Rebel Financing and the commitment problem in civil conflict: An Application to Northern Ireland

Colin Jennings and Santiago Sanchez-Pages

No 38r2h, SocArXiv from Center for Open Science

Abstract: Why is a peace agreement acceptable at some point in time but not earlier? We argue that the commitment problem combined with the nature of rebel Financing can help explain this. Crucial to our argument is that the composition of financing between donations and self-generated funds through organised crime and local governance determine the size of anticipated shifts in the future power of rebel groups. When donations are the main source of funds, shifts in rebel strength will more likely be large and be preempted through conflict by the state. When rebels obtain mainly self-generated funds, shifts in power will more likely be small and allow for peace. We apply this theory to the Northern Ireland conflict and analyse why the 1998 Belfast Agreement was credible, but the very similar failed Sunningdale Agreement in 1973 was not. Our paper contributes to the literature on the boundary between political violence and organised crime.

Date: 2024-04-18
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-inv
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://osf.io/download/662113fa716cb70380a4568e/

Related works:
Working Paper: Rebel financing and the commitment problem in civil conflict: An Application to Northern Ireland (2024)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:osf:socarx:38r2h

DOI: 10.31219/osf.io/38r2h

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in SocArXiv from Center for Open Science
Bibliographic data for series maintained by OSF ().