Suchergebnisse

Barbieri, Keshk, and Pollins (2009) introduce a new Correlates of War trade data set and express various opinions on issues related to analyzing data on trade and how these may impact our inferences on the relationship between trade and conflict. Since there are 33 references to my name in their paper and the authors believe the expanded trade that I have generated to be highly problematic, I respond to some of the issues raised, clarify the specific sources of disagreement, and outline my thoughts on how trade data can be improved and best used in empirical analyses. Barbieri et al. (2009) could be interpreted as suggesting that inferences on the pacifying effect of trade on conflict are fragile and sensitive to decisions on the data. However, their paper in my view provides few new empirical results and does not change my own interpretation of the evidence that dyadic trade reduces the risk of conflict.

Theories of mobilization suggest that groups are more likely to resort to violence in the presence of political opportunity structures that afford greater prospects for extracting concessions from the government or better opportunities to topple ruling governments. However, existing efforts to consider the possible influences of political opportunity structures on incentives for violence and civil war empirically have almost invariably relied upon measures of democracy to proxy for the hypothesized mechanisms, most notably the argument that the opposing effects of political accommodation and repression will give rise to an inverted U-shaped relationship between democracy and the risk of civil war. The authors detail a number of problems with measures of democracy as proxies for political opportunity structures and develop alternative measures based on the likely risks that political leaders will lose power in irregular challenges and their implications for the incentives for resort to violence. The authors evaluate empirically how the security with which leaders hold office influences the prospects of violent civil conflict. The findings indicate that recent irregular leader entry and transitions indeed increase the risk of conflict onset, while democratic institutions are found to decrease the risk of civil war, after controlling for the new measures of state weakness.

Theories of mobilization suggest that groups are more likely to resort to violence in the presence of political opportunity structures that afford greater prospects for extracting concessions from the government or better opportunities to topple ruling governments. However, existing efforts to consider the possible influences of political opportunity structures on incentives for violence and civil war empirically have almost invariably relied upon measures of democracy to proxy for the hypothesized mechanisms, most notably the argument that the opposing effects of political accommodation and repression will give rise to an inverted U-shaped relationship between democracy and the risk of civil war. The authors detail a number of problems with measures of democracy as proxies for political opportunity structures and develop alternative measures based on the likely risks that political leaders will lose power in irregular challenges and their implications for the incentives for resort to violence. The authors evaluate empirically how the security with which leaders hold office influences the prospects of violent civil conflict. The findings indicate that recent irregular leader entry and transitions indeed increase the risk of conflict onset, while democratic institutions are found to decrease the risk of civil war, after controlling for the new measures of state weakness.

We re-examine the Miguel et al. (2004) study of the impact of growth on civil war, using growth in rainfall as an instrument. Miguel et al. (2004) - in our view, erroneously - include countries participating in civil wars in other states. Restricting the conflict data to states with conflict on their own territory reduces the estimated impact of economic growth on civil war. We show how spatial correlations in rainfall growth and participation in civil conflicts induce a stronger apparent relationship in the mis-classified data. © 2009 Taylor & Francis.

Abstract
The award committee has chosen Paul Collier as the winner of the 2016 Lewis Fry Richardson Award in particular in recognition of his contributions to the study of civil war. His famous paper on "Greed and grievance in civil war" – published with Anke Hoeffler in 2004, but circulating in draft form since the late 1990s – has been cited over 1000 times in the Web of Science as of mid-July 2016, and has over 5000 citations in Google Scholar. The jury also highlighted the key role of Collier's work reviving academic research on civil war in the late 1990s, the broader impact of the World Bank group led by Collier in spurring advances in the field as well as stimulating important data collection efforts, as well as his central role in popularizing insights of academic research to a broader audience.

Theories of conflict emphasize dyadic interaction, yet existing empirical studies of civil war focus largely on state attributes and pay little attention to nonstate antagonists. We recast civil war in a dyadic perspective, and consider how nonstate actor attributes and their relationship to the state influence conflict dynamics. We argue that strong rebels, who pose a military challenge to the government, are likely to lead to short wars and concessions. Conflicts where rebels seem weak can become prolonged if rebels can operate in the periphery so as to defy a government victory yet are not strong enough to extract concessions. Conflicts should be shorter when potential insurgents can rely on alternative political means to violence. We examine these hypotheses in a dyadic analysis of civil war duration and outcomes, using new data on nonstate actors and conflict attributes, finding support for many of our conjectures.