WEAK STATES, HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS, AND THE OUTBREAK OF CIVIL WAR. Nicolas Rost. Thesis Prepared for the Degree of MASTER OF SCIENCE

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1 WEAK STATES, HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS, AND THE OUTBREAK OF CIVIL WAR Nicolas Rost Thesis Prepared for the Degree of MASTER OF SCIENCE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH TEXAS May 2005 APPROVED: Steven C. Poe, Major Professor T. David Mason, Minor Professor J. Michael Greig, Minor Professor Steven Forde, Director of Graduate Studies James Meernik, Chair of the Department of Political Science Sandra L. Terrell, Dean of the Robert B. Toulouse School of Graduate Studies

2 Rost, Nicolas, Weak states, human rights violations, and the outbreak of civil war. Master of Science (Political Science), May 2005, 77 pp, 4 tables, 3 illustrations, references, 106 titles. In recent years, explanations for the occurrence of civil war have mainly emphasized state weakness as providing an opportunity for greed-based rebellions. Yet, this explanation leaves many questions open, as it cannot distinguish between weak states that do and those that do not experience civil war. In this paper, I argue that abuses of personal integrity rights, committed or sponsored by the government, provide this missing link. The theory is illustrated and formalized in a game-theoretic model and then tested empirically, building on earlier work by Fearon and Laitin (2003a) and Sambanis (2004). The results show that repression is highly significant in both statistical and substantive terms. According to one model, the probability of civil war onset increases by a factor of almost 16 in highly repressive countries compared to countries with no repression. Further robustness tests across alternative civil war lists largely confirm the importance of human rights abuses in explaining the occurrence of civil war.

3 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would first and foremost like to thank my committee chair Dr. Steven C. Poe and my committee members Dr. T. David Mason and Dr. J. Michael Greig for their mentoring with this thesis, but also with other papers during the past two years. Other professors have offered valuable advice, especially Dr. Emily Clough. I would also like to thank my fellow students, especially Mehmet Gurses and my office mates Chelsea Brown and Geoff Dancy. Cece Hannah, Jerilyn Doss, and Lisa Blakeley have always been supportive of me. I would like to thank those who have supported me financially during the past two years: My parents, the UNT Department of Political Science, the Fulbright Commission, International Studies Quarterly, the UNT Graduate Student Council, and the Robert B. Toulouse School of Graduate Studies. Many thanks to my friends here and in Germany and my family for their listening, comments, and encouragements. Finally, my gratitude goes to Savera Kashmiri for her support throughout the process of writing this thesis. ii

4 TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS...ii LIST OF TABLES...iv LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS... v INTRODUCTION... 1 LITERATURE & THEORY... 6 A. The Repression-Rebellion Link... 6 B. Democracy and Repression...12 C. Weak States and Civil War Onset...17 i) Economic and Demographic Aspects of State Weakness..17 ii) Geographic Aspects of State Weakness...19 iii) Potential War Spoils...19 iv) Cultural Factors...20 A GAME-THEORETICAL MODEL...22 EMPIRICAL TESTS...33 A. The Repression-Rebellion Model...33 i) The Dependent Variable...33 ii) Independent Variables: Repression and Democracy...34 iii) Other Independent Variables...39 B. Results...41 C. Substantial Interpretation and Simulations...46 i) The Substantial Impacts of the Independent Variables...47 ii) Hypothetical Cases: The Four Subgames...50 D. Robustness Tests...52 CONCLUSION...56 APPENDIX...66 REFERENCES...70 iii

5 LIST OF TABLES 1. Logit regression on the probability of civil war onset Simulated effects of statistically significant variables Logit regression on the probability of civil war onset - robustness tests Logit regression on the probability of civil war onset - overall repression replaced by political imprisonment...65 Page iv

6 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Page 1. The onset of civil war in an extensive game form Civil war onset and the (lagged) level of democracy Civil war onset and the (lagged and modified) PTS...62 v

7 I N T R O D U C T I O N Why do civil wars break out in some countries but not in others? One of the difficulties in explaining the occurrence of civil war lies in the collective action problem or rebel s dilemma (Lichbach 1995) that potential rebels face. In recent years, greedbased explanations of civil war onset have received much academic attention. This class of explanations assumes that greedy rebels act as soon as the political opportunity structure allows it, that is, mainly in weak states. The benefits of waging a civil war represent high selective incentives that make it an individually rational choice to initiate an insurgency, as long as the state is so weak that it cannot easily defeat an insurgency. Governments often use a repressive strategy in order to deter violent rebellions from occurring, providing a motivation for the government and governmentsponsored actors to commit acts of incredible cruelty. In this study, I argue that government-sponsored abuses of personal integrity rights increase the probability of a civil war starting, a factor that has been overlooked in much of the literature that focuses on political opportunity structures. Government repression often leads to the exact opposite of what it is aimed for: It significantly increases the probability of civil war onset rather than deterring potential rebels. While political entrepreneurs potential rebel elites react to political opportunities to realize war spoils, these selective incentives are not available to nonelites that might join the rebels, at least not to the same extent. Especially at the beginning of a civil war, rebel groups rarely have the means to compensate all their members. Nonelites, in contrast, will compare the risks of participating to the costs of not participating. The government, 1

