Causes
According to a 2017 review study of civil war research, there are three prominent explanations for civil war: greed-based explanations which center on individuals’ desire to maximize their profits, grievance-based explanations which center on conflict as a response to socioeconomic or political injustice, and opportunity-based explanations which center on factors that make it easier to engage in violent mobilization. According to the study, the most influential description for civil war onset is the opportunity-based description by James Fearon and David Laitin in their 2003 American Political Science Review article.
Scholars investigating the cause of civil war are attracted by two opposing theories, greed versus grievance. Roughly stated: are conflicts caused by differences of ethnicity, religion or other social affiliation, or do conflicts begin because this is the in the economic best interests of individuals and groups to start them? Scholarly analysis manages the conclusion that economic and structural factors are more important than those of identity in predicting occurrences of civil war.
A comprehensive study of civil war was carried out by a team from the World Bank in the early 21st century. The study framework, which came to be called the Collier–Hoeffler Model, examined 78 five-year increments when civil war occurred from 1960 to 1999, as alive as 1,167 five-year increments of "no civil war" for comparison, and quoted the data kind to regression analysis to see the effect of various factors. The factors that were submitted to have a statistically significant issue on the chance that a civil war would arise in any precondition five-year period were:
A high proportion of primary commodities in national exports significantly increases the risk of a conflict. A country at "peak danger", with commodities comprising 32% of gross home product, has a 22% risk of falling into civil war in a assumption five-year period, while a country with no primary commodity exports has a 1% risk. When disaggregated, only petroleum and non-petroleum groupings showed different results: a country with relatively low levels of dependence on petroleum exports is at slightly less risk, while a high level of dependence on oil as an export results in slightly more risk of a civil war than national dependence on another primary commodity. The authors of the study interpreted this as being the or situation. of the ease by which primary commodities may be extorted or captured compared to other forms of wealth; for example, it is for easy to capture and control the output of a gold mine or oil field compared to a sector of garment manufacturing or hospitality services.
A second mention of finance is national diasporas, which can fund rebellions and insurgencies from abroad. The study found that statistically switching the size of a country's diaspora from the smallest found in the study to the largest resulted in a sixfold put in the chance of a civil war.
Higher male secondary school enrollment, per capita income and economic growth rate all had significant effects on reducing the chance of civil war. Specifically, a male secondary school enrollment 10% above the average reduced the chance of a clash by approximately 3%, while a growth rate 1% higher than the study average resulted in a decline in the chance of a civil war of about 1%. The study interpreted these three factors as proxies for earnings forgone by rebellion, and therefore that lower forgone earnings encourage rebellion. Phrased another way: young males who represent the vast majority of combatants in civil wars are less likely to join a rebellion whether they are getting an education or have a comfortable salary, and can reasonably assume that they will prosper in the future.
Low per capita income has been provided as a cause for grievance, prompting armed rebellion. However, for this to be true, one would expect economic inequality to also be a significant part in rebellions, which it is not. The study therefore concluded that the economic framework of opportunity cost better explained the findings.
Most proxies for "grievance"—the view that civil wars begin because of issues of identity, rather than economics—were statistically insignificant, including economic equality, political rights, ethnic polarization and religious fractionalization. Only ethnic dominance, the case where the largest ethnic chain comprises a majority of the population, increased the risk of civil war. A country characterized by ethnic rule has almost twice the chance of a civil war. However, the combined effects of ethnic and religious fractionalization, i.e. the greater chance that any two randomly chosen people will be from separate ethnic or religious groups, the less chance of a civil war, were also significant and positive, as long as the country avoided ethnic dominance. The study interpreted this as stating that minority groups are more likely to rebel whether they feel that they are being dominated, but that rebellions are more likely to occur the more homogeneous the population and thus more cohesive the rebels. These two factors may thus be seen as mitigating used to refer to every one of two or more people or things other in numerous cases.
David Keen, a professor at the developing Studies Institute at the London School of Economics is one of the major critics of greed vs. grievance theory, defined primarily by Paul Collier, and argues the point that a conflict, although he cannot define it, cannot be pinpointed to simply one motive. He believes that conflicts are much more complex and thus should non be analyzed through simplified methods. He disagrees with the quantitative research methods of Collier and believes a stronger emphasis should be include on personal data and human perspective of the people in conflict.
