In this chapter we have suggested a new indicator of civil war which is further applied to three dierent econometric models. Main indicators of civil war are based on the quantitative threshold of battle-death and very few economists have raised doubts on this way of coding civil wars.
Here, we conceptualize civil war as a nal state of a process. Process-driven explanations, best explored through historical narratives that focus on the dynamic interactions among and between actors and countries, can elucidate violence endings. Of course, we do not want to infer that every civil war is the inevitable end of protests. On the contrary, we want to underline the importance of grievances as crucial point from which we can predict a civil war: the more we ignore civil society's reclaims, the more we risk a civil war break out.
Table 3.28: Cox Proportional Hazard Model strati ed with political con icts (Ethnic Fixed Eects): Transitions from Peace to other states
P eace → P eace Peace → ArmedV iolence Peace → W ar
Low Political Rights Quality 0.345 * 0.228 -1.369 **
(0.186) (0.470) (0.692)
High Political Rights Quality 0.193 0.348 -1.018
(0.233) (0.665) (0.724)
Oil Production (Lag) -0.161 0.825 * -0.503
(0.183) (0.474) (0.580)
Autocracy -0.023 -0.595 0.082
(0.167) (0.657) (0.596)
Population Growth (Lag) -0.086 * 0.415 ** 0.204
(0.052) (0.171) (0.149)
Mountainous Terrain -0.060 -5.464 ** 1.254
(0.258) (2.692) (0.999)
Oil Gini 0.164 -1.547 ** 0.667
(0.227) (0.731) (0.713)
Soil Fertility 0.706 ** -1.506 * -1.330
(0.306) (0.894) (1.006)
Gold Production 0.038 0.503 -0.489
(0.139) (0.406) (0.456)
Diamond Production 0.167 0.063 -0.462
(0.122) (0.341) (0.399)
Economic Growth (Lag) 0.783 ** -1.973 -5.566 **
(0.377) (1.961) (2.530)
N 457 457 457
Table 3.29: Cox Proportional Hazard Model strati ed with political con icts (Ethnic Fixed Eects): Transitions from Armed Violence to other states
ArmedV iolence → P eace Armed Violence → ArmedV iolence Armed Violence → CivilW ar
Low Political Rights Quality 0.181 -0.001 -0.571
(0.155) (0.475) (0.854)
High Political Rights Quality -0.016 0.255 -0.262
(0.206) (0.580) (0.755)
Oil Production (Lag) -0.196 0.941 * -0.964
(0.203) (0.510) (0.637)
Autocracy -0.086 -0.349 -0.036
(0.179) (0.583) (0.545)
Population Growth (Lag) -0.038 0.404 ** -0.086
(0.051) (0.174) (0.203)
Mountainous Terrain -0.220 -5.213 * 2.108 *
(0.361) (2.734) (1.199)
Oil Gini 0.217 -1.770 ** 0.792
(0.240) (0.727) (0.743)
Soil Fertility 0.667 ** -1.791 ** -0.903
(0.297) (0.861) (1.116)
Gold Production -0.009 0.595 * -0.333
(0.139) (0.359) (0.478)
Diamond Production 0.221 * 0.077 -0.555
(0.120) (0.323) (0.427)
Economic Growth (Lag) 0.533 -1.497 -4.759 *
(0.371) (2.030) (2.734)
N 558 558 558
Table 3.30: Cox Proportional Hazard Model strati ed with environemntal con icts (Ethnic Fixed Eects): Transitions from Peace to other states
P eace → P eace Peace → ArmedV iolence Peace → CivilW ar
Low Political Rights Quality 0.383 * 0.254 -1.434 **
(0.199) (0.511) (0.647)
High Political Rights Quality 0.256 0.467 -1.039
(0.249) (0.645) (0.658)
Oil Production (Lag) -0.258 1.006 ** -0.673
(0.165) (0.424) (0.541)
Autocracy -0.036 -0.351 0.159
(0.166) (0.588) (0.584)
Population Growth (Lag) -0.094 * 0.371 ** 0.163
(0.052) (0.158) (0.140)
Mountainous Terrain -0.072 -4.160 * 0.850
(0.267) (2.131) (1.055)
Oil Gini 0.182 -1.584 ** 0.959
(0.219) (0.738) (0.691)
Soil Fertility 0.761 *** -1.250 -1.745 **
(0.290) (0.863) (0.835)