8 by indiscriminately abusing personal integrity rights, puts a cost on nonelites even if they do not participate. When government repression and state weakness coexist is civil war an especially probable outcome. The theoretical link between state terror and the occurrence of violent rebellion provides an important part of the explanation of when and why civil wars break out. First, on an individual level, the repression-rebellion link contributes to an understanding of the reasons a country s nonelites might have to join an emerging rebel movement. The goods a successful rebellion is expected to produce often are largely public goods. Free-riding is then the optimal choice, as the risks of participating are avoided, while the public good is available to everyone. Rebel movements can promise or provide individual incentives to a selected few, but not to all its active and passive supporters. Once the government 1 starts to indiscriminately violate basic human rights, simple nonelites whether they oppose the government or not are faced with a threat, and free-riding is no longer costless. As the risk faced by simple nonelites becomes similar to the danger they would face by joining the rebels, the individual approaches indifference between the two choices (Mason and Krane 1989). In this study, I conceptualize repression to be one of the most important factors in increasing the probability of civil war onset. Yet, individuals may have other reasons to join or support a rebel movement. These include feelings of vengeance or anger, for example, as well as ideological commitments, social expectations, or low opportunity costs. Furthermore, rebel organizations exercising control over an area will often try to coerce 1 Throughout this paper, I make the simplifying assumption of the existence of a government and one rebel group fighting each other. Some actual cases, however (like Somalia in the 1990s), are much more complicated. 2

9 nonelites into cooperation, though they can hardly implement perfect control (Gates 2002). Second, the repression-rebellion link also provides an explanation of civil war onset at the country level. Weak states have consistently been found to be more prone to experience the outbreak of a civil war. Still, governments in weak states face a strategic choice and weak states are far more common in time and space than are violent insurgencies. This indicates that even in weak states, armed rebellions may be avoided. Governments can opt for working towards a peaceful settlement of emerging conflicts and try to prevent conflicts from arising outside the established political system. This includes avoiding too much of economic inequality, institutionalizing democracy, and respecting human rights. Though being weak, governments can try to accommodate the opposition, and include all crucial contenders in the polity (Tilly 1978). Alternatively, they can use a strategy of repression, hoping to deter potential rebels. This strategy, however, is dangerous and easily boomerangs, increasing the probability of civil war instead of deterring it. The characteristics of a weak state economic and political discrimination, corruption, the failure of the government to provide basic services, bad governance may provide both the ideological legitimization and the practical opportunity for starting a rebellion (e.g., Collier and Hoeffler 2001; Fearon and Laitin 2003a). But whether enough individuals join and support the emerging insurgency depends on their alternative options: When indiscriminate government terror imposes costs on people who lead a normal life, their participating becomes more likely. In other words, state weakness provides the political 3

10 opportunity for potential rebel leaders to realize spoils from an insurgency; government repression affects individual preference structures in a way that makes participation a likely choice for at least parts of society. 2 If repression is such a bad choice, then why do governments so often go this way? Civil wars are distinguished from interstate conflicts by a power asymmetry between government and rebels (Zartman 1995). Rebel organizations therefore employ a military strategy of hit-and-run, waging a guerilla war. By doing so, they have to rely on popular support, and government forces then try to undercut this support by draining the sea (Valentino et al. 2004; Azam and Hoeffler 2002). Where the rebels hide in the mountains and the government chooses to use a repressive strategy, civilians become easy and likely targets. This explains the situation during a civil war, but why do governments repress before a civil war starts? The more power is concentrated in a political system, the more contending groups are left outside of the polity (Tilly 1978). In every authoritarian regime groups are excluded from the political system and even in democracies, some groups may be barred from power and denied representation. When governments do not want to include contending groups and do not have other means of accommodating them (like a high level of economic development), they will resort to repression, even at the risk of civil war. In the following section, I discuss the literature on civil wars, state repression, and democracy, highlighting the theoretical linkages that have been put forward. I 2 For a discussion of the opportunity/willingness framework, see Most and Starr (1989). 4

11 combine arguments on greed and grievance and collective action problems into a theoretical framework that includes state weakness and government repression to explain potential rebel leaders and nonelites decisions to rebel. I separately discuss the links between civil war and repression, the political system, and state weakness, respectively. In section 2, this theory is then formulated in game-theoretic terms. Based on the hypotheses of the theoretical framework and the comparative statics of the game, an empirical model is constructed to test the theoretical propositions (section 3). The results, which mostly support the theory, are interpreted, followed by a discussion of their possible practical implications and ideas for further research. 5

