Economic Globalization and Civil War

Abstract

In recent decades, the number of countries with ongoing civil wars and the share of these countries in the international system have increased dramatically. At the same time, the scope of economic globalization has also increased. Are these trends related? The theoretical literature on the determinants of civil wars presents conflicting views about the effects of globalization on such wars. One view expects economic globalization to reduce the likelihood of civil wars, ceteris paribus. A second view expects the opposite. A third view implies that globalization does not necessarily affect the likelihood of civil war. Progress in assessing the validity of these arguments requires confronting them with data. However, so far economic globalization has been included as a control variable in a very small number of studies, and only trade was inspected. This paper statistically investigates the effect of several aspects of globalization on civil war from a large‐N, time‐series, cross‐sectional sample. The occurrence of civil war is measured in two ways: the presence of civil war (or civil war prevalence) and the breakdown of civil war (or civil war onset). Economic globalization is measured by the flows of trade, foreign direct investment, portfolio investment, and Internet use. We find that economic forms of globalization reduce the likelihood of civil war, but that Internet use does not affect its likelihood. We conclude the paper with a discussion of the implications of these findings for public policy and for future research.

External Shocks, Internal Shots: The Geography of Civil Conflicts

“…If the opportunity cost story is relevant, it is therefore mainly through the escalation and spatial evolution of ongoing conflicts, rather than through the outbreak of new ones. More generally, our results contribute to the literature on the impact of international trade on civil conflicts (Barbieri and Reuveny, 2005, Jha, 2008, Martin et al, 2008. In particular, we show that trade openness might influence importantly the geography of conflicts within countries.…”

Can states buy peace? Social welfare spending and civil conflicts

“…The first control variable is the natural log of GDP per capita (in 1995 constant US dollars) and it is included to account for the assertion that countries with high levels of economic development are less likely to experience domestic violence (e.g. Fearon & Laitin, 2003;Collier & Hoeffler, 2004;Ellingsen, 2000;Barbieri & Reuveny, 2005). To control for the impact of regime type on civil wars, we use the Polity index.…”

The Political Consequences of Assassination

“…Finally, our regression models also include a number of control variables that other studies have shown to be important causes of civil war and other forms of political unrest (e.g., Gurr 1970;Londregan and Poole 1990;Collier and Hoeffler 2002;de Soysa 2002;Barbieri and Reuveny 2005). These include naturally coded measures for the Year, the (log of) Population, and the period of the Cold War.…”