Suchergebnisse

Schrumpfende Erdölreserven bei gleichzeitig wachsender globaler Energienachfrage haben in der letzten Dekade zu steigenden Erdölpreisen beigetragen. Der Sammelband untersucht die Effekte des hohen Ölpreises in neun Erdölstaaten in Afrika, Lateinamerika, dem Nahen Osten sowie aus der OECD-Welt. Der systematische Vergleich der Länderfälle generiert einige konsolidierte Hypothesen zum Zusammenhang von Ölpreis und Entwicklungen in der Außen-, Innen- und Wirtschaftspolitik, die grundsätzlich die Annahmen des Rentierstaatskonzepts unterstützen: Ein steigender Ölpreis und damit verbundene Erlöse stellen in der Tat eine Machtquelle für die Politik dar und tragen zu kurzfristigen wirtschaftlichen Erfolgen bei. Mittel- und langfristig birgt das Vertrauen auf die hohen Einnahmen jedoch erhebliche Risiken. Der Band zeigt auf, dass die tatsächlichen Entwicklungen nicht ohne Berücksichtigung des erdölunabhängigen Kontexts der jeweiligen Länder erklärt werden können. Deutlich wird dies am Beispiel Libyens, das trotz seines hohen Öleinkommens eine schwere politische Krise durchlebt, aber auch im Falle der wirtschaftlich erfolgreichen und stabilen Demokratie Norwegens

Factionalism can affect the stability and institutionalization of parties and party systems and it can impact on the efficiency and legitimacy of political parties and political systems as a whole. Nevertheless, factionalism has only received scant attention in the comparative literature on political parties. As this paper shows, there is no dearth of conceptual approaches and hypotheses which can readily be used to advance the systematic analysis of factionalism. We survey the relevant literature and offer a comprehensive analytical framework to stimulate comparatively oriented and nuanced studies of the causes, characteristics and consequences of intra-party groups.

In spring 2020, observers and practitioners warned that COVID-19 would increase violence in sub-Saharan Africa by creating an economic shock that would lead to distributional conflicts and government repression. Compared to before the pandemic, violence did increase in 2020, rising by 40 and 60 per cent in terms of fatalities and events, respectively. Controlling for important confounders, COVID-19 proves significant to the increase in violence in many models; however, a robust effect can be found only for "COVID-19 unrest," which forms a fraction of the violence and stems from the stringency of government reactions rather than the pandemic itself. Pre-pandemic fragility accounts best for the region's rise in violence. Expert assessments confirm these findings but also yield evidence warning against prematurely announcing an all-clear. The fallout of the pandemic on conflict is likely to have a longer period of incubation, and there are initial indications that conditions will worsen.

Previous research has shown that minority grievances can contribute significantly to violent conflict. However, it appears that grievances do not inevitably induce religious and other minorities to engage in protest or rebellion. Moreover, relative deprivation may explain conflict but not necessarily violent conflict. Contributing to research on these questions, this paper explores the conditions under which the grievances of religious minorities lead to non-violent or violent protest. Using a motive-opportunity framework, we assume that members of religious minorities who feel discriminated against must be willing and able to engage in peaceful and violent forms of protest - and that certain conditions are required for grievances to result in peaceful or violent dissent. We test this proposition by comparing the Jewish and Muslim communities in Canada. Our findings indicate that relative economic and political deprivation may create concrete grievances that in combination with origin-based value incompatibilities can explain differences in behaviour in reaction to these grievances.

Religion has increasingly become important in conflicts worldwide. Religious leaders may play a key role in mobilizing believers as they can call for peace or instigate violence. But what makes religious leaders support peace or promote violence? Drawing on a survey poll of 102 religious leaders in Juba, South Sudan, this paper represents virtually the first attempt to study the correlates of pro-violence opinions of religious elites in a more quantitative manner in a developing country. The paper analyzes when and why some religious leaders support faith-based violence while others do not. Employing a unique combination of innovative measures, our results have many implications for mobilization processes. We find that leaders' support for faith-based violence is largely independent of individual demographic or personal determinants but is closely related to religious attitudes. Tolerance toward other faiths and secularism reduce pro-violence attitudes. Muslims seem to be more ready to support faith-based violence, probably given their minority status and other peculiarities of Islam in (South) Sudan. Surprisingly, interreligious activities do not reduce support for violence but increase appreciation for peaceful protest. Generally, determinants of peaceful protest substantially differ, suggesting that any support for violence follows its own distinct logic.

Building on theoretical insights from research on the rentier state and the "resource curse," several studies have supported the argument that oil hinders democracy. However, previous research on the rentier state has neglected the global surge of multiparty autocracies or "electoral authoritarian" regimes since the end of the Cold War. No systematic study has been carried out on the question of whether or not and how oil affects electoral contests in nondemocratic regimes. In this paper we contribute to filling this gap by combing the literature on multiparty autocracy and the political economy of the rentier state. As oil production creates substantial, nontransparent revenue streams to national and subnational governments, we hypothesize that oil production has a negative effect on electoral competitiveness, both cross- and subnationally, in multiparty autocracies. Consequently, the democratic "resource curse" emphasized in earlier work on the rentier state is likely to persist even after the introduction of multipartyism in cases where oil production predates democratic institutions. The paper tests the hypothesis cross-nationally, using data on all multiparty elections held in the world in the period 1975 - 2010, and subnationally, using a new data set on subnational election results and oil production in Nigeria. Our results confirm that oil impedes electoral competitiveness, both cross- and subnationally, in multiparty autocracies.

According to quantitative studies, oil seems the only natural resource that is robustly linked to civil war onset. However, recent debates on the nexus of oil and internal conflict have neglected the fact that there are a number of peaceful rentier oil states in existence. Few efforts have been made to explain why some oil-exporting countries have experienced civil war while others have not. We thus address this puzzle, by arguing that civil war risks depend on the specific conditions of oil production and how they come to structure state–society relations. Specifically, we expect that states that are either highly dependent on oil or who have problematic relations with oil regions are prone to civil war. However, these risks will be mitigated either when democratic institutions can manage conflicts peacefully or when abundant oil revenues can be spent in such a way as to buy peace. We test this conditional argument by comparing 39 net oil exporters, using a (crisp-set) Qualitative Comparative Analysis – a methodology particularly suited to test conditional relationships in medium-Nsamples. Our results largely confirm our conditional hypotheses. Conditions of oil production are ambiguous, and particular combinations thus explain the onset of civil war. Specifically, we find that high abundance is sufficient to ensure peace, while two distinct pathways lead to civil war: the combination of high dependence and low abundance, as well as the overlap of ethnic exclusion and oil reserves in non-abundant and non-democratic oil states.

"Trotz eines Rückgangs an offenen politischen Interventionen des Militärs im subsaharischen Afrika spricht vieles dafür, dass es einen Zusammenhang zwischen Merkmalen und Verhalten des Militärs und der Stabilität subsaharischer autokratischer Regime gibt. Der vorliegende Beitrag überprüft anhand einer Reihe von Indikatoren, inwieweit es sich bei Afrikas autokratischen Regimen um (zivilisierte) Militärregime handelt und inwieweit autokratische Regime von der Unterstützung der Streitkräfte abhängen. Ergebnisse auf Basis eines systematischen Vergleichs mit verschiedenen Regimetypen sowie Evidenz aus Einzelfällen legen nahe, dass das Militär eine wichtige Rolle bei der Stabilisierung autokratischer Regime spielt." (Autorenreferat)