Violent conflicts and state capacity: Evidence from Sub-Saharan Africa

Adedoyin Babajide, Ahmad Hassan Ahmad and Simeon Coleman ()

Journal of Government and Economics, 2021, vol. 3, issue C

Abstract: This paper investigates the impacts of conflicts on state-capacity in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), a region that has recorded a disproportionate number of armed conflicts and has a high presence in the Fragile States Index rankings. Individually, both conflicts and state-capacity are known to have important implications for economic development, which underscore their relevance for developing countries. Our aim here is to analyze the relationship between them and for this, we analyze a panel of 49 SSA countries spanning 2000–2015. Our results suggest that the effect of conflicts on state-capacity depends on the variable used to proxy state-capacity is important: conflicts diminish state-capacity when tax revenue is used as the proxy, but the effect is positive when proxied by military expenditure. Other proxies consider include regulatory quality, rule of law, and government effectiveness.

Keywords: State capacity; Internal armed conflicts; External armed conflicts; Sub-Saharan Africa (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D74 H00 O20 O55 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jogoec:v:3:y:2021:i:c:s2667319321000197

DOI: 10.1016/j.jge.2021.100019

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