Greed and grievance in civil war

Looks at the causes of civil war, using a new data set of wars during 1960-99. The authors test a `greed’ theory focusing on the ability to finance rebellion, against a `grievance’ theory focusing on ethnic and religious divisions, political repression and inequality.

Their model finds that greed considerably outperforms grievance as an explanation of the causes of civil war . Consistent with the greed theory, both dependence upon primary commodity exports and a large diaspora substantially increase the risk of conflict. Inconsistent with the grievance theory, greater ethnic and religious diversity reduce the risk of conflict.

The results are robust to correction for outliers, alternative variable definition, and variations in estimation method. [author]