Petroleum Resources and Internal Armed Conflict. May Countries Institutional Legacy or Conflict Legacy Condition the Conflict-Inducing Effect of Oil?
Year: 2014
Type: dissertation
Abstract: What explains oil countries' susceptibility to experience internal armed conflict?While this topic has received considerable scholarly attention in recent years, the question remains unsettled.This thesis introduces the perspective that differences in countries' institutional and societal starting points may explain the divergent experience of armed conflict among oil countries.Two potential conditioning circumstances of the relationship between oil income and risk of armed conflict are explored: a country's institutional legacy and a country's conflict legacy at the commencement of oil income.Differences in countries' institutional legacy is argued to anticipate divergent institutional trajectories in the wake of oil, with differential implications for conflict risk.Conflict legacy, on the other hand, is argued to proxy unusual opportunities of rebellion against oil-financed regimes with the best of available means to buy-off or repress opposition.The merit of these arguments is tested by logistic regression analysis of armed conflict onset among 170 oil and non-oil countries in the years 1961 to 2007.Findings indicate that for two indicators of institutional legacy: initial bureaucratic control and initial education attainment, there is partial support that institutional legacy mediates the effect of oil income on conflict risk.Under certain conditions, there is significant support that oil increases conflict risk among countries at the lower scale of initial institutions, while this effect is reduced and becomes inseparable from zero at the robust end of initial institutions.Conflict legacy, however, is found not to mediate the effect of oil, but rather to have a significant individual impact on conflict risk regardless of size of oil income.In sum, these findings suggest some new answers to the question of why the curse of armed conflict befalls some, but not other oil countries.Further, they support the notion that the relationship between oil income and conflict risk may be explained by the synergies between states' institutional capacities and oil income, at the same time as they underscore that the impact of oil on institutions and conflict risk may not be unidirectional.
Author: Ragnhild Belbo
Language: English
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2412663243