View Full Version : Causes of intrastate-conflict
Last semester I conducted an extensive research project on the causes on intrastate-conflict (civil war, insurgency, armed rebellion etc.) throughout the world and ended with some very interesting results. I began my study by hypothesizing what could be some causes of conflict based on simple understanding of numerous intrastate conflicts throughout the world i.e. Numerous African conflicts, the current Subcomadante insurgency in Mexico, and a variety of civil wars in Central America and South-East Asia.
I began by thinking that economic and political (levels of oppression/freedom etc.) among other factors played major roles in the causation of intrastate-conflict. When analyzing data I found that economic factors like unemployment, low GDP and per capita income had little or no effect while political factors accounted for a large majority of conflicts.
I apologize for the long post, but I was hoping that a QP perspective could possible shine some light on why economic factors did not seem to cause conflict while political factors did. Also I am interested, again from a QP perspective in what may be some other underlying causes of intrastate- conflicts.
Rm1249
Peregrino
02-02-2008, 20:48
You're going to have to aggressively prove your thesis. If your professor knows his a** from a hole in the ground, I don't think you can. My experience (Latin America) says politics ARE economics. It's all about who has the power to control the distribution of wealth. "Politics" is nothing more than the rhetoric used to motivate the peasants who will do the actual fighting. Peasants - the foot soldiers - are manipulated by politicians because socio-economic conditions give them a "handle" they can use to motivate the (unwashed) masses. Food for thought - all of the -isms (capitalism, socialism, fascism, communism, etc.) are ECONOMIC systems.
You might benefit from a look at the "law and economics" literature, which attempts to quantify the development impact of various types of legal regimes and enforcement mechanisms in the same way that political economists have analyzed the impact of voting and political structures. It could also be beneficial to get familiar with the literature on political risk and corruption and their impact on capital formation. I say this with the understanding that the level of economic development is closely related to social stability. A lot of good work has been done in these areas over the past ten years.
After all of this, you will have a lot of competing theories swimming around in your head, but no practical knowledge. After spending time in a few sh!@holes, though, you'll probably agree that it all boils down to an insufficient level of respect for human life and private property rights. ;)
Peregrino
02-02-2008, 21:42
After spending time in a few sh!@holes, though, you'll probably agree that it all boils down to an insufficient level of respect for human life and (the other guy's) private property rights. ;)
:D
You're going to have to aggressively prove your thesis. If your professor knows his a** from a hole in the ground, I don't think you can. My experience (Latin America) says politics ARE economics. .
This is exactly why I was surprised when I analyzed data on nations throughout the world and turned up results that were not statistically significant nor suggesting a causal relationship between the two variables. (Economic factors and intrastate conflict) This may have been an error on my part, because possibly I chose to analyze the wrong aspects of levels of economic development. At any rate I intend to continue my research in fall 08 semester for my Senior thesis and will surely revisit the impact of economy on causation of intrastate conflict.
QUOTE=jatx;198058]You might benefit from a look at the "law and economics" literature, which attempts to quantify the development impact of various types of legal regimes and enforcement mechanisms in the same way that political economists have analyzed the impact of voting and political structures. It could also be beneficial to get familiar with the literature on political risk and corruption and their impact on capital formation. I say this with the understanding that the level of economic development is closely related to social stability. A lot of good work has been done in these areas over the past ten years.
After all of this, you will have a lot of competing theories swimming around in your head, but no practical knowledge. After spending time in a few sh!@holes, though, you'll probably agree that it all boils down to an insufficient level of respect for human life and private property rights. ;)[/QUOTE]
I will take this into account when continuing my research and the first hand experience you QP's have that I do not is exactly why I thought of bringing the topic up. Thank you for your replies and any other discussion on the topic would be beneficial on my end to say the least.
Rm1249
rm1249, I am not a QP, just an over-educated intel geek.
But riddle me this:
Which regressors best explain the level of economic development in a country? How are you measuring the level of economic development? Are you working with a metric which is also closely correlated with social stability? Which is the cause and which is the effect?
Unless you (1) have all of these factors straight in your mind and (2) your objective function accurately reflects this understanding, you will have multicollinearity. Your error terms will be huge and your R-squared will be minuscule.
The reality, of course, is that the factors are all interrelated. If you were to model this as a system, there would be literally dozens of feedback loops. What you really need is system dynamics! :cool:
(Bottom line: pick a smaller, more manageable question, sharpen your thesis and have fun!)
But riddle me this:
Which regressors best explain the level of economic development in a country? How are you measuring the level of economic development? Are you working with a metric which is also closely correlated with social stability? Which is the cause and which is the effect?
To measure economic development and other factors I used a variety of factors: GDP per capita, income disparity and unemployment rates. My hypothesis was that these factors were closely tied with social stability and could be influencing factors on intrastate conflict.
An interesting question of cause and effect-- Nations which host intrastate conflict often DO have economic problems, and one may be led to believe that economic influences do impact conflict, but this relationship could be spurious-- the dependent may actually be the independent. That is to say intrastate conflict causes economic problems, another hyothesis which should be tested.
Unless you (1) have all of these factors straight in your mind and (2) your objective function accurately reflects this understanding, you will have multicollinearity. Your error terms will be huge and your R-squared will be minuscule.
Because the relationship between independent and dependent variables is possibly spurious, the time order is incorrect, could b explain of my lack of statistical significance. My data analysis actually suggest a negative correlation but with a high p-value was labeled unreliable results.
Overall I found that economic factors accounted for less that 4-8% of variation of intrastate conflict- a very low R-square. As you suggested these variables are multicollinear and it is difficult to determine the impact of any single variable.
Rm1249
x-factor
02-03-2008, 14:07
It seems to me like you're not looking at the data in the right way. Looking at simple factors like total unemployement or total per capita GDP isn't going to get it done. I'd suggest taking the analysis deeper. Try looking at economic factors (unemployment, per capita GDP, resources, water, industrialization, etc) cross-referenced by socio-political factors (ethnic group, tribe, region, etc).
As Peregrino suggested, you may find that intrastate conflict is more prevalent where there's a disparity there. Just one example off the top of my head would be the current state of affairs in Iraq which is largely about which ethnic/religious group is in a position to control the countries oil wealth.