Publication: Understanding Civil War : Evidence and Analysis, Volume 1. Africa
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Published
2005
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2012-06-07
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The two volumes of Understanding Civil War build upon the World Bank's prior research on conflict and violence, particularly on the work of Paul Collier and Anke Hoeffler, whose model of civil war onset has sparked much discussion on the relationship between conflict and development in what came to be known as the "greed" versus "grievance" debate. The authors systematically apply the Collier-Hoeffler model to 15 countries in 6 different regions of the world, using a comparative case study methodology to revise and expand upon economic models of civil war. (The countries selected are Burundi, Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo, Nigeria, Kenya, Mozambique, Sudan, Algeria, Mali, Senegal, Indonesia, Lebanon, Russian Federation, Colombia, Northern Ireland, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Macedonia, and the Caucasus.) The book concludes that the "greed" versus "grievance" debate should be abandoned for a more complex model that considers greed and grievance as inextricably fused motives for civil war.
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“Collier, Paul; Sambanis, Nicholas. Collier, Paul; Sambanis, Nicholas, editors. 2005. Understanding Civil War : Evidence and Analysis, Volume 1. Africa. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/7437 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
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Publication Understanding Civil War : Evidence and Analysis, Volume 2. Europe, Central Asia, and Other Regions(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2005)The two volumes of Understanding Civil War build upon the World Bank's prior research on conflict and violence, particularly on the work of Paul Collier and Anke Hoeffler, whose model of civil war onset has sparked much discussion on the relationship between conflict and development in what came to be known as the "greed" versus "grievance" debate. The authors systematically apply the Collier-Hoeffler model to 15 countries in 6 different regions of the world, using a comparative case study methodology to revise and expand upon economic models of civil war. (The countries selected are Burundi, Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo, Nigeria, Kenya, Mozambique, Sudan, Algeria, Mali, Senegal, Indonesia, Lebanon, Russian Federation, Colombia, Northern Ireland, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Macedonia, and the Caucasus.) The book concludes that the "greed" versus "grievance" debate should be abandoned for a more complex model that considers greed and grievance as inextricably fused motives for civil war.Publication Breaking the Conflict Trap : Civil War and Development Policy(Washington, DC: World Bank and Oxford University Press, 2003)Most wars are now civil wars. Even though international wars attract enormous global attention, they have become infrequent and brief. Civil wars usually attract less attention, but they have become increasingly common and typically go on for years. This report argues that civil war is now an important issue for development. War retards development, but conversely, development retards war. This double causation gives rise to virtuous and vicious circles. Where development succeeds, countries become progressively safer from violent conflict, making subsequent development easier. Where development fails, countries are at high risk of becoming caught in a conflict trap in which war wrecks the economy and increases the risk of further war. The global incidence of civil war is high because the international community has done little to avert it. Inertia is rooted in two beliefs: that we can safely 'let them fight it out among themselves' and that 'nothing can be done' because civil war is driven by ancestral ethnic and religious hatreds. The purpose of this report is to challenge these beliefs.Publication How Much War Will We See? Estimating the Incidence of Civil War in 161 Countries(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2001-01)Quantitative studies of civil war have focused either on war's onset, or its termination, producing important insights into these end points of the process. The authors complement these studies by studying how much war we are likely to observe in any given period. To answer this question, they combine recent advances in the theory of civil war initiation, and duration, and, develop the concept of war incidence, denoting th probability of observing an event of civil war in any given period. They test theories of war initiation, and duration against this new concept, using a five-year panel data set for 161 countries. Their analysis of the incidence of war corroborates most of the results of earlier studies, enriching those results by highlighting the significance of socio-ppolitical variables as determinants of the risk of civil war. Their findings: 1) Steps toward advancing political liberalization, or economic development reduce the risk of civil war, whatever the degree of ethno-linguistic fractionalization in a society. 2) This effect is amplified in polarized societies. The probability of civil war is lower in very homogeneous societies, and (less so) in more diverse societies. 3) In polarized societies, the risk of civil war can be reduced by political, rather than economic liberalization. At high levels of political freedom, ethnic diversity - even polarization - has a minimal impact on the risk of civil war. 4) Economic diversification that would reduce a country's reliance on primary exports would also reduce the risk of civil wars, especially in polarized societies. 5) In strategies for preventing civil war, political liberalization should be a higher priority than economic development, but the best possible results would combine political reform, economic diversification, and poverty reduction.Publication External Interventions and the Duration of Civil Wars(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2000-09)The authors combine an empirical model of external intervention, with a theoretical model of civil war duration. Their empirical model of intervention allows them to analyze civil war duration, using "expected" rather than "actual" external intervention as an explanatory variable in the duration model. Unlike previous studies, they find that external intervention is positively associated with the duration of civil war. They distinguish partial third-party interventions that extend the length of war, from multilateral "peace" operations, which have a mandate to restore peace without taking sides - and which typically take place at war's end, or at least when both sides have agreed to a cease-fire. In a future paper, the authors will examine whether partial third-party interventions - whatever their effect on a war's duration - increase the risk of war's recurrence. If that proves true, then even if interventions reduce the length of civil war, they may do so at the cost of further destabilizing the political system, and sowing the seeds of future rebellion.Publication On the Duration of Civil War(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2001-09)The authors model the duration of large-scale, violent civil conflicts, applying hazard functions to a comprehensive data set on such conflicts for the period 1960-99. They find that the duration of conflicts is determined by a substantially different set of variables than those that determine their initiation. The duration of conflict increases substantially if the society is composed of a few large ethnic groups, if there is extensive forest cover, and if the conflict has commenced since 1980. None of these factors affects the initiation of conflict. The authors also find that neither the duration nor the initiation of conflict is affected by initial inequality or political repression. This finding is consistent with the hypothesis that rebellions are initiated where they are viable during conflict, regardless of the prospects of attaining post-conflict goals, and that they persist unless circumstances change.
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