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...

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....

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...

Resource-rich countries have tended to be autocratic and also have tended to use their resource wealth badly. The neoconservative agenda of promoting democratization in resource-rich countries thus offers the hopeful prospect of a better use of their economic opportunities. This paper examines...

Globally, state failure is hugely costly, in terms of lost output and the high costs imposed by failing states on their neighbours. This paper examines the cost of failing states in the Pacific. The Pacific region differs from other regions: since its countries are islands the neighbourhood...

Dans ce document, nous avons examiné les défis qui se posent aux économies de douze pays africains touchés la guerre, dans le domaine de la réhabilitation et de la construction des infrastructures. Notre étude sur les secteurs de l'eau, des transports, de l'énergie et des...

In this article, we revisit Lipset’s law (Lipset 1959), which posits a positive and significant relationship between income and democracy. Using dynamic panel data estimation techniques that account for short-run cross-country heterogeneity in the relationship between income and democracy and...

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...

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...

Deliberate killing is a common part of the defining features of both homicide and civil war. Often, the scale of killing is also similar: most countries have homicide rates that exceed the threshold of one thousand combat-related deaths during a year that is the standard criterion for civil war....