12 L I T E R A T U R E A N D T H E O R Y This section is composed of three sections, discussing the three aspects that increase the probability of civil war onset: repression, characteristics of the political system, and state weakness. I review the literature relevant to each section and generate testable hypotheses to describe the relationship between civil war and repression, the political system, and state weakness, respectively. Whereas state weakness provides an opportunity for potential rebel elites to realize considerable war spoils, nonelites are only willing to join if their costs of not joining are high, as they are under repressive regimes. In section 2, these three parts are tied together in a gametheoretical model, which allows distinguishing between the effects of repression in strong and in weak states. A. The Repression-Rebellion Link In the past two decades, quantitative human rights research has proliferated considerably. Typically, the vast amount of these studies has tried to explain under what conditions human rights violations occur. Six factors have consistently been found to impact the level of violations of personal integrity rights (Poe and Tate 1994; Poe et al. 1999): past repression (Davenport 1995, 1996a; Richards et al. 2001), democracy (Henderson 1991; Fein 1995; Davenport 1995, 2004; Zanger 2000; Regan and Henderson 2002; Harff 2003; Davenport and Armstrong 2004), the level of economic development (Mitchell and McCormick 1988; Carey 2004), population size (Henderson 1993; Carey 2004), international war, and civil war (Krain 1997; Zanger 2000; Harff 6

13 2003). 3 The effects of all these factors, except for past repression, have been interpreted in a theoretical framework of government strength and the perceived threat from the political opposition (Poe 2004). In this strength/threat framework, the decision to violate human rights is mainly perceived as a reaction to threats posed to the government s legitimacy. A number of empirical studies have confirmed that repression tends to increase when governments are faced with violent protest (Pion- Berlin and Lopez 1991; Davenport 1995; Gartner and Regan 1996; Regan and Henderson 2002; Carey 2004). Repression, however, often has the opposite effect of provoking violent conflict, rather than deterring it. 4 What these studies generally neglect is that protests of any form might be a reaction to state terror. Numerous studies in the civil war literature have found that state suppression of political rights and civil liberties, instead of deterring rebellions, actually helps to provoke uprisings, at least at intermediate levels (Gurr 1970; Tilly 1978; Muller 1985; Muller and Seligson 1987; Muller and Weede 1990; Boswell and Dixon 1990; Schock 1996). Studies focusing on ethnic rebellion have confirmed this relationship (Gurr and Moore 1997). Discrimination, another form of repression, has a comparable effect: The State Failure project found that countries with deliberate ethnic discrimination are 13 times more likely to experience ethnic civil war as compared to 3 There has been some research on the influence of international treaties (e.g., Keith 1999; Hathaway 2002), economic aid (e.g., Regan 1995), international trade and FDI (e.g., Apodaca 2001), constitutional provisions for human rights (e.g., Davenport 1996b; Keith 2002; Keith and Poe 2004), and ethnic diversity (e.g., Walker and Poe 2002), but findings are rather mixed. 4 Most of these findings, as well as this study, are based on a subset of human rights, the right to personal integrity, which prohibits political imprisonment, torture, disappearances, and killings. Some quantitative studies on other subsets of international human rights have been conducted (e.g., Poe et al. 1997; Apodaca 1998), but mostly the discourse has been theoretical or based on case studies. 7

14 countries with no or little discrimination (Goldstone et al. 2000, 35). 5 Some of these studies have found that semirepressive regimes are most civil war prone. The question is whether government repression provokes or deters violent rebellion. Lichbach (1987) argues that opposition movements respond to government repression by switching to alternative strategies. Gupta et al. (1993) find that the effects of government sanctions vary with the regime type of the country (see also Moore 1998). Repression, in most of these studies, is either operationalized by using Gastil s Freedom House indices of political rights or civil liberties, or by measuring government sanctions. In this study, I define repression very differently, as human rights abuses committed or sponsored by the government. 6 As I explain below, this latter definition of government repression has a different theoretical impact on civil war onset, operating through different causal mechanisms. It further allows a more clear-cut distinction between democracy and repression (note that the Freedom House indices have oftentimes been used as indicators of democracy as well). Whereas the citizens in an authoritarian country may collectively prefer a more open and participatory political system, it becomes individually rational for nonelites suffering from a repressive regime to engage in violent rebellion. The literature on inequality and relative deprivation (e.g., Davies 1962; Gurr 1968; Muller and Seligson 1987; Midlarsky 1988) assumes that economic grievances lead to violent domestic conflict. The problem with this argument, as pointed out by 5 Fearon and Laitin (2003, 85), on the other hand, find no such effect. 6 My measure of human rights abuses, the modified Political Terror Scale, and Freedom House s measures of political rights and civil liberties are correlated with a factor of.50 and.56, respectively. From here on, repression refers to government-sponsored abuses of personal integrity rights. 8

