What Do We Know about Natural Resources and Civil War?

Abstract

Since the late 1990s, there has been a flood of research on natural resources and civil war. This article reviews 14 recent cross-national econometric studies, and many qualitative studies, that cast light on the relationship between natural resources and civil war. It suggests that collectively they imply four underlying regularities: first, oil increases the likelihood of conflict, particularly separatist conflict; second, ‘lootable’ commodities like gemstones and drugs do not make conflict more likely to begin, but they tend to lengthen existing conflicts; third, there is no apparent link between legal agricultural commodities and civil war; and finally, the association between primary commodities - a broad category that includes both oil and agricultural goods - and the onset of civil war is not robust. The first section discusses the evidence for these four regularities and examines some theoretical arguments that could explain them. The second section suggests that some of the remaining inconsistencies among the econometric studies may be caused by differences in the ways they code civil wars and cope with missing data. The third section highlights some further aspects of the resource-civil war relationship that remain poorly understood.

Natural Resources: Curse or Blessing?

“…There is now a growing body of cross-country evidence that rents on resources and primary commodities, especially oil and other point-source resources, increase chances of civil conflicts and wars especially in Sub-Saharan Africa through weakening of the state or financing of rebels, sometimes by corporations. Diamonds (Lujala, 2010), oil (Fearon and Laitin, 2003;Ross, 2004;Fearon, 2005;Humphreys, 2005) and narcotics (Angrist and Kugler, 2008) especially increase the risk of civil war onsets. Oil increases the likelihood of conflict, especially separatist conflict.…”

“…al., 2002). The effect of resources on incidence and duration of civil wars features strongly in political science (e.g., Ross, 2004;Fearon and Laitin, 2004;. Rival groups fighting about the control over natural resources may harm the quality of the legal system and thus undermine property rights.…”

Natural Resources, Social Conflict, and Poverty Trap

“…1 Ross (2004) In Figure 1 each circle represents a country. The radius of circle is proportional to NM.EXP and dark grey circles represent sub-Saharan countries.…”

Oil and the ‘new wars’: another look at the resource curse using alternative data

“…Leaders of resource-rich states lack incentives to build institutions around taxation and the provision of public goods, which increases vulnerability to sociopolitical failure including open rebellion (Fearon 2005;Kaldor, Karl, and Said 2007;de Soysa 2002). While several propositions about natural resources and conflict have been made, including how resources directly invite loot-seeking rebellion (Collier and Hoeffler 2000;Ross 2004), several recent studies raise objections about the empirical validity of previous research on theoretical and methodological grounds (Alexeev and Conrad 2009;Brunschweiler 2008;Brunschweiler and Bulte 2009;Cotet and Tsui 2013). This study revisits the issue to provide new statistical tests utilizing new data on sociopolitical and institutional decay along various dimensions of societal insecurity referred to as the 'new wars' that are captured by the Global Peace Index (GPI) and several of its subcomponents (Institute for Economics and Peace 2014).…”

“…Resource-wealthy states are also accused of providing lower levels of public goods in terms of education and health, measured in terms of health outcomes and as health spending (Cockx and Francken 2014;Gylfason 2001;de Soysa and Gizelis 2013). Finally, resource wealth generates weak institutions (anarchic institutions) where groups organize armed violence for capturing rents, making a resource-dependent state prone to violence because either state institutions are too weak to monopolize violence or because the resources themselves invite looting, which in turn finances costly rebellion (Collier et al 2003;Fearon and Laitin 2001;Ross 2004;de Soysa 2002). Governments of resourcerich countries where income is unearned simply neglect their citizens and institutions that are needed for providing public goods (Papyrakis and Gerlagh 2004).…”