Inclusive Institutions and the Onset of Internal Conflict in Resource-rich Countries

The literature on institutional determinants of intra-state violence commonly asserts that the presence of multiple political parties reduces the conflict potential within countries; by co-opting oppositional groups into an institutionalized political arena, dissidents would prefer parliamentarian means over violent rebellion in order to pursue their goals. The present paper shows that this proposition does not necessarily hold for fuel-abundant states. In the presence of natural resources such as oil or gas, countries exhibiting numerous non-competitive parties are actually more susceptible to internal conflict. Fortified by the establishment of legal political parties, regime opponents succumb more easily to the prospects of securing resource revenues, adopting rapacious behaviour. Fuel-related internal grievances as well as the opposition’s disaffection over the lack of effective political leverage and government use of political violence provide a seemingly legitimate motive for armed rebellion. Moreover, financial means for insurgency are raised by extortion or the possibility of selling future exploitation rights to natural resources. Logit models using different estimation techniques and alternative operationalizations corroborate the proposed claim. The argumentation is further illustrated by a depiction of the Colombian case.intra-state conflict, natural resources, political parties, democracy, Colombia

The Impact of Fuel Ownership on Intrastate Violence

The impact of natural resources on intrastate violence has been increasingly analyzed in the peace and conflict literature. Surprisingly, little quantitative evidence has been gathered on the effects of the resource-ownership structure on internal violence. This paper uses a novel dataset on oil and natural gas property rights covering 40 countries during the period 1989-2010. The results of regression analyses employing logit models reveal that the curvilinear effect between hydrocarbon production and civil conflict onset - often found in previous studies - only applies to countries in which oil and gas production is mainly state controlled. The findings suggest that only state-owned hydrocarbons may entail peacebuying mechanisms such as specific clientelistic practices, patronage networks, welfare policies, and/or coercion. At the same time, it seems that greed and grievance are more pronounced whenever resources lie in the hands of the state. Exploring the within-country variation, further analyses reveal that divergent welfare spending patterns are likely to be one causal channel driving the relationship between resource ownership and internal violence

Cana, café, cacau: agrarian structure and educational inequalities in Brazil

The present paper explores the relationship between agrarian structure and human capital formation between and within Brazil’s federal units. It is argued that whether states’ agriculture is in plantation style, based on cheap coerced labor, or organized around family farming matters for the formulation of educational policies. According to the main claim, landlords were not interested in paying higher taxes to educate the masses and curtailed the expansion of schooling in order to keep a cheap workforce and maintain their monopoly over the decision-making process. Describing several episodes in Brazil’s history of public instruction, the paper stresses the distributional conflicts over education as well as the rural aristocracy’s resistance towards broadly-targeted, citizenship-enhancing educational policies. The descriptive evidence is complemented by statistical analyses employing historical as well as more recent data. It is shown that states characterized by a more egalitarian land distribution, which are not under the dominance of powerful landlords, exhibit better educational coverage and enhanced instruction quality. They also spend more on schooling.El presente artículo estudia la relación entre la estructura agraria y la formación de capital humano, tanto dentro como entre las unidades federales de Brasil. Se argumenta que la agricultura de los Estados es de estilo plantación — basado en mano de obra forzada barata, o por el contrario organizada alrededor de la granja familiar — es crucial para la formulación de las políticas educativas. De acuerdo a esta hipótesis, los propietarios de la tierra no estaban interesados en pagar impuestos más altos para educar a las masas y restringieron la expansión escolar con la intención de mantener una mano de obra barata y el monopolio del proceso de toma de decisiones. A través de la descripción de distintos episodios de la historia de la instrucción pública en Brasil, el artículo muestra los conflictos distributivos sobre la educación y la resistencia de la aristocracia rural en relación con los más amplios objetivos ciudadanos para intensificar las políticas educativas. La evidencia descriptiva se complementa con el análisis estadístico de datos históricos y recientes. Se muestra que los Estados con una distribución más igualitaria de la tierra, que no están bajo el dominio de poderosos propietarios de la tierra, tuvieron una mejor cobertura y calidad educativa. Asimismo, demostramos que invirtieron más en escolarización

