Natural resource wars in the shadow of the future: Explaining spatial dynamics of violence during civil war

Previous studies on natural resources and civil wars find that the presence of natural resources increases both civil conflict risk and duration. At the same time, belligerents often cooperate over resource extraction, suggesting a temporal variation in the contest over this subnational space. This study argues that parties fight over natural resources primarily when they expect that the conflict is about to end, as the importance of controlling them increases in the post-conflict setting. In contrast, belligerents that anticipate a long war have incentives to avoid fighting near natural resources since excessive violence will hurt the extraction, trade, and subsequent taxation that provide conflict actors with income from the resource. We test our argument using yearly and monthly grid-cell-level data on African civil conflicts for the period 1989–2008 and find support for our expected spatial variation. Using whether negotiations are underway as an indicator about warring parties’ expectations on conflict duration, we find that areas with natural resources in general experience less intense fighting than other areas, but during negotiations these very areas witness most of the violence. We further find that the spatial shift in violence occurs immediately when negotiations are opened. A series of difference-in-difference estimations show a visible shift of violence towards areas rich in natural resources in the first three months after parties have initiated talks. Our findings are relevant for scholarship on understanding and predicting the trajectories of micro-level civil conflict violence, and for policymakers seeking to prevent peace processes being derailed

Democracy at the point of bayonets/ Peceny

xiii, 254 hal.; 23 cm

Democracy at the point of bayonets/ Peceny

xiii, 254 hal.; 23 cm

Liberal Social Reconstruction and the Resolution of Civil Wars in Central America

Are forceful security guarantees necessary to resolve civil wars?Drawing on realist insights, Barbara Walter argues that insecurity isthe critical barrier to civil war settlement and that securityguarantees are a necessary [but] not sufficient condition forsettlement. Civil war combatants are reluctant to relinquish weaponsbecause doing so renders them vulnerable to physical retaliation byenemies within the postsettlement state and makes it impossible for themto enforce concessions included in the agreement. International actorscan best overcome this obstacle, according to Walter, by offeringcredible and forceful guarantees of postwar security for the disarmingside. She found that combatants in civil wars occurring between 1940 and1990 almost always failed to reach successful negotiated solutions totheir conflicts unless an outside power guaranteed the safety of thebelligerents during the ensuing transition period. Of the eight casesof successful negotiated settlements in her study, only two involved nointernational security guarantees. The more profound the guarantees, asmanifested in the commitment of troops prepared to fight to preservepeace, the greater the probability that agreements will be honored. From1940 to 1990 such guarantees never failed to lead to successfulnegotiated settlements.