Gold Production -0.030 0.556 -0.391
(0.142) (0.379) (0.366)
Diamond Production 0.203 * -0.112 -0.443
(0.119) (0.328) (0.384)
Economic Growth (Lag) 0.628 * -1.788 -4.473 *
(0.349) (1.768) (2.500)
N 604 604 604
Table 3.31: Cox Proportional Hazard Model strati ed with environmental con icts (Ethnic Fixed Eects): Transitions from Armed Violence to other states
ArmedV iolence → P eace Armed Violence → ArmedV iolence Armed Violence → W ar
Low Political Rights Quality 0.175 0.139 -0.313
(0.176) (0.512) (0.908)
High Political Rights Quality -0.021 0.448 0.025
(0.226) (0.607) (0.824)
Oil Production (Lag) -0.261 1.024 ** -1.107 **
(0.189) (0.453) (0.561)
Autocracy -0.105 -0.202 0.054
(0.180) (0.578) (0.558)
Population Growth (Lag) -0.069 0.388 ** 0.011
(0.052) (0.161) (0.178)
Mountainous Terrain -0.058 -4.078 * 1.255
(0.370) (2.164) (1.199)
Oil Gini 0.249 -1.830 ** 0.982
(0.233) (0.749) (0.661)
Soil Fertility 0.754 *** -1.504 * -1.686 *
(0.288) (0.847) (0.912)
Gold Production -0.084 0.545 -0.245
(0.140) (0.342) (0.397)
Diamond Production 0.265 ** -0.040 -0.540
(0.114) (0.310) (0.399)
Economic Growth (Lag) 0.459 -1.668 -4.537 *
(0.361) (2.052) (2.661)
N 558 558 558
Table 3.32: Cox Proportional Hazard Model strati ed with enviromental con icts (Ethnic Fixed Eects): Transitions from Civil War to other states
CivilW ar → P eace Civil War → ArmedV iolence Civil War → CivilW ar
Low Political Rights Quality 0.501 ** 0.098 -2.169 ***
(0.245) (0.605) (0.606)
High Political Rights Quality 0.239 0.438 -1.464 ***
(0.294) (0.819) (0.561)
Oil Production (Lag) 0.153 1.046 -0.420
(0.229) (0.973) (0.558)
Autocracy -0.071 0.109 -0.311
(0.179) (0.751) (0.417)
Population Growth (Lag) -0.050 -0.046 0.227
(0.048) (0.145) (0.174)
Mountainous Terrain -0.038 -1.443 1.051
(0.260) (1.835) (0.939)
Oil Gini -0.088 -2.663 ** 1.026
(0.264) (1.304) (0.650)
Soil Fertility 0.596 ** 0.255 -2.261 **
(0.302) (0.814) (0.961)
Gold Production 0.040 -0.100 -0.135
(0.142) (0.403) (0.366)
Diamond Production 0.111 0.395 -0.773 **
(0.122) (0.398) (0.358)
Economic Growth (Lag) 0.430 -2.429 -1.300
(0.335) (2.861) (2.211)
N 438 438 438
Table 3.33: Main Conclusion about Country Level Analysis
Country Level Analysis
Peace more population→less peace; more mountains→less peace; more economic growth→more violence
Armed Violence more mountains → more violence
Civil War more economic growth → more war
Table 3.34: Main Conclusion about Ethnic Level Analysis
Ethnic Level Analysis
Peace more economic growth→more peace or war; more diamond→more peace; more population→less peace; more fertile→more peace.
Armed Violence more oil → more violence; more inequality → more violence
Civil War more inequality→more war; more fertility→more war; more mountains→more war;more diamond→less war
Table 3.35: Main Conclusion about Transitions
Non-Ethnic Level Analysis
Peace more economic growth→more peace; less rights→less peace; more population→more peace
Armed Violence less rights → more violence.
Civil War more economic growth→ less war
From this perspective, we have developed a year-level indicator of violence escalation based on 3 levels of violence: 1. peace, peaceful demonstrations and strikes; 2. armed con ict and riots; and 3. civil war. The rst two levels are derived from SCAD and ACLED, while the third degree of violence (hence, civil war) is taken from UCDP and ACLED. This construction makes suitable our analysis, since it reports three possible outcomes for its violence status variable.
