Natural Resources and Civil War: Another look at Data Export

@article{citeulike:1615753, abstract = {The existing literature identifies natural resource wealth as a major determinant of civil war. The exact mechanism through which resources cause conflict is highly contested, however. The dominant view is that resources provide finance and motive for war (the looting rebels model). Others see natural resources as causing 'political Dutch disease,' which in turn weakens state capacity. Many of the studies addressing the mechanisms use a discrete variable measuring oil dependence. Theoretically interesting nonlinearities have been ignored. This study uses a new data set on resource rents that are disaggregated as forestry, mineral, and energy rents for addressing the resources-conflict relationship. While forestry and mineral rents are by and large unrelated to civil war, energy rents exhibit a curvilinear relationship to conflict, which contradicts the state capacity model. Oil and other energy sources seem to allow governments control at higher levels but not at moderate levels of dependence, roughly 15-25\% of GDP. This result makes the oil-weakens-states argument hard to sustain. Among several control variables, trade to GDP and the growth rate of income seemed robustly related to peace, which suggests that trade and other growth promoting policies might be powerful instruments for the international community to make resource-dependent countries less prone to violence. More work contrasting exports-based data and resource rents data could yield greater insights as to the exact mechanisms linking natural resource wealth to peace and war.}, author = {Neumayer, De-Soysa}, citeulike-article-id = {1615753}, citeulike-linkout-0 = {http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/geographyAndEnvironment/whosWho/profiles/neumayer/pdf/Civilwarandresources.pdf}, comment = {JPR 2004 This study is motivated by the works by FL (2003) and CH(2002), both of which discuss the mechanism of the relationship between natural resource dependence and civil wars. CH's finding: The harzard of civil war after a threshold (32\% of the primary commodity exports per total exports) decreases. In other words, the relationship between natural resources and conflict is curvilinear. FL' finding: A higher dependence on oil exports increases the harzard of civil war. This is because a high dependence on energy resources raises the hazard of civil war via weakening state capacity. The authors creates a new dataset employing a continuous measure of resource wealth (not a simple dichotomous measure of oil dependence). This dataset includes 149 nations from 1970 - 2001. He employs logit analysis. He controls Results: They found a strong curvilinear shape with major wars where peace obtains at very high levels of dependence. They find little evidence to suggest that dependence on minerals and forest resources at the risk of civil war. }, keywords = {fearon-laitin2003, forestry, gleditsch2002, minerals, oil, war-onset}, posted-at = {2007-09-03 08:10:08}, priority = {0}, title = {Natural Resources and Civil War: Another look at Data}, url = {http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/geographyAndEnvironment/whosWho/profiles/neumayer/pdf/Civilwarandresources.pdf} }

TY - JOUR ID - citeulike:1615753 L3 - citeulike-article-id:1615753 N2 - The existing literature identifies natural resource wealth as a major determinant of civil war. The exact mechanism through which resources cause conflict is highly contested, however. The dominant view is that resources provide finance and motive for war (the looting rebels model). Others see natural resources as causing ‘political Dutch disease,’ which in turn weakens state capacity. Many of the studies addressing the mechanisms use a discrete variable measuring oil dependence. Theoretically interesting nonlinearities have been ignored. This study uses a new data set on resource rents that are disaggregated as forestry, mineral, and energy rents for addressing the resources-conflict relationship. While forestry and mineral rents are by and large unrelated to civil war, energy rents exhibit a curvilinear relationship to conflict, which contradicts the state capacity model. Oil and other energy sources seem to allow governments control at higher levels but not at moderate levels of dependence, roughly 15-25% of GDP. This result makes the oil-weakens-states argument hard to sustain. Among several control variables, trade to GDP and the growth rate of income seemed robustly related to peace, which suggests that trade and other growth promoting policies might be powerful instruments for the international community to make resource-dependent countries less prone to violence. More work contrasting exports-based data and resource rents data could yield greater insights as to the exact mechanisms linking natural resource wealth to peace and war. TI - Natural Resources and Civil War: Another look at Data KW - fearon-laitin2003 KW - forestry KW - gleditsch2002 KW - minerals KW - oil KW - war-onset N1 - JPR 2004 This study is motivated by the works by FL (2003) and CH(2002), both of which discuss the mechanism of the relationship between natural resource dependence and civil wars. CH's finding: The harzard of civil war after a threshold (32% of the primary commodity exports per total exports) decreases. In other words, the relationship between natural resources and conflict is curvilinear. FL' finding: A higher dependence on oil exports increases the harzard of civil war. This is because a high dependence on energy resources raises the hazard of civil war via weakening state capacity. The authors creates a new dataset employing a continuous measure of resource wealth (not a simple dichotomous measure of oil dependence). This dataset includes 149 nations from 1970 - 2001. He employs logit analysis. He controls Results: They found a strong curvilinear shape with major wars where peace obtains at very high levels of dependence. They find little evidence to suggest that dependence on minerals and forest resources at the risk of civil war. AU - Neumayer, De-Soysa UR - http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/geographyAndEnvironment/whosWho/profiles/neumayer/pdf/Civilwarandresources.pdf ER -