Magnus Öberg, Peace and Conflict, Uppsala University

Patrimonialism, Globalisation and Civil Conflicts

2007-2012

The purpose of this project was to investigate how external economic factors might undermine stability in neo-patrimonial regimes leading to civil conflicts and coups détat. Four research tasks were identified in the research plan: a) to investigate new dimensions of governance on the risk of civil conflict and coups; b) to investigate the interplay between external shocks and systems of governance on the risk of civil conflict and coups; c) to study the effect of external economic factors on the risk of civil conflict and coups; and d) to generate a new global dataset on coup events.

On the whole the project has followed the original plan, but the emphasis has been somewhat more on governance structures and somewhat less on the economic shocks than originally intended. It also took more time than anticipated to complete the coup data. There have also been a few spin-offs that were not anticipated the original plan, including an edited volume on data collection methods.

Findings

In a series of studies Sollenberg examines the effect of foreign aid and development assistance on the risk of civil conflict and coups d'état. Aid can be thought of as a form of non-tax revenue and as such aid generates incentives for rent-seeking behavior and distributional conflict among elites that under some circumstances increase the risk of civil conflicts and coups. Sollenberg identifies three such circumstances. In a first paper she shows that institutions mediate the relationship between foreign aid and armed conflict in that higher volumes of aid are linked to an increased probability of armed conflict in states where there are few constraints on executive power. The implication is that institutions play an important role in inhibiting rent-seeking incentives and distributional conflict from translating into armed conflict. In a second paper, Sollenberg find empirical support for a threshold effect of foreign aid on conflict risk, arguing that aid increases the probability of conflict only when aid levels are sufficiently high to constitute a valuable prize for rebels. In a third paper, she finds that sudden negative changes in aid flows increase the risk of armed conflict as well as of coup attempts. She argues that aid shortfalls represent a type of shock to the supply of rents which shortens time horizons of elites, hence accelerating distributional conflict over aid rents. Sollenberg also finds some support for a differential effect of high aid levels on conflict risk and coup risk; conflict risk is increased in states with a higher level of aid whereas coup risk is reduced. This difference is attributed to aid providing resources to sustain patronage politics which allows governments to co-opt inside elites, while presenting a more valuable prize for elites outside the patronage system.

In a study of economic shocks and rebellions in Africa Fjelde utilizes exogenous variation in world market prices on agricultural products to examine the impact of economic conditions on the risk of civil war violence in Sub-Saharan Africa. The relationship between local economic conditions and rebellious activity has a central place in the civil war literature. Lower wages and fewer employment opportunities in the labor-intensive sector of the economy is said to increase participation in rebellion, as the opportunity cost of fighting falls. Fjelde examines how economic shocks - measured through fluctuations in farm prices and deviations in rainfall - influence the occurrence of civil war events in rain fed agricultural producing and non-agricultural producing regions of Sub-Saharan Africa, respectively. She finds an increased risk of civil war violence following economic downturns in the agricultural sector in areas where farming provides a major source of income. The paper relies on a new, geo-coded civil war event dataset from the Uppsala Conflict Data Program and utilizes GIS software to study sub-national variations in the occurrence of civil war violence across Sub-Saharan Africa in the 1989 - 2010 period.

In a study on the relationship between the quality of government institutions and civil war Öberg and Melander examine the effect of bureaucracy quality on the risk of civil war in different institutional settings. In autocratic regimes governments cannot rely on mass media, opinion polls, public expressions of popular opinion and so on to keep it informed about the nature and scope popular grievances. Instead, autocratic regimes will largely have to rely on various government agencies to inform them about the state of public opinion. Öberg and Melander argue that this makes the quality of the government bureaucracies important for the maintenance of civil peace in autocratic states. More autonomous and meritocratic bureaucracies will be better able to provide the information needed to devise strategies and policies that reduce the risk of violent challenges to government power. In patrimonial systems where appointments are clientelistic the functioning of bureaucracies will be impeded both by a lack of autonomy and by lower levels of efficiency and professionalism. Using a cross-sectional time-series dataset covering the period 1985-2004 they find that high bureaucracy quality is indeed associated with civil peace in autocratic regimes.

Finally, the coup dataset collected for this project constitutes an important finding in its own right. Covering almost 600 coup events globally from 1950 to 2010 it describes not only the date, location and outcome of coup events, but also contains information on identity of the actors, the use of force, battle deaths, one-sided violence, foreign involvement, and the fate of incumbents and coup makers among other things.

