Following the wave of democratization during the 1990s, elections are now common in low-income societies. However, these elections are frequently flawed. We investigate the Nigerian general election of 2007, which is to date the largest election held in Africa and one seriously marred by...

Grievance and reduced opportunity costs are two popular ideas within the civil war literature to explain participation in violent rebellion. We test both hypotheses at the village-level using data on recruitment activities during the civil war in Burundi. We use historical data on violent...

This paper explores the importance of the risk of violence on the decision making of rural households, using a unique panel data set for Colombian coffee-growers. We identify two channels. First, we examine the direct impact of conflict on agricultural production through the change in the...

In 2009, hostilities were brought to an end in Burundi when the FNL rebel group laid down weapons. In exchange for peace, ex-rebels benefited from a disarmament, demobilization and reintegration (DDR) program to finance their return to civilian life. A few years earlier, another rebel group...

This paper argues that endogenous mechanisms linking processes of violent conflict and household poverty provide valuable micro foundations to the ongoing debate on the causes and duration of armed conflicts. Household poverty affects the onset, sustainability and duration of violent conflict...

Social tensions impede social cohesion and public goods provision. They can also be a driving force for more serious conflicts such as civil wars. Surprisingly, however, the emergence of social tensions has only rarely been studied in the literature. In the present contribution a game-theoretic...

The causes of internal conflicts are not easy to identify, and in order to understand its dynamics it is important to determine the factors that influence its persistence. The appropriation of economic resources has been identified as a cause of the conflict; however, asset appropriation may not...

Recent research on violence against civilians during wars has emphasized war-related factors over political ones. For example, factors such as control of territory or characteristics of the armed groups have been prioritized at the expense of factors such as ideological alignments or local...

We examine how natural resource location, rent sharing and fighting capacities of different groups matter for ethnic conflict. A new type of bargaining failure due to multiple types of potential conflicts (and hence multiple threat points) is identified. The theory predicts conflict to be more...