15 many scholars, is to explain how the collective action problem is overcome. A higher average income might be desirable to many, but most prefer to free-ride instead of shouldering the costs of achieving such a change. While low income reduces the opportunity costs of rebelling, indiscriminate government repression places costs on nonelites, even if they do not participate. As a consequence, repression makes it individually and not only collectively more desirable to join or support the rebels. On the individual level, Mason and Krane (1989) develop a rational choice model that lays out how repression creates a conflict spiral and drives civilians into joining the rebels. They thereby provide an explanation of one important means of overcoming the collective action problem political movements are faced with (Olson 1965). Other solutions offered in the literature include selective incentives (Olson 1965; Oliver 1980; Moore 1995) market, community, contract, and hierarchy (Lichbach 1995, for community see also Taylor 1988), psychological and reputational incentives (Chong 1991), leadership (Van Belle 1996), and framing processes (Berejikian 1992). Mason and Krane s (1989) explanation differs from the ones above in that the incentive to join the insurgents is not created within the group but externally by the government. Here, it becomes important to distinguish between potential rebel elites who initiate an insurgency and nonelites who are willing to join the guerrilla or not (Mason and Krane 1989, 176). The elites can expect to gain considerable benefits from a successful rebellion, political or economic. These selective war spoils, however, can rarely be extended to the majority of participants so that nonelites 7 can only realize 7 The rebel elites are nonelites too, of course. Here, I use the word nonelites to refer to all habitants of a country except government agents and rebel elites. 9

16 small material benefits and possibly psychological or reputational ones. Henceforth, nonelites are willing to join or support the rebels if their costs of not joining are high, i.e. if the government indiscriminately commits human rights violations. Indiscriminately does not necessarily mean that the whole population is affected, but merely that the government does not distinguish between actual rebels and nonelites from, for example, the same region or the same ethnic, religious, socio-economic, or political group. Nonelites would prefer to stay out of the conflict (Mason and Krane 1989, 176), but government repression drives them into rebellion. 8 Hypothesis 1: The more repression a government exerts, the higher the probability of a civil war to break out. Some might question whether repression increases the probability of all kinds of civil wars. Collier and Hoeffler (2000) distinguish between greed- and grievance-based civil wars which raises the concern of whether the probability of greed-based civil wars increases to the same extent as the probability of grievance-based civil wars in weak states. Empirically, though, rebel movements often shift from one type to the other or combine aspects of both. The rebel leadership might be driven by greed, whereas the rank and file members are motivated by grievances. In greed-based civil wars, insurgents seek to profit from the fighting while it is still ongoing, for example by trafficking in contraband (Fearon 2004) or looting. This type of insurgency, if victorious, generates additional amounts of selective incentives, at least for the elites, making it easier to overcome the rebel s dilemma. Greed-based rebellions might be seen as business or investment (Collier et al. 2004). 8 This argument should not be interpreted as a normative excuse or legitimization for violent behavior on an individual level. 10

17 In grievance-based insurgencies, on the other hand, the civil war is only interpreted as an investment (Collier et al. 2004). Although the rebels may have to rely on creating selective incentive structures to attract members, the emphasis is put on producing a collective good (e.g., an independent country, a new government). Many rebellions start out as grievance-based insurgencies, but then turn into greed-based ones. In Peru, for instance, the Sendero Luminoso was an ideological movement in the beginning, until the rebels discovered the potential profits from growing and smuggling drugs. Fearon (2004) finds that if the rebels use contraband as a financial source, the duration of civil wars increases considerably. As a result, the distinction between greedand grievance-based civil wars should be more important for studies on war duration than studies on onset. Further, I argue that greed should play a role for potential rebel elites, more than for the nonelites that join them. Elites can usually realize substantial spoils in the war, and may react to openings in the political opportunity structure by initiating insurgencies. Nonelites, on the other hand, are willing to join only if the danger of participating is lower than the costs of not participating. Participants in a rebellion face the dangers of death or lifelong imprisonment, but under repressive regimes, nonparticipants as well face similar risks of being arbitrarily imprisoned, tortured, disappeared, or killed. Even if an insurgency is purely greed-based from the beginning, nonelites will only join if alternative payoffs from not joining are low, as the rebels cannot provide sizable incentives for too many members. While few civil wars start off 11

18 as being greed-based, I expect repression to play an important role even in these rare cases. A potential rebel elite is of course aware of this phenomenon and will consider two aspects before making the decision to start a civil war. First, they will evaluate the probability of success in their struggle, or at least, the probability of surviving long enough to realize some spoils from the insurgency. Zartman (1995, 9) quotes Kissinger stating that the guerilla wins if he does not lose; the conventional army loses if it does not win. According to this line of thought, potential rebel leaders do not necessarily have to expect to win outright before mounting an insurgency, but they do have to believe that they will not lose in order to realize some spoils. For this calculation, mainly factors of state strength play a role, as in Fearon and Laitin s (2003a) argument. But there is a second, if related, factor: A potential rebel elite will have to reflect on whether they can gain enough support from the population, both by attracting new members and receiving enough active and passive support from the population. One main reason for whether the rebels will succeed is the level of government-sanctioned terror that nonelites face, i.e. the costs of not joining or supporting the rebels. B. Democracy and Repression In this section, I develop theoretical expectations on the effects of democracy on civil war onset, once repression is controlled. While repression is usually reduced as the level of democracy increases (Henderson 1993; Poe and Tate 1994; Fein 1995; Davenport 1995, 2004; Poe et al. 1999; Zanger 2000; Regan and Henderson 2002; 12

