The Conflict Trap in the Greek Civil War 1946-1949: An economic approach

Nicos Christodoulakis

GreeSE – Hellenic Observatory Papers on Greece and Southeast Europe from Hellenic Observatory, LSE

Abstract: The paper provides a quantitative analysis of the armed confrontation that took place in Greece between the Communist Party and the Centre-Right Government during 1946-1949. Using monthly data for battle casualties a dynamic Lotka-Volterra framework is estimated, pointing to the existence of a conflict trap that explains the prolongation of the civil war and its dire consequences for the country. To examine the extent to which the confrontation was influenced by socio-economic factors, a regional analysis finds that political discontent was mainly correlated with pre-war grievances rather than class-structure, while the mobilization of guerilla forces was crucially affected by morphology and the local persecutions by the Government. The economic cost of the conflict is estimated to be close to an annual GDP, and its effect to last for at least a decade, in line with similar findings in contemporary civil wars. The failure to prevent the conflict or stop its escalation is discussed together with some conclusions for the long term repercussions and the current social discontent in Greece.

Keywords: Civil war; Greece; production function; equilibrium and stability conditions (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C62 E23 N44 O52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (14)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.lse.ac.uk/europeanInstitute/research/he ... eSE/GreeSE-No-83.pdf (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 404 Not Found (http://www.lse.ac.uk/europeanInstitute/research/hellenicObservatory/CMS%20pdf/Publications/GreeSE/GreeSE-No-83.pdf [301 Moved Permanently]--> https://www.lse.ac.uk/europeanInstitute/research/hellenicObservatory/CMS%20pdf/Publications/GreeSE/GreeSE-No-83.pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: The conflict trap in the Greek Civil War 1946-1949: an economic approach (2014)
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:hel:greese:83

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in GreeSE – Hellenic Observatory Papers on Greece and Southeast Europe from Hellenic Observatory, LSE Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Vassilis Monastiriotis ().