Inclusive Institutions and the Onset of Internal Conflict in Resource-rich Countries

The literature on institutional determinants of intra‐state violence commonly asserts that the presence of multiple political parties reduces the conflict potential within countries; by co‐opting oppositional groups into an institutionalized political arena, dissidents would prefer parliamentarian means over violent rebellion in order to pursue their goals. The present paper shows that this proposition does not necessarily hold for fuel‐abundant states. In the presence of natural resources such as oil or gas, countries exhibiting numerous non‐competitive parties are actually more susceptible to internal conflict. Fortified by the establishment of legal political parties, regime opponents succumb more easily to the prospects of securing resource revenues, adopting rapacious behaviour. Fuel‐related internal grievances as well as the opposition’s disaffection over the lack of effective political leverage and government use of political violence provide a seemingly legitimate motive for armed rebellion. Moreover, financial means for insurgency are raised by extortion or the possibility of selling future exploitation rights to natural resources. Logit models using different estimation techniques and alternative operationalizations corroborate the proposed claim. The argumentation is further illustrated by a depiction of the Colombian case.Studien über die institutionellen Determinanten innerstaatlicher Gewalt legen nahe, dass die Präsenz multipler politischer Parteien das Konfliktpotential innerhalb der Länder reduziert. Es wird behauptet, dass Parteien oppositionelle Gruppierungen in eine institutionalisierte politische Arena kooptieren und somit anstatt der Anwendung gewaltsamer Rebellion die Verfolgung parlamentarischer Maßnahmen fördern. Der vorliegende Artikel zeigt, dass diese Prämisse nicht für ressourcenreiche Staaten gilt. Bei gleichzeitigem Vorhandensein von natürlichen Ressourcen wie Öl oder Gas und nicht‐kompetitiver Multiparteiensysteme steigt die innerstaatliche Konfliktwahrscheinlichkeit. Gestärkt durch die Einrichtung legaler politischer Parteien und geleitet von der Absicht, die Ressourcengewinne zu kontrollieren, greifen Dissidenten eher zu Waffen. Ressourcenbezogene Missstände sowie die Unzufriedenheit Oppositioneller über mangelnde politische Einflussmöglichkeiten und die Anwendung staatlicher Unterdrückung liefern dabei offenbar legitime Motive für gewaltsame Aktionen. Zudem wird in vielen Fällen die Finanzierung rebellischer Aufstände z. B. durch ressourcenbedingte Erpressung ermöglicht. Ergebnisse von Logit‐Modellen unter Anwendung unterschiedlicher Schätzverfahren und alternativer Operationalisierungen unterstreichen die vorgetragene Argumentation, welche durch die Schilderung des kolumbianischen Falls zusätzlich veranschaulicht wird

Ex oleo bellare? The Impact of Oil on the Outbreak of Militarized Interstate Disputes

According to conventional wisdom, strategic natural resources like oil are harmful to international peace. Nonetheless, there is little empirical quantitative work on the link between resource abundance and interstate conflicts. Analyzing the impact of oil on militarized interstate disputes on a monadic level of analysis, this paper shows that oil in fact influences the conflict potential between countries. Results of logistic regressions suggest that a high absolute oil production is associated with an increased risk of dispute initiation. Per capita oil production, in contrast, does not seem to influence a country's propensity to start militarized conflicts. We also find that while very small oil-rich countries are more frequently the object of military actions, large oil producers seem to be generally spared from foreign attacks. We conclude that specific causal mechanisms such as an increased military capacity or the indulgence of the international community (rather than domestic political conditions inherent to the rentier state) might be particularly useful to explain our findings

Do Religious Factors Impact Armed Conflict? Empirical Evidence from Sub-Saharan Africa

