The Political Economy of Opposition Groups: Peace, Terrorism, or Civil Conflict

Michael Jetter and Bei Li

No 6747, CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo

Abstract: This paper proposes a simple framework to better understand an opposition group’s choice between peace, terrorism, and open civil conflict against the government. Our model implies that terrorism emerges if constraints on the ruling executive group are intermediate and rents are sizeable, whereas conflict looms under poor executive constraints. Analyzing annual data for up to 158 countries in a panel setting provides evidence consistent with these hypotheses. The results emerge both when considering the incidence and onset of terrorism and conflict. The corresponding magnitudes are economically sizeable. Overall, these findings can help us understand and anticipate the choices of opposition groups.

Keywords: conflict; executive constraints; foreign aid; natural resource rents; oil rents; political institutions; rents; terrorism (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D74 F35 O11 P47 P48 Q34 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm and nep-pol
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ces:ceswps:_6747

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