Conflict, Civil War and Underdevelopment: An IntroductionAuthor(s): S. Mansoob MurshedSource: Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 39, No. 4, Special Issue on Civil War in DevelopingCountries (Jul., 2002), pp. 387-393Published by: Sage Publications, Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1555273 .Accessed: 28/08/2011 16:14

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? 2002 Journal of Peace Research, vol. 39, no. 4, 2002, pp. 387-393 Sage Publications (London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi) [0022-3433(200207)39:4; 387-393; 025804]

Conflict, Civil War and Underdevelopment: An Introduction*

S. MANSOOB MURSHED

Institute of Social Studies, The Hague

Conflict has been a feature of human society since time immemorial. Disputes that arise may be organ- ized around social class, ethnicity, religion, region, or some combination of these factors. The struggle can be over economic opportunities, as well as political and civil rights, among other contestable factors. In peaceful societies, conflict is channelled into nonviolent means and institutions for both its expres- sion and resolution. Civil war is not necessarily irrational, but a product of certain objectives, therefore amenable to rational-choice analysis. In low-income countries, civil war makes poverty reduction and growth difficult to achieve. Many contemporary civil wars have an ethnic dimension, as ethnicity is a strong uniting force. Grievances, therefore, play a major part in contemporary conflict, but greed - the desire to control resources and capture rents - also enters into the calculus of conflict. Ultimately, open warfare cannot emerge inside a society with a functioning social contract, as greed and grievances are managed and conflict is contained in countries with properly operating institutions. Consequently, con- flict resolution requires the reconstitution of the social contract.

Introduction

Conflict has been a feature of human society since time immemorial. Disputes that arise may be organized around social class, ethnic- ity, religion, region, or some combination of these factors. The struggle can be over

* I am grateful to Tony Addison, my project co-director at WIDER (http: //www.wider.unu.edu), for stimulating aca- demic interaction over a number of years. Thanks are also due to Scott Gates and Nils Petter Gleditsch for their encouragement. The contributions of the authors in this special issue and other project participants of the WIDER project on 'Why Some Countries Avoid Conflict While Others Fail' are gratefully acknowledged. WIDER also gratefully acknowledges the generous support of the governments of Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden towards its research programme and activities during 2000-01. Glenn Martin ofJPR and Janis Vehmann-Kruela of WIDER superbly handled the administrative side. All opinions expressed in this article are mine alone, and should not necessarily be ascribed to WIDER or the ISS. Correspondence: murshed@iss.nl.

economic opportunities, as well as political and civil rights, among other contestable factors. In peaceful societies, conflict is channelled into nonviolent means and insti- tutions for both its expression and resolu- tion. Economic and human development cannot occur without a large measure of social stability, which in turn requires the nurturing of institutions for nonviolent con- flict resolution. Conflict in low-income countries makes the objective of poverty reduction all the more difficult, since not only is growth retarded, public money is taken for military spending from basic social services, and the poor are themselves dispro- portionately the victims of conflict. Econ- omists are increasingly concerned with how badly designed economic policy raises the vulnerability of low-income developing

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countries to conflict, and how economic policy reinforces, or weakens, the social con- tract that underpins peace. Fundamentally, violent internal conflict is a symptom of the absence or breakdown of the implicit or explicit social contract that sustains peace.

Conflict and the Collapse of the Social Contract

Traditionally, war has been viewed as an irrational act, brought about by misunder- standing and coordination failure, and pri- marily a breakdown in relations between nation-states. Today, most armed conflicts occur between groups within the same nation-state, and in the developing world.1 A common view is that civil war is fundamen- tally irrational, and therefore not amenable to the techniques of economics or rational- choice political science. But is this so? Once the interests of belligerents are taken into account, conflict may be the product of rational decisions, even if it is only of a bounded or myopic rational-choice variety. Even a terrible genocide, as in Rwanda for instance, is often planned well in advance in a cold, pre-meditated manner and carried out to meet a well-defined objective. Further- more, evidence is accumulating that socio- economic variables, such as the desire to control natural-resource rents, social frag-

1 The measurement of conflict and its occurrence is not straightforward (see Wallensteen & Sollenberg, 2001). The Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict (1997: 12) lists the following 39 locations as having had conflicts which led to at least 1000 deaths in any one year in the 1990s: Afghanistan, Algeria, Angola, Azerbaijan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Burundi, Cambodia, Chad, Chechnya, Republic of Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo (Zaire), Colombia, Croatia, East Timor, El Sal- vador, Eritrea (secession from Ethiopia), Georgia, Ghana, Guatemala, Haiti, Iraq, Kashmir (India vs. Pakistan), Lebanon, Liberia, Moldova, Nigeria, Persian Gulf War, Peru, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Sindh, Somalia, South Africa, Southeast Turkey (Kurdistan), Sri Lanka (Tamil uprising), Sudan, Tajikistan, Uganda, Yemen. To this list, one may add Myanmar, Irian Jaya (Indonesia), Kosovo, Nepal and the 1998-2000 Eritrea-Ethiopia war to produce our total of 44 conflicts.