19 Harff 2003; Davenport and Armstrong 2004), democracy and non-repressiveness are conceptually and empirically distinct phenomena. Many of the studies that explore whether repression increases the probability of rebellion use the Freedom House 7-point measure of civil liberties to model repression (e.g., Muller 1985; Muller and Seligson 1987; Muller and Weede 1990; Boswell and Dixon 1990; Schock 1996), where 1 represents general respect for civil liberties, and 7 wide-spread suppression of these liberties. Political rights refer to the electoral process, political pluralism and participation, and the functioning of the government. Civil liberties refer to the freedom of expression and belief, associational and organizational rights, rule of law, personal autonomy and individual rights. 9 The problems with this measure are obvious: Civil liberties may be suppressed without widespread violations of the most basic human rights. Singapore in 1985 and 1986, for instance, was assigned a 5 on the civil liberties index, but almost no violations of personal integrity rights occurred. The relationship between repression and democracy has received much scholarly attention. While Poe and Tate (1994) found a linear influence (the more democratic a country is the fewer human rights abuses), Fein s (1995) More Murder in the Middle hypothesis posits that more violations should occur in so-called anocracies. These countries that are neither fully consolidated democracies nor fully established autocracies, are expected to experience more repression because governments are too 9 accessed March

20 weak to effectively deter the opposition and, at the same time, they do not have the means to politically or economically accommodate opposition demands. Davenport and Armstrong (2004) explain that the relationship between democracy and repression is even more complex than Fein s inverted u-curve. They develop a threshold-model and find that the level of democracy has no impact on the level of repression up to a relatively high threshold. Only beyond that level has democracy an alleviating impact on human rights violations. In other words, there are about as many authoritarian states and anocracies that repress human rights as there are that do not. Moreover, fully developed democracy seems to be a sufficient condition for avoiding very high levels of repression. In their sample, not a single fully developed democracy experienced the highest levels of repression (there has been one case since, Israel in 2002 and 2003), and only a couple show scores of intermediate to high levels of human rights abuses. The implications of this complex relationship between democracy and repression for the study of civil war onset are potentially important. Fearon and Laitin (2003a) have not found democracy to have a significant impact on the likelihood of a civil war to break out, though a dichotomous measure of anocracy was significant, as well as a measure of political instability. Sambanis (2004) does not include a democracy measure, but only the anocracy variable in his models, and finds it of only moderate influence. 14

21 Since authoritarian regimes can choose whether or not to repress, it is important to control for both repression and democracy in a multivariate model. 10 While repression is expected to impact the probability of civil war onset independently of the level of democracy for the reasons laid out above the repression-rebellion link I also expect democracy to significantly decrease this probability. Democracies do not oppress political conflicts but provide rules to peacefully solve these conflicts within the political system. This makes it easier to find compromise solutions and to share political power across different ethnic or ideological groups in a country. Thereby, fewer groups are left outside the polity and have an incentive to violently claim inclusion. A higher political adaptability of democracies may also make it easier to solve conflicts nonviolently (Lacina 2005). In addition to democratic institutions, democratic norms exclude violent rebellion as a legitimate option. 11 Hypothesis 2a: Once repression is controlled, democracy will exert a significant impact on the probability of a civil war to break out, decreasing this probability. Hegre et al. (2001) find support for a domestic democratic peace, but they find that both anocracies and politically unstable countries are more conflict prone. Similarly, Fearon and Laitin (2003a) and Sambanis (2004) find significant effects for anocracy and political instability in some of their models. Anocracies are more civil war prone because neither are democratic institutions fully established, nor has an authoritarian regime consolidated its power. Anocracies have oftentimes unstable, unconsolidated political systems. Several groups may compete for control of the government while the rules of 10 Or, in Muller and Seligson s (1987, 432) and Muller and Weede s (1990, 647) words, for both structural and behavioral repression. 11 However, I cannot empirically discriminate between these alternative explanations. 15

22 the game have not been institutionalized. Similarly, political instability delegitimizes the ones in power and shows that they may be vulnerable. The same should be especially true in newly independent states. Sambanis (2004, 837), though, criticizes the use of the new states variable in Fearon and Laitin s (2003a) study, since it might be correlated with some other variables, especially instability, anocracy, income, and ethnic fractionalization. The state weakness argument, however, leads to the expectation that new states are more war prone. In Fearon and Laitin s (2003a, 84) Model 1, new state was the substantially and statistically most significant dichotomous variable. Further, new states have been found to be more likely to experience other forms of political instability, including interstate disputes (see Brecher et al. 2000; Carment 1993) and genocides and politicides (Krain 1997, 346; Harff 2003, 62). Finally, military regimes are expected to increase the probability of civil war onset. Military regimes are defined as any regime with a military person as the chief executive that comes into power following a successful military coup (Madani 1992). Military regimes can be expected to represent politically weak governments. They have installed themselves by staging a coup and rarely enjoy widespread popular support. Further, the very fact that a coup was staged indicates that government structures were weak in the first place. Hypothesis 2b: Hypothesis 2c: Hypothesis 2d: Civil wars are more likely to break out in anocracies. Countries with a recent history of political instability show a higher probability of experiencing a civil war. Civil wars are more likely to break out in countries governed by military regimes. 16

