in attenuation of the estimated relationship between the concept and conflict onset. The level of attenuation varies across modeling strategies: a structural equation model is the most consistently robust estimation technique, while the median over expert codings and multiple imputation are the least robust.

The Joint Effect of International and Domestic-Level State Capacity on Civil War Risk

This article examines the role of international and domestic-level factors for strengthening states’ capacity. State failure enhances insecurity, since there is not sufficient agency or institutions to provide adequate security guarantees and to put into operation established rules. When the government is unable to address grievances stemming from such insecurity, armed conflict becomes more likely. Links with external institutions and domestic-level capacity that increases prosperity prevent insurgencies and promote stability, however. To this end, this research develops a new theory linking state capacity and the international and domestic-level factors to internal conflict. Empirically, this study examines the risk of civil conflict onset, focusing on the combined effect of international (political globalisation) and domestic-level (GDP per capita) state capacity as the main driving force. The results show that the joint effect of these factors has a negative impact on civil war risk, which is significantly and substantially important.

Humanitarian food aid and civil conflict

Abstract Humanitarian food aid has long been considered to be an effective tool towards conflict mitigation among donors and policymakers. Within the Sustainable Development Goals that have the objectives of ending hunger before 2030 (SDG#2) and bringing peace and justice (SDG#16), humanitarian food assistance may play a critical role in delivering progress in developing countries. However, there have been growing concerns that it may actually have counter-intended effects by aggravating civil conflicts in recipient countries. We estimate the effect of humanitarian food aid on civil conflict using a sample of 79 recipient countries between 2002 and 2017. Our analysis exploits cross-sectional and time variation in between-country humanitarian food aid displacements. Our baseline instrumental variables estimates imply that a 10 percent increase in humanitarian food aid per capita decreases the incidence of civil conflict by about 0.2 percentage point (or by about 0.9 per cent at the mean conflict incidence). Humanitarian food aid also decreases the incidence of small-scale and large-scale civil conflicts, and the onset and duration of civil conflicts.

The geography of natural resources, ethnic inequality and civil conflicts

We study whether the spatial distribution of natural resources across different ethnic groups within countries causes spatial inequality and the incidence of armed conflict. By providing a theoretical rent-seeking model and analysing a set of geo-coded data for mines, night-time light emissions, local populations and ethnic homelands, we show that the spatial distribution of resources is a major driving factor of ethnic income inequality. Moreover, a spatially unequal distribution of natural resources induces rent-seeking behaviour and thus increases the risk of civil conflicts. Consequently, we extend the perspective of the resource curse to explain cross-country differences in income inequality and the onset of civil conflicts.

Simplified complexity: Analytical strategies for conflict event research

Scholars who have sought to identify the triggers of rare political events have met with limited success. With respect to civil war, studies teach us to expect conflict where it is feasible. However, although we understand where civil conflict occurs, we do not quite understand when it occurs. Focusing on civil conflict, I argue that time-variant and time-invariant explanations relate to the outcome by means of two distinct causal processes, which has implications for the identification of triggers of rare events. I provide an easily implementable approach to improve rare event estimation that uses matching to leverage constant attributes to estimate the effects of rare predictors. I demonstrate the utility of this procedure by providing an aggregate and disaggregate example of civil conflict onset estimation.

Whose greed, whose grievance, and whose opportunity? Effects of foreign direct investments (FDI) on internal conflict

This paper investigates the influence of foreign direct investments on the probability of civil conflict onset, contributing to the debate on globalization and civil conflict. I relax the common assumption that all forms of globalization are equivalent in their effects on civil conflict. I also incorporate the cross-sectoral heterogeneity of investments in existing arguments about the socioeconomic externalities of foreign direct investments as determinants of conflict. With long time horizons and managerial control of their foreign affiliates, foreign direct investors are strategic players aiming to maximize profits and uniquely able to alter their environment through socio-political channels. This distinguishes FDI from trade and foreign portfolio investments. Through a combination of political agency and socio-economic influences on grievance and greed among domestic groups, some types of FDI are likely to alleviate the risk of civil conflict (service sector FDI), while others exacerbate it (primary sector FDI). Analyses using a new data set of sector-specific FDI stock, 1980–2013, lend empirical support to the argument. Showing that economic globalization can have simultaneous positive and negative externalities, these findings are informative for the current dialogue on the role of global markets in sustainable development.

Funding rebellion

We introduce a new dataset measuring if and how rebel groups earn income from the exploitation of natural resources or criminal activities. The Rebel Contraband Dataset makes three contributions to data in this area. First, it covers a wide range of natural resources and types of crime. Second, it measures rebel engagement in these activities over time. Third, it distinguishes among different strategies that rebel groups employ, such as extortion and smuggling. Theory suggests that reliance on natural resource wealth should lead rebels to mistreat civilians, but cross-group research using existing data does not find support for this relationship. We replicate an earlier study using data from the Rebel Contraband Dataset and conclude that there is a consistent relationship between natural resource exploitation and civilian victimization. Future research can use the dataset to explore questions about the onset, location, severity, and outcomes of civil conflicts.

Leader Survival Strategies and the Onset of Civil Conflict: A Coup-Proofing Paradox

It is paradoxical that authoritarian leaders often hold power for long periods of time, despite their states being plagued with rebellion. Scholarship has argued the practice of coup-proofing is potentially responsible for this trend. However, though regular armed forces are often allowed to whither when coup-proofing, states often retain substantial capabilities in the form of well-armed and well-trained coup-proofing units. This article argues that coup-proofing is more likely to contribute to rebellion when leaders are hesitant to deploy their coup-proofing units: when coup risk is high. Using a global sample of authoritarian regimes for the years 1971–2011, tests indicate that heavily coup-proofed regimes do in fact see a considerable increase in civil war likelihood when the risk of a coup is high but see no change in conflict propensity when coup risk is low.

Can migration reduce civil conflicts as an antidote to rent-seeking?

In this paper, I investigate whether access to migration reduces the positive effect of natural resources on the onset of civil conflicts shown in the literature. There is a negative and significant correlation between the interaction variable “migration rate-natural resources” and the probability of outbreak of civil wars, showing that the effect of natural resources is conditional on the migration rate. Simulations to quantify the marginal effects of the interaction term show that a migration rate equal to 6% or higher dampens the effect of natural resources on civil wars. To address the potential endogeneity problem in estimating the relationship between civil conflicts and migration, although I distinguish economic migrants from refugees, I also use an IV approach. In this respect, the negative effect of the two interacting variables on the probability of outbreak of civil wars remains robust after having instrumented the migration rate by using the gravity-based predicted emigration rate. Given the endogenous nature of the ratio of primary exports to GDP, in addition, the study directly utilizes the emigration rates as an alternate robust method to estimate the primary issue on civil conflicts. The results show that only the civil conflicts caused by natural resources are negatively impacted by emigration rates.