Theoretically, the “mobilization hypothesis” establishes a link between religion and conflict by arguing that religious structures such as overlapping ethnic and religious identities are prone to mobilization; once politicized, escalation to violent conflict becomes likelier. Yet, despite the religious diversity in sub-Saharan Africa and the religious overtones in a number of African armed conflicts, this assumption has not yet been backed by systematic empirical research on the religion–conflict nexus in the region. The following questions thus remain: Do religious factors significantly impact the onset of (religious) armed conflict? If so, do they follow the logic of the mobilization hypothesis and, if yes, in which way? To answer these questions, this paper draws on a unique data inventory of all sub-Saharan countries for the period 1990–2008, particularly including data on mobilization-prone religious structures (e.g. demographic changes, parallel ethno-religious identities) as well as religious factors indicating actual politicization of religion (e.g. inter-religious tensions, religious discrimination, incitement by religious leaders). Based on logit regressions, results suggest that religion indeed plays a significant role in African armed conflicts. The findings are compatible with the mobilization hypothesis: Overlaps of religious and ethnic identities and religious dominance are conflict-prone; religious polarization is conflict-prone only if combined with religious discrimination and religious tensions.Armed conflict, religion, sub-Saharan Africa, mobilization

Ethnic fractionalization, natural resources and armed conflict

Thus far, researchers working on ethnicity and resources as determinants of civil conflict have operated largely independently of each other. While there is plenty of evidence that natural resources may spur armed conflict, empirical evidence for the nexus between ethnic fractionalization and conflict remains inconclusive. Some authors conclude that ethnically fractionalized societies are actually spared from intrastate violence. Others find either a positive relationship or none at all between ethnic fragmentation and internal conflict. In this context, this paper serves two purposes: first, it shows that salience-based fractionalization indices are associated with a higher risk of ethnic conflict onset; second, it finds evidence that oil further increases the conflict potential within fractionalized countries. The combination of oil and a shared identity seems to help overcome the collective action problems associated with rebellion, by providing recruitment pools, strong motives and the necessary financial means for insurgency. Employing logit models for pooled time-series cross-sectional data, our quantitative analysis shows that various ethnic fractionalization indicators are robustly linked to a substantially increased risk of ethnic armed conflict onset in a subset of oil-abundant countries

Oil and diamonds as causes of civil war in Sub-Saharan Africa: under what conditions?

Recent research has increasingly questioned the link between natural resources and violent conflict while stressing the importance of resource-specific context conditions under which internal conflicts become more likely. This paper engages in a systematic analysis of six of these resource-specific conditions comparing 15 African oil and diamond producing countries. Employing a Boolean logic, the results of our analysis indicate that, typically, a conflict-ridden diamond or oil producer is highly dependent on resources, its revenues are hardly spent on distributional policies and the security apparatus and, moreover, it suffers from intercommunal problems in the producing regions. Little income from resources per capita and substantial production of lootable resources in peripheral regions seem to constitute necessary conditions for civil war. Thus, our findings imply that future theoretical models and empirical strategies should integrate the full set of (resource specific) context conditions. Efforts to raise a more integrative approach combining quantitative and qualitative research designs seem particularly promising

Do Religious Factors Impact Armed Conflict? Empirical Evidence From Sub-Saharan Africa

Theoretically, the 'mobilization hypothesis' establishes a link between religion and conflict by arguing that religious structures such as overlapping ethnic and religious identities are prone to mobilization; once politicized, escalation to violent conflict becomes likelier. Yet, despite the religious diversity in sub-Saharan Africa and the religious overtones in a number of African armed conflicts, this assumption has not yet been backed by systematic empirical research on the religion-conflict nexus in the region. The following questions thus remain: Do religious factors significantly impact the onset of (religious) armed conflict? If so, do they follow the logic of the mobilization hypothesis and, if yes, in which way? To answer these questions, this paper draws on a unique data inventory of all sub-Saharan countries for the period 1990-2008, particularly including data on mobilization-prone religious structures (e.g. demographic changes, parallel ethno-religious identities) as well as religious factors indicating actual politicization of religion (e.g. inter-religious tensions, religious discrimination, incitement by religious leaders). Based on logit regressions, results suggest that religion indeed plays a significant role in African armed conflicts. The findings are compatible with the mobilization hypothesis: Overlaps of religious and ethnic identities and religious dominance are conflict-prone; religious polarization is conflict-prone only if combined with religious discrimination and religious tensions