Moreover, we have linked each degree of violence to a particular root of con ict, which we have divided into: political con ict, religious con ict and environmental con ict. Since ACLED and SCAD provide very detailed information about the typology of con ict, we combine this information with newspapers, historical books, websites and communiqué in order to understand the main reasons of complaint.
By following the econometric procedures of Jung (2009, 2006) and French (2005) we imple-ment 3 methods to construct the Markov probabilities and we develop a country-level analysis, an ethnic-level and a non-ethnic groups-level of analysis: rst, we apply a simple counting method, the second method predicts transition probabilities using ordered logit models and, lastly we de-rive hazard rates from a semi-parametric proportional hazard (Cox) model. 50 African countries and 479 ethnic groups in Africa are covered from 1975 through 2014.
We proceed our analysis, rst by estimating transition probabilities between violence states with a simple count method as used in Jung (2006), and Diehr and Patrick (2001). We count the number of transitions from initial states to states one period ahead, also by typology of con ict (environmental con ict, political con ict and religious con ict). We have discovered that when we study at country level we obtain dierent results from those of ethnic level or non-ethnic groups level. Generally speaking, at country level it seems that countries are more con ict-prone or, at least, trapped into civil war. When we study at micro-macro level, instead, peace is more probable, and even if a community is living an armed con ict, peace shows to be more likely. Moreover, we have seen that the impact of the typology of con ict on violence status should not be overall underestimated.
Since it is also important to understand, which factors may aect the appearance of civil war, in the second method we t a model to predict the probability of transition as a function of initial violence status, economic growth, population growth, oil, diamond and gold production, quality of political rights, autocracy, soil fertility and a Gini indicator developed by Morelli and Rohner (2015). As before, we run this model on three dierent dataset: country-level dataset, ethnic-level dataset and non-ethnic groups-level dataset. Results are pretty coherent with the simple counting method. Therefore, peace is more probable than war when a community is living an armed con ict and peace shows to be persistent. In particular, our models tell us that a community living in a territory with a religious (low) con ict, a growing diamond production and a positive economic growth is more likely to remain in peace, while population growth aects negatively peace. When, instead we have an unequal community with many fertile lands, there is more probability to move to war. This can be explained with the inequality issue but also with the land grabbing phenomenon. In a urban context, instead, political and economic variables matter more: if non-ethnic groups can enjoy a positive GDP growth they are more likely to remain peaceful but, if this growth is not used for public purposes and there is an autocratic regime, some grievances may arise and explode into an armed con ict. Autocracy can use governmental forces to repress or control the con ictual mass. Results at country level are coherent with those of the counting model as well: there is a high persistence for each level of violence. In particular, more populated countries with many mountains increase the probability of war (as the economic literature proves). Moreover, economic growth has a crucial role: when we are in peace, an economic growth creates some changes that, if not properly addressed, can rise some violent grievances and if we are in war, economic growth results to be highly related to the persistence of civil war.
Finally, we use methods from survival analysis and we construct hazard rates from the various violence degrees into consecutive violence states.
We nd our results very plausible and coherent with previous probabilities: a community living in a mountainous area, with an increase in population density and oil production is more likely to move to war, even in peaceful period. On the contrary, an ethnic group living in a fertile land, with diamond reserves, economic growth and with some religious tensions, are more likely to live in peace.
In every model, we see diamond production, soil fertility and population growth to be related with violence transition.
While diamond production is always associated with a return to peace, in some cases, we have seen that oil is positively related to civil war escalation. We have explained that relationship by linking oil with weapons: oil is used as a primary resource of money to buy weapons, both in the legal market (from government) and in the illegal one. Therefore, if there are some violent turbulences, an increase in oil production may improve the illegal market and so laundering activities.
Soil fertility is always associated with peace as well. We have given an emphasis to this result because it highlights the importance of land in Africa. Of course, fertile lands are important everywhere: fertile lands ensure food security and income at micro and macro level. The link with peace is hence clear. However, in Africa, land is much more important for cultural and historical reasons: many Africans are still related to their ancestral roots, where ethnic groups are historically nomads, farmers, shermen or shepherds. It is not a matter of tribalism, as Kenyatta said in the rst meeting of the Organisation of African Unity (Addis Abeba, 1963).