23 Hypothesis 2e: Civil wars are more likely to break out in newly independent countries. These four hypotheses lead to the next section which discusses state weakness: All four factors are signs of political state weakness, while in the next section I discuss economic, demographic, and geographic aspects of state weakness. C. Weak States And Civil War Onset State weakness has long been associated with the occurrence of civil war (e.g., Skocpol 1979). State weakness produces the openings in the political opportunity structure that can be seized upon by initiating an insurgency. State strength, in this theoretical concept, mainly effects the calculations of potential rebel leaders. They see a greater chance for realizing benefits from an insurgency the weaker the state is, regardless of whether they perceive rebellion as investment or business. If the state is strong enough, an insurgency will be crushed soon, leaving no room for any benefits to materialize. State weakness thus creates an opportunity for rebellion (Collier and Hoeffler 2001), but it does not necessary create the willingness of nonelites to join or support the movement. i) Economic and Demographic Aspects of State Weakness In Sambanis (2004, Table 4) study, the only two variables that show a statistically significant impact across 12 different lists of civil wars, , are GDP 17

24 per capita and the log of population size (see also Elbadawi and Sambanis 2002). 12 Both a very low level of economic development and a large population produce relatively weak states and make it easier for the political opposition to organize and start in a violent rebellion. 13 A low economic standing makes it more complicated for a government that is not willing to share power to accommodate contending groups. 14 In addition, Mason and Krane (1989) argue that governments that are neither willing to launch redistributive programs to accommodate opposition demands, nor have the economic resources to do so, are likely to switch to a repressive strategy. A large population size, on the other hands, makes it harder for governments to control the whole country. This also increases the probability of existing contending groups that feel politically or economically underrepresented. In addition, both these conditions have consistently been found to be associated with relatively high levels of repression, in turn increasing the probability of a civil war (Mitchell and McCormick 1988; Henderson 1993; Poe and Tate 1994; Poe et al. 1999; Carey 2004). Hypothesis 3a: Hypothesis 3b: The level of economic development is negatively correlated with the probability of a civil war breaking out. A country s population size is positively correlated with the probability of a civil war breaking out. 12 With one exception: population size was not significant with Regan s list of civil conflicts. Both per capita income and population size, as well as all other independent variables in Sambanis models, are lagged by one year. Both are also significant over three different model specifications, four different civil war lists, and the period. 13 Sambanis (2004, 844) argues that the results for population size might be an artifact of the high absolute threshold of deaths used to code civil wars. Indeed, with Regan s civil conflict data, where a lower threshold of 200 deaths is used, the coefficient for population size is not significant. However, the state strength argument provides some reasons to theoretically expect more civil wars in larger countries, as discussed below. 14 Fearon and Laitin (2003, 76) use the level of economic development also as a proxy for the quality of counterinsurgency measures. They contend that weak local policing or inept and corrupt counterinsurgency practices [ ] often include a propensity for brutal and indiscriminate retaliation that helps drive noncombatant locals into rebel forces. 18

25 The level of economic development or the average income also impacts the opportunity costs of participating in an upheaval. The higher the opportunity costs, the less likely nonelites will be to join or support the insurgents. It becomes thereby harder for rebel elites to act as political entrepreneurs and to recruit followers and attract supporters. As potential rebel elites are aware of this difficulty, they are less likely to initiate a rebellion. ii) Geographic Aspects of State Weakness In addition to economic and demographic aspects, geographic aspects of a country may contribute to state weakness. Specifically, rough terrain makes it easier for rebels to hide from government troops, to wage a guerilla style war (Collier and Hoeffler 2001; Fearon and Laitin 2003a), and to traffic contraband. Hypothesis 3c: Countries with rough terrain will show a higher probability of experiencing a civil war. iii) Potential War Spoils Fearon and Laitin (2003a) find that civil wars are more likely to start in states with a high amount of oil exports. Oil exports are not as much a sign of state weakness as they represent potential spoils for the rebels should they succeed in overthrowing the government or creating their own state in an oil rich area. Oil fields can usually not be exploited by the insurgents during a civil war. Exploitation requires exalted investment and foreign companies will be turned away by the political and economic instability of that country. The government that controls oil fields, on the other hand, is 19

