Anke Hoeffler

On the Duration of Civil War

This article explores empirically the duration of civil war. It relates the duration of civil war to two alternative models of conflict and culls testable hypotheses from the case study literature on civil war. Using a comprehensive dataset on large-scale violent civil conflicts covering the 1960-2000 period, a wide range of hypotheses are tested by means of hazard function regressions. The results show that the duration of conflict is systematically related both to structural conditions prevailing prior to conflict and to circumstances during conflict. The key structural characteristics that lengthen conflict are low per capita income, high inequality and a moderate degree of ethnic division. The key variable characteristics that shorten conflict are a decline in the prices of the primary commodities that the country exports and external military intervention on the side of the rebels. Furthermore, the results indicate that the chances of peace were much lower in the 1980s and 1990s than they had been previously. Three empirical explanations are suggested as different approaches to civil war: rebellion-as-investment, in which the critical incentive is the post-conflict payoff; rebellion-as-business, in which the critical incentive is the payoff during conflict; and rebellion-as-mistake, in which military optimism prevents the recognition of any mutually advantageous settlement. The article concludes that the empirical evidence is incompatible with the first of these approaches but consistent with the others.

On the Incidence of Civil War in Africa

An econometric model of civil war is applied to the analysis of conflict in sub-Saharan Africa. Results show that Africa has had a similar incidence of civil conflict to other developing regions, and, with minor exceptions, its conflicts are consistent with the global pattern of behavior. However, the structure of risk differs considerably from other regions. Africas economic characteristics have made it more vulnerable to conflict, but this has been offset by social characteristics that make its societies atypically safe. The contrasting trends of conflict are analyzed: rising in Africa and declining in other regions. Results show that these trends are predicted by the model. Africas rising trend of conflict is due to its atypically poor economic performance.

Resource Rents, Governance, and Conflict

Case studies as well as cross-country studies suggest that countries with an abundance of natural resources are more prone to violent conflict. This collection of articles analyzes the link between natural resources and civil war in a number of different ways. So far the literature falls broadly into two camps. First, in the economics literature the well-documented “resource curse” leads to low-income growth rates and low levels of income. These in turn constitute low opportunity costs for rebellion and make civil war more likely. On the other hand, political science literature concentrates on the link between natural resources and weak institutions. States with natural resources often rely on a system of patronage and do not develop a democratic system based on electoral competition, scrutiny and civil rights. Based on further empirical evidence in this volume we conclude with a brief overview of current policy initiatives.

Post-conflict risks

Post-conflict societies face two distinctive challenges: economic recovery and reduction of the risk of a recurring conflict. Aid and policy reforms have been found to be effective in economic recovery. In this article, the authors concentrate on the other challenge — risk reduction. The post-conflict peace is typically fragile: nearly half of all civil wars are due to post-conflict relapses. The authors find that economic development substantially reduces risks, but it takes a long time. They also find evidence that UN peacekeeping expenditures significantly reduce the risk of renewed war. The effect is large: doubling expenditure reduces the risk from 40% to 31%. In contrast to these results, the authors cannot find any systematic influence of elections on the reduction of war risk. Therefore, post-conflict elections should be promoted as intrinsically desirable rather than as mechanisms for increasing the durability of the post-conflict peace. Based on these results, the authors suggest that peace appears to depend upon an external military presence sustaining a gradual economic recovery, with political design playing a somewhat subsidiary role. Since there is a relationship between the severity of post-conflict risks and the level of income at the end of the conflict, this provides a clear and uncontroversial principle for resource allocation: resources per capita should be approximately inversely proportional to the level of income in the post-conflict country.

The Augmented Solow Model and the African Growth Debate

Using panel data the question whether Africas growth performance can be accounted for is analysed in the framework of the augmented Solow model. OLS levels results suggest that the model cannot fully account for Africas low growth performance. However, these OLS estimates are likely to suffer from inconsistency and endogeneity problems. As our preferred estimation method we suggest the use of recently developed system generalized method of moments (GMM) estimator. Our system GMM results indicate that the augmented Solow model can account for Africas low growth performance, provided that we allow for unobserved country specific effects and the endogeneity of investment in estimating the parameters of the model. Hence, rather than concentrating research efforts on the analysis of a spurious Africa dummy, it may be more worthwhile to focus on the continents low investment ratios and high population growth rates, which we found to be sufficient to explain Africas low growth rates. Copyright 2002 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd

Violence Against Civilians in Civil Wars: Looting or Terror?