mentation, poverty, inequality and insti- tutional breakdown, all play a role in con- temporary civil wars. Economic analysis, particularly fields dealing with endogenous public choice, has much to say about these matters. Also, empirical techniques associ- ated with econometrics can shed light on many hypotheses, particularly given the emergence of qualitative data, for example on governance indicators.

This special issue brings together some of the output of the UNU/WIDER (United Nations University, World Institute of Development Economics Research, in Helsinki, Finland) research project on 'Why Some Countries Avoid Conflict While Others Fail'. The primary focus of research at WIDER is on development, and therefore the focus of the above mentioned project was not on conflict per se, but rather its role in retarding the process of development. As can readily be observed from note 1, most of today's wars are civil wars, occurring in low- income developing countries. The part played by civil wars in lowering economic growth, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, where per capita growth rates have been negative in many countries for much of the last two decades, cannot be overestimated. As Rodrik (1999) emphasizes, countries with weak institutions of conflict management, as well as high-income inequality, are less able to withstand economic shocks and experi- ence growth failure. They are also more prone to the risk of civil strife and war, since their weak institutions, which are further weakened by shocks and lower growth, are unable to contain the resulting social pressure and distributional conflict.

Over the last five years or so, economists have started paying much more attention to internal conflict. This is not to say that it was completely ignored before, but the new research has very much arisen out of a press- ing need to understand continued develop- ment failure, especially in sub-Saharan

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Africa. In this new literature, a distinction is often made between grievance, a motivation based on a sense of injustice in the way a social group is treated, often with a strong historical dimension, and greed, an acquisi- tive desire similar to crime, albeit often on a much larger scale. Nobody would claim of course that these motives are entirely separ- ate in practice (and motives often change during the course of war), but the distinction can be a useful analytical starting point. An important question is whether contemporary civil wars are more the product of grievances or more the result of greed (Collier & Hoeffler, 2001).

There are genuine grievances producing civil war, many of which are related to econ- omic factors: systematic economic discrimi- nation against groups based on ethno- linguistic or religious differences. Extreme poverty and poor social conditions (includ- ing refugee camps) also facilitate conflict by providing more readily available combatants. Competing groups are formed when collec- tive action problems can be overcome (Olson, 1965). Many of today's civil wars have an ethnic or nationalist dimension; and ethnicity, whether based on language, religion or other distinctions, is often a superior basis for collective action in con- temporary conflicts in poorer countries than other social divisions such as class. In co- alescing groups, therefore, present-day and historical grievances play a crucial part. This is all the more possible when there are inequalities across a small number of clearly identifiable groups - horizontal inequalities (see Stewart, 2000). More often than not, these take the form of high asset inequality, discriminatory public spending across groups and unequal access to the benefits of state patronage, such as government jobs. Furthermore, state failure in providing security and a minimal level of public goods often forces individuals to rely on kinship ties for support and security, this ethnic capital

thereby becoming highly important to indi- viduals (as discussed in Azam, 2001). But, as always, ethnicity must be treated carefully: there is no simple, linear relationship. Indeed, where ethnic diversity is very large, we would not expect to see much conflict, as the different groups find it difficult to organize against each other, a conjecture that is verified by empirical work, including the article by de Soysa (2002).

Discussion of greed as a motive for conflict has mainly arisen in the context of natural- resource endowments, an abundance of which - at least so far as valuable minerals are concerned - appears to increase the risk of a country falling into serious conflict. Certainly there are all too many tragic examples of con- flict in mineral-rich countries, notably Angola, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Sierra Leone, to name but three. The issue is addressed by all the contributions to this issue directly or indirectly. Capturable natural-resource rents, such as alluvial dia- monds (point-source resources in the article by Addison & Murshed, 2002), can result in contests over the right to control these, some of which take the form of warfare, but also criminality and corruption in other instances. Buhaug & Gates (2002) find that the pres- ence of capturable natural resources tends to draw the conflict closer to these resources, thereby enlarging the conflict zone.

