IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/kap/iaecre/v15y2009i3p351-36110.1007-s11294-009-9207-x.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

State-Sponsored Mass Killing in African Wars—Greed or Grievance?

Author

Listed:
  • Chyanda Querido

Abstract

What motivates African governments to engage in mass killings at some stage in the armed conflicts? I make the argument that violence against civilians is the outcome of a rational decision process. Using an empirical model, I identify the conditions for civil wars to evolve into mass killings. The results show that the existence of oil onshore and diamonds, the cost of a military conflict, and the number of ethnic groups in a country affect the likelihood of mass killing. Copyright International Atlantic Economic Society 2009

Suggested Citation

  • Chyanda Querido, 2009. "State-Sponsored Mass Killing in African Wars—Greed or Grievance?," International Advances in Economic Research, Springer;International Atlantic Economic Society, vol. 15(3), pages 351-361, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:iaecre:v:15:y:2009:i:3:p:351-361:10.1007/s11294-009-9207-x
    DOI: 10.1007/s11294-009-9207-x
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s11294-009-9207-x
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s11294-009-9207-x?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. José G. Montalvo & Marta Reynal-Querol, 2005. "Ethnic Polarization, Potential Conflict, and Civil Wars," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(3), pages 796-816, June.
    2. Jean-Paul Azam & Anke Hoeffler, 2002. "Violence Against Civilians in Civil Wars: Looting or Terror?," Journal of Peace Research, Peace Research Institute Oslo, vol. 39(4), pages 461-485, July.
    3. R. J. Rummel, 1995. "Democracy, Power, Genocide, and Mass Murder," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 39(1), pages 3-26, March.
    4. Paul Collier & Anke Hoeffler, 2002. "Greed and Grievance in Civil War," Economics Series Working Papers WPS/2002-01, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
    5. R. Harrison Wagner, 2004. "Bargaining, War, and Alliances," Conflict Management and Peace Science, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 21(3), pages 215-231, July.
    6. Paul Collier & Anke Hoeffler, 2002. "Greed and grievance in civil wars," CSAE Working Paper Series 2002-01, Centre for the Study of African Economies, University of Oxford.
    7. Harff, Barbara, 2003. "No Lessons Learned from the Holocaust? Assessing Risks of Genocide and Political Mass Murder since 1955," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 97(1), pages 57-73, February.
    8. William Easterly & Roberta Gatti & Sergio Kurlat, 2006. "Development, democracy, and mass killings," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 11(2), pages 129-156, June.
    9. Humphreys, Macartan & Weinstein, Jeremy M., 2006. "Handling and Manhandling Civilians in Civil War," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 100(3), pages 429-447, August.
    10. Todd Sandler & Keith Hartley (ed.), 2003. "The Economics of Conflict," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, volume 0, number 2497.
    11. José Garcia Montalvo & Marta Reynal-Querol, 2004. "Ethnic polarization, potential conflict and civil wars," Economics Working Papers 770, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, revised Mar 2005.
    12. Sang Hoo Bae & Attiat Ott, 2008. "Predatory Behavior Of Governments: The Case Of Mass Killing," Defence and Peace Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 19(2), pages 107-125.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Butler, Dana, 2021. "Horizontal inequality and grievances: A lethal combination? A case study analyzing the impact of the Israeli settlement policy on the level of violence of Palestinian citizens living in Hebron," IPE Working Papers 168/2021, Berlin School of Economics and Law, Institute for International Political Economy (IPE).
    2. Hanne Fjelde & Lisa Hultman & Livia Schubiger & Lars-Erik Cederman & Simon Hug & Margareta Sollenberg, 2021. "Introducing the Ethnic One-Sided Violence dataset," Conflict Management and Peace Science, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 38(1), pages 109-126, January.
