According to Hoeffler, 2012, about sixteen million people have lost their lives in civil wars since the Second World War. Horrific conflicts particularly in the late 1990s in Rwanda, Chechnya, and the Balkans as well as elsewhere prompted a remarkable upsurge in studies of the causes of civil war (Chiozza, Gleditsch, & Goemans, 2004). Social scientists, as well as economists, have over the years conducted numerous cross-national statistical studies to establish the causes of these costly violent conflicts given that most people would be better off by using peaceful means to settle their disputes. The researchers seek to understand what prompts people to take up arms and proceed to risk their lives and property in insurgencies. Civil wars are caused by numerous factors that are complexly intertwined, therefore, it would be misleading to view these conflicts as purely autonomous. This paper provides a literature review of different research on civil wars in the hope of gaining a better understanding of the causes behind these costly violent conflicts. This is extremely important because if a solution is to be found to prevent conflicts from escalating to full plugged civil war and resolve the ongoing ones, as well as prevent future violent conflicts and maximize the opportunity of preventing the reoccurrence of the conflicts after apparent settlement, then people must comprehensively understand the causes of these conflicts.
Over the past ten years, intensive research has been conducted on the causes of civil wars. As of today, the most influential research on the topic is that by Paul Collier and Ankle Hoeffler. Their previous studies have sparked numerous subsequent enquiries into the correlation between the dependence of natural resources and the onset of civil wars (Collier and Hoeffler, 2004). Collier and Hoeffler’s definition of war is any conflict that results in at least one-thousand deaths per year with both the government forces and the indefinable rebels suffering at least 5% of the total fatalities. In their query to establish factors that initiate rebellions, collier and Hoeffler develop an econometric models that enable them to predict the outbreak of civil conflict. Their study examines descriptive data on seventy-nine civil conflicts that occurred over the duration of 1969 to 1999. They first distinguish between economic and political science accounts of rebellion. On one hand, their economic theory describes civil wars as an industry that creates profits from looting which makes the insurgents indistinguishable from pirates (Collier and Hoeffler, 2004). In other words, civil wars are motivated by greed that is driven by the fact that profitable opportunities of such conflicts are never passed up. On the other hand, their political science approach describes civil wars in terms of motive. That is, civil war happens when the grievances are acute enough to prompt the people to engage in violent protest.
Delegate your assignment to our experts and they will do the rest.
Their regression analysis on quantitative variables of both grievance and opportunity establish their statistical significance at the onset of civil wars. Collier and Hoeffler establish that at the onset of civil war, grievance variables such as economic inequality, religious and ethnic polarizations as well as political repression are statistically insignificant. On the contrary, opportunity variables such as dependency on natural resources, large diaspora, low economic growth, as well as a large and highly dispersed population with low income per capita increase the risk of civil war. In regard to greed versus grievance debate, Collier and Hoeffler conclude that opportunity as a cause of conflicts coincides with the economic model of civil war as driven by greed. Even though Collier and Hoeffler find grievance indicators identified in this study which form the basis of democracy to be statistically insignificant at the onset of civil wars, Hegre, 2014, establishes that democracy, as a cause of civil war cannot be ignored. His empirical findings establish that states that have consolidated democracies have lower risk of civil wars than sub-democracy states. However, this finding is limited by the fact that both democracy and peace results from pre-existing socio-economic conditions. In other words, economic development on its own cannot prevent civil wars if the democracy of the people is violated by the government (Hegre 2014).
Unlike Collier and Hoeffler, Deny and Walter, 2014, establish that ethnic polarization is a key cause of civil war. From their quantitate study, Deny and Walter establish that ethnic groups are more likely to have grievances against a government regime as well as can easily organize support and mobilize support for a civil conflict. In instances where the political power is shared along ethnic lines, the ruling regime is likely to disproportionately favor its own ethnic side at the expenses of other ethnic group creating ethic line-oriented grievances. Moreover, the inelastic nature of ethnic identity creates difficult-to-resolve bargaining problems before, during and after the civil war due to the ethnic group’s commitment to attain what it wants (Hegre, 2014). The reasons, incentives and opportunities to mobilize and engage in a violent conflict are higher among ethnic groups.