A related point concerns environmental conflict, specifically the struggle over land use and water rights in situations of acute shortage of these means of livelihood. The article by de Soysa (2002) examines the con- tribution of shortages of renewable resources such as land or water relative to the abun- dance of non-renewable resources (dia- monds, oil) in determining the risk of conflict. The results of his econometric investigation across a cross-section of 138 countries suggest that the former has little impact, whereas mineral-resource endow- ment significantly contributes to the risk of

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conflict. Also, the more exposed a nation is to trade, the greater the likelihood of peace; an intuitive outcome as international trade cannot flourish in very poorly governed and conflictual societies.

The greed versus grievance dichotomy is a useful entry point into the debate. But for these forces to take the form of large-scale violence, there must be other factors at work, specifically a weakening of the social con- tract. Therefore, while rents from capturable point resources do constitute a sizeable 'prize', violent conflict is unlikely to take hold if a country has a framework of widely agreed rules, both formal and informal, that govern the allocation of resources, including point-resource rents, and the peaceful settle- ment of grievances. Such a viable social con- tract can be sufficient to restrain, if not eliminate, opportunistic behaviour, such as large-scale theft of resource rents, and the violent expression of grievance.

Conflict-affected nations have histories of weak social contracts (or a once strong social contract that has degraded). This weakness is in many instances a legacy of colonialism, which institutionalized mechanisms favour- ing settlers over indigenous peoples (Guatemala, Indonesia, South Africa); divide and rule favouring one ethnic group over another, as in Rwanda; market controls to create rents for settlers to the cost of locals (Indonesia and Zimbabwe); and the expro- priation of land and resource rents (Angola, Sri Lanka and the Belgian Congo). Pre- colonial ethnic rivalry over territory and assets, the case in resource-scarce countries such as Afghanistan, Somalia and Sudan, and the failure of longstanding independent states to strengthen mechanisms of political representation, notably Ethiopia, Haiti and Liberia, also lie behind weak social contracts (see Nafziger, Stewart & Vayrynen, 2000). A single ethnic group (or a subset) often assumed power in the immediate post- independence era (the 1960s), subjugating

others and concentrating the fruits of state power - public employment, other public spending and resource rents - into its own hands (see Ndikumana, 2001, on Burundi and Rwanda). A final complexity in fatally weakening social contracts was the inter- action of these 'domestic' factors with exter- nal events, notably the Cold War, which provided finance and ideological succour to ruling elites and rebels (notably in Central America, Central Africa and the Horn of Africa).

The net result of these processes is the accumulation of grievances within the context of a disintegrating social contract that would otherwise have provided the rules of the game to govern the distribution of the social pie and to achieve peaceful conflict resolution. And the collapse of the social contract, and the resulting civil war, nearly always has a strong fiscal dimension: the state is increasingly perceived to exercise favouritism in public spending and to tax unjustly. Azam & Mesnard (2001) present a model of civil war in which the social con- tract between different groups weakens when the state breaks its implicit promise to make a fiscal transfer to all of society's members. Those who are excluded rebel in an attempt to overthrow the state and redress their griev- ance. Addison, Le Billon & Murshed (2000) present a model in which civil war is partly motivated by a desire for natural-resource rents, but where historically generated griev- ances also play a role. Addison & Murshed (2001) discuss the role of the social contract and its disintegration as civil war develops.

In summary, both greed and grievance motivate belligerents, but they have complex and deep roots in a disintegrating social con- tract that then permits their free, and violent, expression. These deeper roots also provide some hope: even societies marked by pro- longed civil war can in some instances reassemble a working social contract (Mozambique), or make progress towards

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one (Guatemala). Somalia's civil society is showing a remarkable creativity in trying to cut across both greed and grievance to create a social contract, drawing on longstanding and traditional means of dispute resolution. If greed or grievance alone drive conflict, violence would simply continue indefinitely.

Other Areas Covered in this Issue

Still, while there is hope, there is also much to fear. Conflict, once initiated, can have unpre- dictable dynamics. Open warfare is just one manifestation of the disintegration of the social contract. The other is criminality, which also flourishes in the environment of failed states and poor governance. In addition, crim- inal activity, whether involving extortion or trade in contraband goods, plays a major part in financing conflict. The artide by Skaperdas (2002) considers warlord competition. This is a situation where warlords, akin to gangsters, compete with one another for the lootable or capturable surplus. Although it is a model of banditry, there are surprising similar overtones in a variety of civil wars in Africa (Sierra Leone, Democratic Republic of Congo, Liberia, Angola) and elsewhere (Chechnya, Georgia). Excessive competition between rival warlords lowers the amount of the very loot that they compete over. This is because excess warlord competition discourages peaceful production (which may not always be true of non-renewable resources). If that is the case, then a long-term time horizon ought to dis- courage excess competition and violence, but it may not do so if eliminating the enemy now yields greater expected returns in the future. Mehlum, Moene & Torvik (2002) consider the allocation of talent, especially after the end of war and after demobilization. Talented individuals may choose to criminally predate or act as protectors of the predated. This situ- ation can also arise in societies, as in the former Soviet Union, where the social con- tract was severely stressed by the transition