    3. Attiat F. Ott & Sang Hoo Bae, 2011. "Modeling Mass Killing: For Gain or Ethnic Cleansing?," Chapters, in: Derek L. Braddon & Keith Hartley (ed.), Handbook on the Economics of Conflict, chapter 4, Edward Elgar Publishing.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. repec:kap:iaecre:v:15:y:2009:i:3:p:351-361 is not listed on IDEAS
    2. Joan Esteban & Massimo Morelli & Dominic Rohner, 2015. "Strategic Mass Killings," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 123(5), pages 1087-1132.
    3. Attiat F. Ott & Sang Hoo Bae, 2011. "Modeling Mass Killing: For Gain or Ethnic Cleansing?," Chapters, in: Derek L. Braddon & Keith Hartley (ed.), Handbook on the Economics of Conflict, chapter 4, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    4. Chyanda Querido, 2007. "A Game Theoretic Approach of War," EcoMod2007 23900073, EcoMod.
    5. van Weezel, Stijn, 2020. "Local warming and violent armed conflict in Africa," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 126(C).
    6. Jose G. Montalvo & Marta Reynal‐Querol, 2008. "Discrete Polarisation with an Application to the Determinants of Genocides," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 118(533), pages 1835-1865, November.
    7. Alacevich, Caterina & Zejcirovic, Dijana, 2020. "Does violence against civilians depress voter turnout? Evidence from Bosnia and Herzegovina," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 48(4), pages 841-865.
    8. Charles Anderton & Jurgen Brauer, 2014. "Economics of Genocide and International Law," Working Papers 1409, College of the Holy Cross, Department of Economics.
    9. Satya Chakravarty & Bhargav Maharaj, 2012. "Ethnic polarization orderings and indices," Journal of Economic Interaction and Coordination, Springer;Society for Economic Science with Heterogeneous Interacting Agents, vol. 7(1), pages 99-123, May.
    10. Charles Anderton, 2014. "Killing Civilians as an Inferior Input in a Rational Choice Model of Genocide and Mass Killing," Working Papers 1412, College of the Holy Cross, Department of Economics.
    11. Holger Strulik, 2008. "Social composition, social conflict and economic development," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 118(530), pages 1145-1170, July.
    12. Remi Jedwab & Noel D. Johnson & Mark Koyama, 2019. "Negative shocks and mass persecutions: evidence from the Black Death," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 24(4), pages 345-395, December.
    13. Yuri M. Zhukov, 2014. "Theory of Indiscriminate Violence," Working Paper 365551, Harvard University OpenScholar.
    14. Christopher Blattman & Edward Miguel, 2010. "Civil War," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 48(1), pages 3-57, March.
    15. Martin Ottmann, 2017. "Rebel constituencies and rebel violence against civilians in civil conflicts," Conflict Management and Peace Science, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 34(1), pages 27-51, January.
    16. Dripto Bakshi & Indraneel Dasgupta, 2020. "Identity Conflict with Cross-Border Spillovers," Defence and Peace Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 31(7), pages 786-809, October.
    17. Freire, Danilo & Uzonyi, Gary, 2018. "What Drives State-Sponsored Violence?: Evidence from Extreme Bounds Analysis and Ensemble Learning Models," SocArXiv pzx3q, Center for Open Science.
    18. Dasgupta, Indraneel & Mukherjee, Diganta, 2014. "Assimilation, Criminality and Ethnic Conflict," IZA Discussion Papers 7924, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    19. Stijn van Weezel, 2018. "Apocalypse now? - Climate change and war in Africa," Working Papers 201816, School of Economics, University College Dublin.
    20. Christopher Blattman, 2009. "Civil War: A Review of Fifty Years of Research," Working Papers id:2231, eSocialSciences.
    21. Anderton Charles H. & Carter John R., 2015. "A New Look at Weak State Conditions and Genocide Risk," Peace Economics, Peace Science, and Public Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 21(1), pages 1-36, January.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Mass killing; Civil war; Africa;
    All these keywords.

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:kap:iaecre:v:15:y:2009:i:3:p:351-361:10.1007/s11294-009-9207-x. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.