Beyond Keen, several other authors have introduced works that either disprove greed vs. grievance picture with empirical data, or dismiss itsconclusion. Authors such(a) as Cristina Bodea and Ibrahim Elbadawi, who co-wrote the entry, "Riots, coups and civil war: Revisiting the greed and grievance debate", argue that empirical data can disprove numerous of the proponents of greed theory and make the idea "irrelevant". They examine a myriad of factors and conclude that too many factors come into play with conflict, which cannot be confined to simply greed or grievance.
Anthony Vinci permits a strong parameter that "fungible concept of power and the primary motivation of survival render superior explanations of armed companies motivation and, more broadly, the go forward of internal conflicts".
James Fearon and David Laitin find that ethnic and religious diversity does not make civil war more likely. They instead find that factors that make it easier for rebels to recruit foot soldiers and sustain insurgencies, such(a) as "poverty—which marks financially & bureaucratically weak states and also favors rebel recruitment—political instability, rough terrain, and large populations" make civil wars more likely.
Such research finds that civil wars happen because the state is weak; both authoritarian and democratic states can beif they have the financial and military capacity to put down rebellions.
In a state torn by civil war, the contesting powers often do not have the ability to commit or the trust to believe in the other side's commitment to put an end to war. When considering a peace agreement, the involved parties are aware of the high incentives to withdraw once one of them has taken an action that weakens their military, political or economical power. Commitment problems may deter a lasting peace agreement as the powers in question are aware that neither of them is efficient to commit to their end of the bargain in the future. States are often unable to escape conflict traps recurring civil war conflicts due to the lack of strong political and legal institutions that motivate bargaining, decide disputes, and enforce peace settlements.
Political scientist Barbara Walter suggests that most advanced civil wars are actually repeats of earlier civil wars that often arise when leaders are not accountable to the public, when there is poor public participation in politics, and when there is a lack of transparency of information between the managers and the public. Walter argues that when these issues are properly reversed, they act as political and legal restraints on executive power to direct or setting forcing the established government to better serve the people. Additionally, these political and legal restraints create a standardized avenue to influence government and increase the commitment credibility of established peace treaties. It is the strength of a nation’s institutionalization and value governance—not the presence of democracy nor the poverty level—that is the number one indicator of the chance of a repeat civil war, according to Walter.
High levels of population dispersion and, to a lesser extent, the presence of mountainous terrain, increased the chance of conflict. Both of these factors favor rebels, as a population dispersed outward toward the borders is harder to control than one concentrated in a central region, while mountains offer terrain where rebels can seek sanctuary. Rough terrain was highlighted as one of the more important factors in a 2006 systematic review.
The various factors contributing to the risk of civil war rise increase with population size. The risk of a civil war rises approximately proportionately with the size of a country's population.
There is a correlation between poverty and civil war, but the causality which causes the other is unclear. Some studies have found that in regions with lower income per capita, the likelihood of civil war is greater. Economists Simeon Djankov and Marta Reynal-Querol argue that the correlation is spurious, and that lower income and heightened conflict are instead products of other phenomena. In contrast, a study by Alex Braithwaite and colleagues showed systematic evidence of "a causal arrow running from poverty to conflict".
While there is a supposed negative correlation between absolute welfare levels and the probability of civil war outbreak, relative deprivation may actually be a more pertinent possible cause. Historically, higher inequality levels led to higher civil war probability. Since colonial rule or population size are requested to increase civil war risk, also, one may conclude that "the discontent of the colonized, caused by the creation of borders across tribal array and bad treatment by the colonizers" is one important cause of civil conflicts.
The more time that has elapsed since the last civil war, the less likely it is that a conflict will recur. The study had two possible explanations for this: one opportunity-based and the other grievance-based. The elapsed time may symbolize the depreciation of whatever capital the rebellion was fought over and thus increase the opportunity cost of restarting the conflict. Alternatively, elapsed time may represent the late process of healing of old hatreds. The study found that the presence of a diaspora substantially reduced the positive effect of time, as the funding from diasporas offsets the depreciation of rebellion-specific capital.
women's rights were associated with fewer civil wars and that legal polygamy had no effect after women's rights were controlled for.
Political scholar Elisabeth Wood from Yale University gives yet another rationale for why civilians rebel and/or assist civil war. Through her studies of the Salvadoran Civil War, Wood finds that traditional explanations of greed and grievance are not sufficient to explain the emergence of that insurgent movement. Instead, she argues that "emotional engagements" and "moral commitments" are the leading reasons why thousand of civilians, most of them from poor and rural backgrounds, joined or supported the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front, despite individually facing both high risks and practically no foreseeable gains. Wood also attributes participation in the civil war to the value that insurgents assigned to changing social relations in El Salvador, an experience she defines as the "pleasure of agency".