Empirical studies on the causes of civil war robustly show that poor countries are more likely to suffer civil war than rich ones. However, the interpretations of this finding differ. The literature proposes three different causal mechanisms: (1) poverty leads to grievances; (2) income proxies...

Recent research identifies state capacity as a crucial determinant of civil peace. Scholars often interpret the association between wealth and peace as state capacity effects, but they have not clearly distinguished the impact of administrative reach and capacity for coercion from those effects...

Structural adjustment programs of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) are often blamed for disrupting social relations by forcing austerity on vulnerable people and introducing unpopular liberalization policies. Some suggest that such interventions harm ethnic relations in developing countries...

There is surprisingly little empirical scholarship on the spread of capitalistic economic policies under the rubric of ‘globalization’ and domestic peace. While the classical liberals saw free markets leading to social harmony because of self-interest of individuals, who cooperate...