Rather than viewing civil wars as a cohesive class of events, Sobek and Payne break them into replacement and legitimacy civil wars depending on how the rebelling organizations goals of changing the domestic political environment. In replacement civil wars, the rebels are after removing the sitting government from power without changing anything else in the state. On the other hand, rebels in legitimacy civil wars seek to fundamentally change the relationship between the society and the state (Sobek and Payne, 2010). In order to prove the existence of the two categories of as well as their respective causes, Sobek and Payne conduct an empirical analyses of civil conflicts that occurred in the period of 1960 to 1999. Their findings establish that civil wars of replacement happens in countries where the governments extract a lot of wealth from the society (Sobek and Payne, 2010). The rebels in such case are driven by greed and prefer to accrue the benefits of the societal wealth as opposed to the sitting governments. Since such resources in most cases come from state-controlled primary commodities, any government that overdraws the wealth is always at risk of a civil war. However, this risk is mitigated by a governments capacity to resist the rebels (Sobek and Payne, 2010). As such, the risk of civil war is greater if the government is weak and it over extracts wealth from the society. On the other hand, civil wars of legitimacy are driven by the prospects of waging a successful fight against the state to redress the injustices perpetrated by the sitting government. This means that the prospect of legitimacy civil wars increases with the increase of grievances or injustices as well as the availability of means to sustain their future viability (Sobek and Payne, 2010). Irvin, 2014, cites similar motives in the case of separatist civil wars as well. She states that, just like insurgencies, separates civil wars require economic resources as well as a favorable opportunity structure to carry on.
Even though grievances play an important role on the onset of civil war as Collier and Hoeffel establish, Reagan and Norton, 2005, observe that it has not led to civil war in most parts of the world that are currently facing political violence. While Collier and Hoeffel state that these grievances must be acute to prompt people to indulge in violent conflicts, Regan and Norton state that they are not enough on their own to mobilize mases to rebel against the government. This however, does not mean that grievances are statistically insignificant as a cause of a civil war. Regan and Norton cite the critical functions of elite rebels as the key to sparking a civil war. Their ability to mobilize resources at the onset of a civil war sparks violence and serves to fuel and extend the conflict by financing the operations of the rebels. In agreement with Sobek and Payne, Regan and Norton state that the government can mitigate the risk of a civil war by suppressing the rebels. This is a critical stage for both sides of the conflict. While the soldiers incur the cost of the civil war at this point, the protest leaders are expected to avail selective benefits. In other words, if the elite rebels fail to provide these selective benefits such as protection from government forces or shares from the conflicts revenue, then the rebels will defect giving the government the opportunity to subdue the conflict by using other tools to lure the rebels (Regan and Norton 2005)
Conclusion
literature review reveals that causes of civil war are not only complex, but also intertwined. Irrespective of the method used, greed and grievances have been found to be the two most important causes of civil war. However, their political and economic dimension present a complex intertwined structure of variables that may or may not ignite a civil war. All the factors such as political oppression, lack of democracy, revenue gains, economic disparity and ethnic or religious polarizations have higher risk of resulting in a civil war if the government is both exploitive and lacks the capacity to suppress the rebels. Nevertheless, the political and economic as well as social sets of variables examined in the above studies have little effects on their own. As such, Dixon, 2009, advices that future research should take grievances more seriously both in measurement and theory as well as theorize the interaction between the individual variables of interests and adapt the concept of ‘multiple paths to civil war’ in order to develop a comprehensive understanding of the causes of civil wars.
References
Chiozza, G., Gleditsch, K. S., & Goemans, H. (2004). Civil war, tenure, and interstate insecurity. Typescript, Harvard University, University of California, San Diego, and the University of Rochester . Retrieved from https://semanticscholar.org/52d1/a0813866363337f8fb3f83304146772a2058
Denny, E., & Walter, B. (2014). Ethnicity and civil war. Journal of Peace Research, 51 (2), 199-212. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/24557416
Dixon, J. (2009). What Causes Civil Wars? Integrating Quantitative Research Findings. International Studies Review,11 (4), 707-735. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/40389163
Hegre, H. (2014). Democracy and armed conflict. Journal of Peace Research, 51 (2), 159-172. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/24557413
Hoeffler, A. (2012). On the Causes of Civil War. Oxford Handbooks Online, 1-34. doi:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780195392777.013.0009
Irvin, C. (2004). Beyond Greed and Grievance. International Studies Review, 6 (2), 289-291. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/3699599
Regan, P., & Norton, D. (2005). Greed, Grievance, and Mobilization in Civil Wars. The Journal of Conflict Resolution,49 (3), 319-336. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/30045117
Sobek, D., & Payne, C. (2010). A Tale of Two Types: Rebel Goals and the Onset of Civil Wars. International Studies Quarterly, 54 (1), 213-240. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/40664244