This article analyses the motives of violence against civilians during internal wars. It is suggested that soldiers may terrorize civilians because they need the loot to augment their resources while the rest of the time is engaged in fighting proper. An alternative hypothesis suggests that terrorizing the civilian population plays a direct military role. The displacement of large fractions of the civilian population reduces the fighting efficiency of the enemy, as they cannot hide as easily and obtain less support. These two alternative hypotheses are investigated in a simple two-stage game-theoretic model. At stage 1, the government and the rebels simultaneously decide on the level of forces engaged in violence against civilians before they choose the level of forces that they engage in the fighting proper at stage 2. There are two types of sub-game perfect equilibria in this model: there is a pure fighting equilibrium in which no violence against civilians takes place and a pure terror equilibrium. In the latter equilibrium, it is shown that terror substitutes for fighting if the government can afford it. Predictions of the model are tested using African refugee data. In accordance with the theoretical model, the refugee population displays strong positive serial correlation, and after controlling for war, overseas development assistance has a positive impact on the outflow of refugees. Thus, the results support the hypothesis that violence against civilians is motivated by military objectives and suggest that donor funding to governments at war should be cut if the protection of civilians is regarded as more important than the fate of the fighters.

Unintended Consequences: Does Aid Promote Arms Races?*

Using global data for the period 1960–99, we model military expenditure. Neighbours’ military spending and development aid are important determinants of military expenditure. An implication of the model is that there are regional arms races which are fuelled by aid. Potentially, aid is encouraging a ‘regional public bad’. There may, however, be an offsetting public good effect if military spending deters rebellions. In a simultaneous equation model, we find no deterrence effect of spending on the risk of civil war. Hence, there appears to be no regional public good effect offsetting the public bad arising from a neighbourhood arms race.

Need, Merit or Self-Interest - What Determines the Allocation of Aid?

Previous studies into aid allocation have concluded that foreign aid is allocated not only according to development needs but also according to donor self-interest. We revisit this topic and allow for donor as well as recipient specific effects in our analysis. Our results indicate that roughly half of the predicted value of aid is determined by donor specific effects. Of the remaining variation, recipient need accounts for 36 percent and donor self-interest for about 16 percent. This suggests that the previous literature has overstated the importance of donor self-interest. However, bilateral donors seem to place little importance on recipient merit. Recipient merit, measured by growth, democracy and human rights, accounts for only two percent of predicted aid.

Free and Fair Elections - A New Database

The holding of elections has become universal but only about half of all elections are free and fair. Electoral malpractice not only distorts the quality of representation but has implications for political, social and economic outcomes. Existing datasets either provide information on election quality for a large number of elections but offer little detail, or they provide very detailed information for a small number of elections. Our data collection effort closes this gap by providing ten variables of election quality for all leadership elections for the period 1975–2011. We use these data to provide an assessment of elections that is closely tied to the commonly used term ‘free and fair’. We define ‘freeness’ of the election as the rules of the election and the process leading up to the election, and ‘fairness’ of the election refers to the events on the election day. Our data show that the quality of elections has declined over time. These electoral problems are mainly due to issues in the run-up to the elections. Using probit regressions we investigate the possible causes of election malpractice. Our analysis suggests that the freeness and the fairness of the elections are related to a number of variables, such as income, aid, executive constraints and the presence of election monitors, but that these variables have differential effects on freeness and fairness.

Chapter 23 Civil War

Abstract Civil wars are intricate social, political and psychological phenomena. However, economics can offer analytical insights which are useful alongside the more conventional approach of case-studies. Indeed, the policy conclusions drawn from economic analysis sometimes cast doubt on conventional advice. The use of economic theory and statistical evidence help to guard against excessive generalization from individual civil wars that inevitably suffer from both a surfeit of possible explanations and advocacy. Rigorous empirical study of civil war requires a precise definition of an imprecise and poorly observed phenomenon, a process that provides considerable room for legitimate disagreement. Hence, we begin by discussing the choices made in constructing the major data sets that describe the duration and severity of civil wars. Ideological, religious or ethnic differences are conventionally regarded as the causes of civil war. Economic theory explains civil war in the framework of incentives and constraints rather than ideologies or identities. This framework enables economists to analyze the distinctive feature of civil war: the emergence and persistence of a rebel army: some conditions make rebellion both more attractive and more feasible than others. Consistent with this emphasis on incentives and constraints, statistical studies suggest that economic characteristics, notably the level, growth and structure of income, are important influences on the risk of war. In addition to the explanation of the initiation and duration of civil wars, economic methods can also generate estimates of their costs and consequences. This is an essential step towards the cost-benefit analysis of policy interventions.