from communism, especially in Azerbaijan and the other newly independent states of Central Asia. An oversupply, or the new entry of predators, increases demand for the com- plementary service - protection from preda- tion - and overall criminality increases. This is inimical to poverty reduction and the resump- tion of sustainable reconstruction and growth.

Other factors also influence the dynamics and longevity of wars, especially when they affect the ability of belligerents to organize and protect themselves. Buhaug & Gates (2002) consider a neglected dimension: the geogra- phy of conflict and the relationship of topog- raphy to warfare. Using data from 1946 onwards, they find that ethnic and secession- ist wars tend to be located at a greater distance from the capital, while wars that try to capture the state by overthrowing the existing govern- ment are nearer to the capital. Conflicts with a longer duration tend to expand the total war zone. Similarly, conflict zones that adjoin an international border offer rebel armies a better chance of escape, provide scope for resupply and trade in illicit products and serve to expand the conflict zone. Mountainous, forested and rugged terrain should intensify the size of the conflict, but data difficulties regarding this variable render it insignificant in the regressions carried out.

Aside from the belligerents themselves, other actors are caught up in conflict, most noticeably civilians and humanitarian workers. These too influence conflict's dynamics. In the model contained in Azam & Hoeffler (2002), there exists a trade-off between pure fighting and activities concen- trated on terrorizing the population. While the former offers scope for looting, the role of terror is to displace civilians and lower rebel fighting efficiency, as rebel troops are less able to disguise themselves amongst civil- ians. But less loot is available when the government terrorizes civilians in rebel areas, as the population will have fled. Terror tactics are therefore likely to produce a refugee

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crisis. Foreign aid may discourage a looting war, as more money is available. But when the government is more inclined to terrorize civilians in rebel areas with a view to weaken- ing rebel armies, more aid encourages more violence and increases the chances of a refugee crisis. Aid delivery can be redesigned to limit these perverse incentives, but to do so we need to understand clearly each con- flict's specific dynamics.

It is evident that peace agreements to end conflict tend to fail, and it takes several attempts to bring about a lasting peace (Walter, 2001, for example). In other words, one or more parties to a peace treaty often renege on their commitment to peace. The resumption of warfare lowers the reputation of those who repudiate peace agreements, making future peace agreements more costly and difficult to achieve. In the presence of capturable point resources and overall poverty, however, the resumption of warfare is sometimes attractive, all the more so when groups are impatient to consume (have a high discount rate). These matters are analysed in detail in Addison & Murshed (2002). The commitment to any peace agree- ment can be enhanced by credible outside intervention, in the form of effective peace- keeping forces. This is part and parcel of the reform of international institutions as dis- cussed in Nayyar (2002). Most of the inter- national institutions of conflict management that exist were fashioned during the Cold War and are geared to dealing with inter-state conflict rather than civil war.

To end conflict, we need to understand its causes. Unfortunately, we are only able clearly to identify factors that contribute to the risk of open political violence and civil war. The actual outbreak of civil war, however, requires triggers that are usually both internal and external; these are not pre- dictable and must arise in the context of the failure of state and society to manage con- flict. Internal triggers are events that actually

push potential belligerents over the brink into warfare. External triggers consist of actions and signals by outsiders, neighbour- ing countries and great powers that make the prospect of fighting or secession more attractive. Conflict triggers can only be oper- ational when the institutions of conflict management have degenerated and the social contract is non-functional.

Be that as it may, the restoration of peace requires the reconstitution of the social con- tract. This requires a broad-based pattern of economic growth associated with reconstruc- tion and the peace dividend. Each society will tend to have different conceptions regarding what constitutes a desirable pattern of broad-based public spending and taxation: for some, the emphasis will be on the pro- vision of public services that reduce the absolute poverty of the excluded groups, while others will demand a more compre- hensive closure of the gap between the excluded and the favoured groups by means of public spending and taxation, a concern for reducing group inequality as well as reducing absolute poverty. But, whatever the precise pattern of broad-based spending required, the necessary fiscal transfers must somehow be financed. Achieving peace from this starting point is exceedingly difficult since subsequent promises by the state to rectify the initial injustice, by fiscal transfers and other means, may be imperfectly credible (Addison & Murshed, 2001). More- over, in a prolonged conflict the tax base declines along with the economy, thereby reducing the size of the fiscal transfer that the state is able to offer compared with the initial transfer it should have made to avoid war. The state can, however, share the post- conflict peace dividend with the rebels, and reducing military spending after a peace deal will release resources for such broad-based spending as education and health.