26 in a privileged situation as it can easily exclude large parts of the population from the economic gains. While oil revenues may encourage rent-seeking and corruption among government elites, these revenues can also be used to battle the insurgents. If the rebels succeed, however, large benefits from the oil production materialize. This increases the incentives for potential rebel leaders to stage a rebellion, but not necessarily for nonelites, as they cannot expect to receive much of these benefits. Accordingly, I expect the following hypothesis to hold true. Hypothesis 3d: Oil exporting states will show a higher probability of experiencing a civil war. iv) Cultural Factors While neither Fearon and Laitin (2003a) nor Sambanis (2004) find much evidence for an increasing civil war probability with rising levels of ethnic and religious fractionalization, it is important to control for these cultural factors, as many civil wars are fought over ethnic or religious issues (Kaufmann 1996). Even if ethnicity or religion is not the primary cause, both government and opposition elites oftentimes instrumentalize and exploit, or even create, such cleavages (Horowitz 1985; Kaufman 1996). Ethnic and religious cleavages also make it easier for rebel leaders to recruit new members and retain them as they can concentrate on specific groups in society (Gates 2001). Lake and Rothchild (1996) suggest that ethnic wars arise from information failures and problems of credible commitment, which should be more likely to occur in weak states. Fearon and Laitin (1996), however, note that ethnic cooperation occurs far more often than ethnic conflict; Mueller (2000) even questions the viability of ethnic 20

27 explanations for civil war. Ethnic and religious fractionalization are included in the empirical model to test the following two hypotheses: Hypothesis 3e: Hypothesis 3f: Countries with a high level of ethnic fractionalization will show a higher probability of experiencing a civil war. Countries with a high level of religious fractionalization will show a higher probability of experiencing a civil war. To summarize, this theory distinguishes between the opportunity and willingness to start a civil war. Willingness does not only include the opportunity costs of rebelling, but also the costs of not joining or supporting the rebels. The theory treats potential rebel leaders and nonelites separately. Elites perceive state weakness as an opportunity to start an insurgency, but they depend on a substantial number of nonelites to join or support the insurgency group. Nonelites are willing to join if the costs of not joining are high, i.e. if the government indiscriminately commits human rights abuses. In the following section, a game-theoretic model is constructed to illustrate and formalize the theory, followed by an empirical test. 21

28 A G A M E T H E O R E T I C A L M O D E L The game described in this section illustrates the theoretical framework outlined above. From the expected utility functions of potential rebel elites and nonelites, comparative statics are calculated, which correspond to the hypotheses derived from the theory. Formalizing a theoretical argument helps to ensure internal logical consistency. In this case, the game-theoretical model also allows examining different combinations of the factors increasing the probability of civil war onset. For example, what impact does repression have, contingent on the level of state weakness? Comparative statics allow specifying the theoretically expected impact of each factor, holding other influences constant. These effects can then be tested empirically. From the formal model below, some additional theoretical expectations are generated. To give a short summary, civil war is only found to be the equilibrium outcome when state weakness and state terror coexist. In addition, the size of potential war spoils, and the opportunity costs of rebelling should also have an effect on civil war onset. Finally, rebel elites should be more sensitive to changes in any of these aspects compared to nonelites. The game tree is depicted in Figure 1. Nature moves first, choosing between a strong and a weak state. This move is common knowledge to all other players, as the whole play is one of perfect information. The government moves next, deciding between a repressive and a non-repressive strategy. Third, the opposition elites (or extremists) decide whether or not to mount a rebellion and fourth, the nonelites (or 22

29 moderates) decide whether or not to join the movement. 15 Although in the sequence of this model, potential leaders first decide whether to mount a rebellion and nonelites later decide whether to join the movement, reality is much more complex. Opposition elites, the population at large, and the government interact over an extended period of time before it comes to a civil war. In the game tree, state weakness and repression are modeled as dichotomous choices. In the comparative statics section below, this unrealistic assumption is relaxed to produce testable hypotheses. Government, in this model, does not necessarily refer only to the party in power. In a democratic system, even in a weak state, this might include political opposition parties that are sufficiently tied to the polity and can either expect to win elections at some time in the future, be part of a government coalition, or exert political influence regardless of their opposition status. Even in democracies, however, groups are sometimes excluded from the polity. For each combination of strong/weak states and repression/no repression, there are three possible outcomes. These four combinations denote the four subgames of the game tree. If opposition elites do not start a rebellion, nothing happens. If they do rebel, on the other hand, the nonelites decide to join the movement or not. If they do join, a civil war breaks out, as the rebel movement becomes large enough. If they do 15 The model applies equally well if the word elite is replaced by the word extremists, and population or nonelites by moderates. Elites are similar to extremists in that they are the first to decide whether to mount a rebellion; moderates are similar to nonelites in that they later decide whether to join or not. Further, elites and extremists can expect higher potential benefits from the insurgency, albeit for different reasons. While political-economic payoffs might be more salient to political entrepreneurs, extremists profit from political-ideological benefits. 23

30 not join, the movement will either break down, or end up as a terrorist group or an assemblage of criminal gangs. In order to calculate potential elites and nonelites payoffs, I construct expected utility functions for both players. State weakness and repression have an impact on both potential rebel elites and nonelites calculations. Potential elites react to opportunities posed by the weakness of the state. They can benefit from criminal or terrorist activities, as well as from the spoils of a civil war if the state is sufficiently weak so that neither is crushed immediately. Potential rebel elites prefer, however, civil war as they can then share the risk of violently opposing the government with the participating nonelites. There are many beneficial outcomes for potential rebel leaders: They may become the new political leaders in a newly formed state after secession or if the central government is thrown over (insurgency as investment); they may make profits during the conflict, e.g., from looting, drug trafficking or blood diamonds (insurgency as business, Collier et al. 2004); or they may realize economic or political profits from criminal or terrorist activities. These spoils are assumed to exceed the benefits of leading a normal life. For potential rebel leaders, therefore, opportunity is more important than willingness, as they are always willing to initiate an insurgency. For nonelites, on the other hand, joining a rebel movement is always risky, as it involves the danger of capture or death and, in most cases, the abandoning of their families and jobs. Even a lower level of support like hiding rebels or providing them with food or merely not denouncing them involves risks. While nonelites might turn to the rebels hoping that they will shelter them from indiscriminate government repression 24

