Do expectations on oil discoveries affect civil unrest? Micro-level evidence from Mali

In recent years, many oil finds were made along the shores of Africa, often triggering high hopes. But do expectations of the consequences of oil discoveries affect subsequent conflict? A number of arguments back this idea. Relative deprivation theory suggests that oil discoveries raise hopes of windfalls, which if not fulfilled, result in frustration and thus increase conflict risk. In contrast, cognitive psychology assumes that the effect of expectations largely works through a confirmation bias and thus depends on whether individuals attach positive or negative expectations to oil discoveries. Given the lack of appropriate data, these relationships have never been tested empirically. Using unique georeferenced data from a representative survey in Mali in 2006, this paper addresses this gap. Our results suggest that expectations indeed significantly contribute to subsequent conflict. The negative or positive character of expectations is critical, working as "self-fulfilling prophecy" rather than frustrated "great expectations": when people hold negative views on the future effects of oil, the risk of civil unrest increases

Quantitative risk assessment tools for the EU's Eastern and Southern neighbourhoods

Understanding and anticipating violent conflict and the breakdown of governance in the European Union (EU) neighbourhood is complex. However, it is of great value for academia and EU foreign policy. How can the EU know about, prepare for, and possibly help prevent governance breakdown and violent conflict in its neighbourhood? To answer this question, we propose innovative quantitative approaches to capture violent conflict and governance breakdown through survey-based and non-survey-based data at the sub-national level. We assess different theoretical approaches to explaining violent conflict and governance breakdown with a focus on social resilience. Moreover, we discuss numerous methodological tools including random forests, Bayesian methods, and change point analysis. The paper highlights the possibility of measuring and predicting violent conflict and governance breakdown in the EU neighbourhood at the sub-national level. We underline our arguments with initial empirical analyses. Further, we point to several research gaps such as the necessity to develop data collection efforts in order to build analyses and predictions on better data

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

Identifying the effect of climate variability on communal conflict through randomization

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Identifying the effect of climate variability on communal conflict through randomization

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Replication Data for: ‘Mtwara will be the new Dubai’: Dashed expectations, grievances and civil unrest in Tanzania

When does inequality lead to conflict? Despite recent studies highlighting the effects of group exclusion, this question has not been fully answered. We argue that objective group inequality is not sufficient to fuel unrest. Structural inequalities need to be perceived as unfair, and become grievances, in order to spark mobilization. While most conflict scholars recognize this on a theoretical level, statistical tests of the effect of inequality on conflict almost exclusively rely on objective data. This limits their ability to distinguish when inequality is politically relevant and when it is not. Southern Tanzania is a case in point. Despite decades of marginalization, the population remained peaceful until natural gas was discovered, and the government was perceived to break their promises of local development. Demonstrating that objective regional inequalities have remained relatively constant, while group grievances seems to have increased, we argue that direct measures of grievances are needed to pinpoint when inequality becomes politically salient. Using novel survey data, we find that people who think that the region is treated unfairly have the highest likelihood of supporting and participating in civil unrest

Understanding Ceasefires

Until recently, ceasefires were largely overlooked, and only discussed generally in the context of research on peace processes, or in practitioner guidance. This is now changing. Project teams devoted to the systematic study of ceasefire agreements in civil conflicts at the Peace Research Institute Oslo and CSS invited researchers, practitioners, and policymakers to a workshop in Oslo in September 2019 to collectively explore how we can better understand and design ceasefires. This article for the journal International Peacekeeping, edited by CSS’ Govinda Clayton, Corinne Bara, and Siri Aas Rustad, offers a selection of work presented and discussed at this workshop.Waffenstillstände wurden bis vor kurzem weitgehend übersehen und nur allgemein im Rahmen der Forschung zu Friedensprozessen oder in der Praxisberatung diskutiert. Dies ändert sich jetzt. Projektteams am Friedensforschungsinstitut Oslo und CSS, die sich der systematischen Untersuchung von Waffenstillstandsabkommen in zivilen Konflikten widmeten, luden im September 2019 Forscher, Praktiker und politische Entscheidungsträger zu einem Workshop nach Oslo ein, um gemeinsam zu untersuchen, wie wir Waffenstillstände besser verstehen und gestalten können. Dieser International Peacekeeping Artikel, herausgegeben von CSS Forscher Govinda Clayton, Corinne Bara und Siri Aas Rustad, bietet eine Auswahl von Arbeiten, die in diesem Workshop präsentiert und diskutiert wurden.ISSN:1353-3312ISSN:1743-906