On the contrary, it is a matter of facts that nomads need land for their animals, and farmers need lands for their agriculture. These two needs are sometimes in contrast each other. Of course, there are also several examples of historical equilibrium between dierent ethnic groups26. However, in a continent threatened by deserti cation and poverty, this need becomes much more complex and crucial. Moreover, fertile land in Africa is drawing international attention also from policy makers.
Finally, we have seen that population growth is a major driver to civil war, which is coherent with the economic literature. However, we have underlined that we should spend more attention on this relationship; rst of all, when we talk about population growth, we should not think on population boom (as we can imagine from Asia). We can see from gures 1.2 and 1.3 that Africa is not that much populated, compared to other continents27. Projections tell us that because of high levels of fertility28, Africa will become soon as populated as China (the continent's current population of about one billion is projected to rise to between 3.1 and 5.7 billion with probability 95% by the end of the century) (Raleigh et al., 2010) but nowadays African population is not a problem. Therefore, in Africa population growth does not mean an excessive population density. As we have explained in this chapter, it is rather a problem related to the fact that cities cannot stand population pressure because of lack of services. It is not a coincidence that many governments of developing countries now explicitly discourage strong urban population growth; 77 percent of African countries have implemented policies to reduce migrant ows to large cities (Raleigh et al., 2010). At the same time, it is also true that in some regions, out-migrants from rural areas no longer even aspire to move to towns in their own countries: many rural out-migrants seek to move straight to overseas destinations, mainly in Europe (Smith, 2012).
26For instance, in Niger, farmers and shepherds co-live along Niger river. During the ood season shermen pro t of rich water for shing. When the river get reduces, farmers reach the area where they can nd very fertile land and transhumance arrives with breeders and animals for grazing. Niger Delta is thus a perfect place for every type of traditional activity and ethnic groups have found their peaceful equilibrium which is ruling since ever27Only Nigeria and Ethiopia have a density similar to western countries
28Bongaarts and Casterline suggest two reasons for the slower fertility decline in Sub-Saharan Africa: rst, ideal Africa family size are still high, with a median of 4.6 children per woman. Second, the unmet need for contraception (the dierence between the demand for contraception and its use) has remained substantial at about 25%, with no systematic decline over the past 20 years (Gerland et al, 2014)
Fig. 3.4: World Wide Population Growth in 2015. Source: World Bank Indicator 2015
Moreover, we have to remind that population growth takes into account also migrants from other countries. Migration, in a context of poor development, can arise some social troubles, especially if those migrants come from con ictual territories. Often it is underestimated that during a civil war, graduated people, technicians, experts and professional people escape from the country. This has dramatic consequences not only from an intimate point of view (people are forced to leave their native territories) but also for peace: when a country is impoverished of its best human resources, moral and material reconstruction becomes much more harder.
Brief, population growth is not a problem per se. Population becomes a problem in a context of poverty and big cities without services and infrastructures. In fact, when we study at non-ethnic groups level we see that if we are in peace, population growth reduces the likelihood to remain in peace but, if we are in war, population growth helps to reach peace.
Although the economic literature of civil wars puts a lot of emphasis on economic variables, in our study economic growth does not show many signi cant eects, especially when we focus on ethnic groups. These variables become important when we study at non-ethnic groups or country level. At ethnic groups level, political and economic variables matter more: if non-ethnic groups can enjoy a positive GDP growth they are more likely to remain peaceful but, if this growth is not used for public purposes and there is an autocratic regime, some grievances may arise and explode into an armed con ict. Economic growth has a crucial role also when we study at country level. We have seen that economic growth can create some changes that, if not properly addressed, can rise some violent grievances leading not only to civil war, but also to a persistence of civil war.
We focus also on the study of primary reasons of civil war. We have summed up these roots into political, environmental and religious con icts. However, from our analysis we have found out that only religious con ict has a signi cant eect on the violence escalation. In particular, religious con ict seems to be peace-prone in every model we have run.
Fig. 3.5: African Population in 2016. Source: WORLD POPULATION DATA 2016