EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Of rulers, rebels, and revenue: State capacity, civil war onset, and primary commodities

Cameron G Thies ()
Additional contact information
Cameron G Thies: Department of Political Science, University of Iowa

Journal of Peace Research, 2010, vol. 47, issue 3, 321-332

Abstract: This article investigates the relationship between civil war onset and state capacity through a focus on the role of primary commodities. This is accomplished by moving the focus of the civil war literature away from an almost exclusive concern with the incentives of rebels to a consideration of both rebels and rulers as revenue seeking predators. This predatory theory approach expects that higher levels of state capacity should deter civil war onset, while civil war onset should reduce state capacity. Further, natural resource rents are expected to enhance state capacity, rather than increase the likelihood of civil war onset. In order to deal with the endogeneity posed by including fiscal measures of state capacity in single equation models of civil war onset, this study employs a simultaneous equations framework. This framework allows us to capture the effects of civil war onset on state capacity and vice versa, as well as the effects of primary commodities on both endogenous covariates. The main findings from the statistical analyses include: state capacity does not affect civil war onset, but civil war onset reduces state capacity; and primary products directly affect only state capacity - they do not directly affect civil war onset, as found in previous contributions to the literature.

Keywords: civil war onset; natural resources; predation; primary commodities; resource curse; state capacity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (16)

Downloads: (external link)
http://jpr.sagepub.com/content/47/3/321.abstract (text/html)

Related works:
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:sae:joupea:v:47:y:2010:i:3:p:321-332

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of Peace Research from Peace Research Institute Oslo
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().

 
Page updated 2025-03-19
Handle: RePEc:sae:joupea:v:47:y:2010:i:3:p:321-332