Helga Malmin Binningsbø

A price worth fighting for? Natural resources and conflict recurrence

While a number of publications show that natural resources are associated with internal armed conflict, surprisingly little research looks at how natural resources affect post-conflict peace. This article therefore investigates the relationship between natural resources and post-conflict peace by analyzing new data on natural resource conflicts. We argue that the effect of natural resources on peace depends on how a country’s natural resources can constitute a motive or opportunity for armed conflict. In particular, three mechanisms may link natural resources to conflict recurrence: disagreements over natural resource distribution may motivate rebellion; using natural resources as a funding source creates an opportunity for conflict; and natural resources may aggravate existing conflict, acting either as motivation or opportunity for rebellion, but through other mechanisms than distributional claims or funding. Our data code all internal armed conflicts between 1946 and 2006 according to the presence of these resource–conflict links. We claim such mechanisms increase the risk of conflict recurrence because access to natural resources is an especially valuable prize worth fighting for. We test our hypotheses using a piecewise exponential survival model and find that, bivariately, armed conflicts with any of these resource–conflict mechanisms are more likely to resume than non-resource conflicts. A multivariate analysis distinguishing between the three mechanisms reveals that this relationship is significant only for conflicts motivated by natural resource distribution issues. These findings are important for researchers and policymakers interested in overcoming the ‘curse’ associated with natural resources and suggest that the way forward lies in natural resource management policies carefully designed to address the specific resource–conflict links.

Armed conflict and post-conflict justice, 1946–2006 A dataset

This article introduces a new dataset on post-conflict justice (PCJ) that provides an overview of if, where, and how post-conflict countries address the wrongdoings committed in association with previous armed conflict. Motivated by the literature on post-conflict peacebuilding, we study justice processes during post-conflict transitions. We examine: which countries choose to implement PCJ; where PCJ is implemented; and which measures are taken in post-conflict societies to address past abuse. Featuring justice and accountability processes, our dataset focuses solely on possible options to address wrongdoings that are implemented following and relating to a given armed conflict. These data allow scholars to address hypotheses regarding justice following war and the effect that these institutions have on transitions to peace. This new dataset includes all extrasystemic, internationalized internal, and internal armed conflicts from 1946 to 2006, with at least 25 annual battle-related deaths as coded by the UCDP/PRIO Armed Conflict Dataset. The post-conflict justice (PCJ) efforts included are: trials, truth commissions, reparations, amnesties, purges, and exiles. By building upon the UCDP/PRIO Armed Conflict Dataset, scholars interested in PCJ can include variables regarding the nature of the conflict itself to test how PCJ arrangements work in different environments in order to better address the relationships between justice, truth, and peace in the post-conflict period.

Post-Conflict Justice and Sustainable Peace

No systematic study has examined the effect of post-conflict justice on the duration of peace on a global basis. This paper attempts to fill that void by building on a newly constructed dataset (Binningsbo, Elster, and Gates 2005), which reports the presence of various forms of post-conflict justice efforts (trials, purges, reparation to victims, and truth commissions) as well as processes associated with abstaining from post-conflict justice (amnesty and exile). It investigates the long-term effects of post-conflict justice on the duration of peace after conflict. It uses a Cox proportional hazard model to analyze the influence of the various types of post-conflict justice on the length of the peace period before the recurrence of violent conflict. Post-conflict trials as well as other types of justice do lead to a more durable peace in democratic as well as non-democratic societies, but the results are weak and are therefore difficult to generalize. Forms of non-retributive justice (that is, reparations to victims and truth commissions), however, are strongly associated with the duration of peace in democratic societies, but are not significant for non-democratic societies. Amnesty tends to be destabilizing and generally associated with shorter peace duration, but exile tends to lead to a more durable peace.

Jarstad, Anna K & Timothy D Sisk, eds (2008) From War to Democracy: Dilemmas of Peacebuilding. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. xvii(i) + 290 pp. ISBN 9780521713276

I suppose quite a few social scientists like myself have struggled to make it through such classics as Leviathan or The Wealth of Nations. On those occasions when I have actually finished them, I have often felt more exhausted than inspired. Reading classics as well as new pieces in Theories of Social Order, on the other hand, I could not wait to turn the page. The key to its readability is not only the short and well-drawn excerpts, but also the enlightening way they are knitted together by the editors, Michael Hechter and Christine Horne. The pieces are categorized in chapters by the type of actor or structure in which a solution for the problem of social order is sought: individuals, hierarchies, markets, groups and networks. For each of these, Hechter and Horne take care to bring out the core causal mechanisms and factors of the pieces and discuss their limitations and challenges. Each chapter ends with one or two empirical studies, which very nicely show how the theories can be applied to concrete puzzles. The second edition of the book contains a few more chapters than the first and, I would say, has an improved structure. This book will surely inspire many social scientists to give more attention to theory and integrate it more effectively in empirical research. It also brings out the editors’ argument that the best explanations of social phenomena point out both causal factors and the mechanism by which they work. The broad topic – cooperation and social order – and the wide range of approaches taken by the authors ensure that almost any social scientist will find much of interest here. Helge Holtermann

Beyond Territory and Scarcity: Exploring Conflicts over Natural Resource Management

produce a ‘repression backlash’ that ultimately weakens states. Zwerman and Steinhoff argue that groups sometimes seek out repression to provoke the state into actions that will delegitimate state authorities. Johnston and Ferree, in separate essays, focus on speech acts as challenges to regimes and identify ridicule and social stigmatization as forms of ‘soft repression’. Koopmans shows how the public discourse either permits or blocks states from using violent repression on certain challengers, while Ball shows how media distortions make it difficult to get good numbers on government repression. The volume closes with a valuable debate in which Tilly presents four plausible and empirically well-supported mechanisms for explaining social protest. Lichbach challenges this by presenting ten highly convincing mechanisms by which military action against terrorist-harboring states will reduce terrorist mobilization, and then ten equally convincing mechanisms by which it will increase it. Lichbach argues that it is devilishly difficult to specify which mechanisms will be activated and dictate outcomes in any specific circumstances. This volume gives us many mechanisms of protest/ repression dynamics to consider and advances considerably our understanding of those dynamics. Jack A. Goldstone