31 (Mason and Krane 1989), supporters of the rebels will always face the potential danger of getting caught or killed by government agents, at least as long as the state is not perfectly weak. They do receive some selective benefits from joining the rebels, but these will be very low in material terms and not high enough in social (reputational) and psychological terms to rationally justify participation. Since benefits are low, nonelites are motivated by willingness more than by opportunity. Specifically, they will compare the costs of joining to the costs of not joining. These costs mainly stem from indiscriminate human rights abuses committed by the government against the population. Either way, if the costs of not joining are sufficiently high to outweigh the danger of joining, it becomes rational for the individual to join. The expected utility function for nonelites (C) is as follows: E(U) C = j [wm (1 w) d] + (1 j) [n r], (1) where j is the decision to join a rebel movement and 1 j is the decision to abstain (j = {0, 1}); w is state weakness (0 w 1), 1 w, therefore, is state strength; m is the motivation to join the rebels (selective material or reputational benefits, but also irrational feelings of vengeance, ideological reasons, etc.; 0 m 1); d is the danger associated with joining the rebels (d = 1, since it might involve death or lifelong imprisonment); n are the economic, social, and psychological benefits of leading a normal life, i.e. of not joining the rebels (0 m < n 1); 16 and r is government repression (0 r 1) All the variables in this model, but especially m and n should be interpreted as individually perceived payoffs that vary across different people. 17 I decided not to discount repression by state weakness as especially politically and economically weak states seem to experience relatively high levels of government-sponsored human rights abuses. 25

32 If the individual joins (j = 1), she will realize her material and reputational benefits m to an extent dependent to the weakness of the state w. 18 However, these incentives are assumed to be small, so that the danger of participating (dependent on state strength, 1 w) 19 will make the total payoff negative in most cases. Yet, if she does not join (j = 0), she will receive the benefits of leading a normal life (n) but will have to bear the costs of repression (-r). If these are higher than wm (1 w) d, a higher if still negative utility can be realized from participating. The benefits of leading a normal life (i.e. the opportunity costs of rebelling) are assumed to be higher than the benefits from rebelling as a consequence of the collective action problem or rebel s dilemma. m refers to selective incentives only, benefits from possible collective goods are equal for participants and non-participants and are therefore not included in the game. The decision to join the rebels could also be modeled as a decision of supporting the rebels to varying degrees, from passive sympathizing to actual participation in the fighting. j would then be a continuous, rather than a dichotomous variable. The expected utility for potential rebel elites (E) is as follows: E(U) E = i [ws ((1-w) d - p)] + (1 i) [n r], (2) where i is the decision to initiate an insurgency and 1 i is the decision not to (i = {0, 1}); w, again, is state weakness (0 w 1), 1 w is state strength; s are the spoils that could be realized from mounting an insurgency (0 m < n < s < 1); 18 In other words, state weakness indicates the probability with which these benefits will be realized. 19 Similarly, state strength indicates the probability with which the danger materializes. 26

33 d is the danger associated with initiating an insurgency (d = 1), as above; p is the rate of nonelites participation in the insurgency (0 p 1); n, as before, refers to the economic, social, and psychological benefits of leading a normal life, i.e. of not initiating an insurgency (0 < n 1); and r is government repression (0 r 1). If the potential leaders initiate an insurgency (i = 1), spoils s will materialize to the extent that the state is weak. 20 They will have to bear the danger d (as a function of state strength, 1 w), but for them, p, the rate of participation, is subtracted from the danger, because they can share the risk if others join. On the other hand, if they do not initiate an insurgency (i = 0), elites will have to face the same level of repression r as the nonelites, and receive similar benefits n. Participation, in turn, depends on how many nonelites choose to join (j = 1). E(U) C depicts the expected utility calculation of one individual only, whereas p expresses the rate of participation, as a result of the aggregation of many individual choices. Participation, therefore, may be calculated from equation (1) as: p = wm (1-w) d + r n; (3) where m is now the average perceived motivation to join, over all nonelites, and n represents the average perceived benefits of leading a normal life, over all nonelites. Thus, p is positive if wm + r > (1-w) d + n. Practically, p cannot be smaller than 0, although it can be mathematically. In other words, nonelites will join a rebel movement to the extent that costs from repression (plus small selective benefits m) exceed the danger of fighting (discounted by state strength, plus the benefits of a 20 Once more, state weakness indicates the probability with which spoils are realized. 27