Conflict is now more directly integrated into research on the causes of development

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failure than ever before. The debate has

already moved on considerably from the early contributions of the 1990s, in particular unpacking and going deeper into the motives of belligerents, understanding the ways in which social norms and rules constrain

aggressive behaviour and capturing more

closely the dynamics of conflict, the role of non-combatants and the ways in which peace can be secured. The articles in this special issue add to this ongoing debate, but also

provide a chance to take stock and to move forward in developing new theories and in

undertaking more empirical investigation.

References

Addison, Tony; Philippe Le Billon & S. Mansoob Murshed, 2000. 'On the Economic Moti- vation for Conflict in Africa', paper presented at the Annual World Bank Conference on Development Economics, Paris, 26-28 June (http://www.worldbank.org/research/abcde/ eu_2000/papers).

Addison, Tony & S. Mansoob Murshed, 2001. 'From Conflict to Reconstruction: Reviving the Social Contract', UNU/WIDER Discussion Paper No. 48. Helsinki: UNU/WIDER (http://www.wider.unu.edu/ publications/publications.htm).

Addison, Tony & S. Mansoob Murshed, 2002. 'Credibility and Reputation in Peacemaking', Journal of Peace Research 39(4): 487-501.

Azam, Jean-Paul, 2001. 'The Redistributive State and Conflicts in Africa', Journal of Peace Research 38(4): 429-444.

Azam, Jean-Paul & Anke Hoeffler, 2002. 'Violence Against Civilians in Civil Wars: Looting or Terror?', Journal of Peace Research 39(4): 461-485.

Azam, Jean-Paul & Alice Mesnard, 2001. 'Civil War and the Social Contract', paper presented at the Royal Economic Society Annual Con- ference, Durham, 9-11 April.

Buhaug, Halvard & Scott Gates, 2002. 'The Geography of Civil War', Journal of Peace Research 39(4): 417-433.

Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly

Conflict, 1997. Preventing Deadly Conflict. New York: Carnegie Corporation.

Collier, Paul & Anke Hoeffler, 2001. 'Greed and Grievance in Civil War', manuscript, World Bank (http://www.worldbank.org/research/ conflict/papers/greedandgrievance.htm).

de Soysa, Indra, 2002. 'Paradise Is a Bazaar? Greed, Creed, and Governance in Civil War, 1989-99', Journal of Peace Research 39(4): 395-416.

Mehlum, Halvor; Karl Ove Moene & Ragnar Torvik, 2002. 'Plunder & Protection Inc.', Journal of Peace Research 39(4): 447-459.

Nafziger, E. Wayne; Frances Stewart & Raimo Vayrynen, eds, 2000. War, Hunger, and Dis- placement: Volume 1 - Analysis. Oxford: Oxford University Press for UNU/WIDER and Queen Elizabeth House, International Development Centre, University of Oxford.

Nayyar, Deepak, ed., 2002. 'Governing Globaliz- ation: Issues and Institutions', forthcoming. Oxford: Oxford University Press for UNU/WIDER.

Ndikumana, Leonce, 2001. 'Fiscal Policy, Conflict, and Reconstruction in Burundi and Rwanda', UNU/WIDER Discussion Paper No. 62. Helsinki: UNU/WIDER (http://www. wider.unu.edu/publications/publications.htm).

Olson, Mancur, 1965. The Logic of Collective Action. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Rodrik, Dani, 1999. 'Where Did All the Growth Go? External Shocks, Social Conflict, and Growth Collapses', Journal of Economic Growth 4(4): 385-412.

Skaperdas, Stergios, 2002. 'Warlord Com- petition', Journal of Peace Research 39(4): 435-446.

Stewart, Frances, 2000. 'Crisis Prevention: Tack- ling Horizontal Inequalities', Oxford Develop- ment Studies 28(3): 245-262.

Wallensteen, Peter & Margareta Sollenberg, 2001. 'Armed Conflict 1989-2000', Journal of Peace Research 38(5): 629-644.

Walter, Barbara E, 2001. Committing to Peace: The Successful Settlement of Civil Wars. Prince- ton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

For biographical details of the author, see the article by Addison & Murshed later in this issue.

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