The coup data show a number of interesting trends and patterns. Like other forms of violence coups events show a declining trend in the post cold war era. Since 1950 we have seen coup events in most regions of the world, but Africa and South America stand out accounting for almost 75% of the coups. Furthermore, countries with features characteristic of patrimonial systems like high levels of political corruption and lacking constraints on executive power are clearly overrepresented in the coup data. This pattern fits well with what one would expect from a system of patrimonial politics where competing elite factions fight over the spoils of government. Even in coups where the instigators originate outside the state apparatus the coup leaders are almost invariably former government elites (e.g. former officers, ministers, or presidents).

Publications

A few studies emanating from the project have been published and several more are being prepared for publication (see list of publications). The two most significant studies published so far are:

"Buying Peace? Oil Wealth, Corruption and Civil War, 1985-99" (Journal of Peace Research, 2009). In this article Fjelde argues that, contrary to received wisdom, political corruption is not necessarily associated with a higher risk of civil war in oil-rich states. Political corruption can be used to accommodate opposition and placate restive groups by offering private privilege in exchange for political loyalty. Since oil wealth is associated with large rents accruing in state treasuries, it provides an economic foundation for such clientelist rule. This article thus argues that oil-rich governments can use political corruption to buy support from key segments of society, effectively outspending other entrepreneurs of violence. Based on an analysis of civil war onsets, 1985-99, the article finds support for this 'co-optation argument'. While both oil and corruption per se increase the risk of conflict overall, higher levels of corruption seem to weaken the harmful impact of oil on the risk of civil war.

"Is the Hidden Hand an Iron Fist? Capitalism and Civil Conflict" (Journal of Peace Research, 2010). In this article Fjelde and co-author Indra de Soysa argue from an opportunity-cost perspective that the payoffs to rebellion are structured by how an economy is governed. Closed economies are likelier than more open ones to accumulate 'rebellion specific capital' because of high payoffs to organization in the shadows. Using an index of economic freedom that measures how free people are to transact in an economy, the authors find that countries more favorable to free enterprise have a reduced risk of civil war onsets, a result that is robust to the inclusion of institutional quality, per capita wealth, and sundry controls. The findings do not suggest that states under conditions of capitalism lose their autonomy to provide the public good of peace, as skeptics of globalization claim.

New Research Questions

The project has generated many questions, among them is how and in what ways different governance systems condition conflict behavior? How does the system of governance (interacting with other factors) condition where in a society, and between what actors, and in what form does conflict manifest itself (coups, civil wars, communal conflict, revolutions, peaceful protests)? This also relates to how conflicts of different types are linked to each other, e.g. coups leading to civil wars, protests to coups, an do on. These phenomena are usually studied in isolation from each other, but in collecting data on coup events it has become obvious that they are often related in various ways and are sometimes simply different strategies pursued by the same actors under different circumstances and so should be studied together.

Publicationlist

Books

Fjelde, Hanne (2009). Sins of Omission and Commission: The Quality of Government and Civil Conflict. Uppsala: Dept. of Peace and Conflict Research. Report No. 88 (Dissertation).

Sollenberg, Margareta (2012). A Scramble for Rents: Foreign Aid and Armed Conflict. Uppsala: Dept. of Peace and Conflict Research. Report No. 95 (Dissertation, in print)

Öberg, Magnus (2011). Understanding Peace Research: Methods and Challenges, co-edited with Kristine Höglund, New York and London: Routledge.


Articles

Fjelde, Hanne (2008). Book Review: “High Stakes and Stakeholders: Oil Conflict and Security in Nigeria” by Kenneth Omeje, Journal of Peace Research, 45: 4.

Fjelde, Hanne (2010). ”Is the Hidden Hand an Iron Fist? Capitalism and Civil Conflict” Journal of Peace Research, 47(3): 287-298.

Härutöver har några artiklar färdigställts inom ramen för projektet, även om det huvudsakliga arbetet med dessa utfördes före 2008:

Fjelde, Hanne (2010). ”Generals, Dictators, and Kings, Authoritarian Regimes and Civil Conflict, 1973 – 2004” Conflict Management and Peace Science.
27(3): 195-218.

Fjelde, Hanne (2009). ”Buying Peace? Oil, Corruption and Civil Conflict 1985-99”, Journal of Peace Research: 47(2):199-218.

Hanne Fjelde & Indra de Soysa, (2009) ”Coercion, Cooptation or Cooperation. State Capacity and Civil War, 1961-2004” Conflict Management and Peace Science, 2009, 26(1): 5-25.


Bookchapters

Öberg, Magnus (2011). “Doing Empirical Peace Research” with Kristine Höglund in Understanding Peace Research: Methods and Challenges, Kristine Höglund and Magnus Öberg eds, New York and London: Routledge, 2011.

Öberg, Magnus (2011). “Improving Information Gathering and Evaluation” with Kristine Höglund in Understanding Peace Research: Methods and Challenges, Kristine Höglund and Magnus Öberg eds, New York and London: Routledge, 2011.

Öberg, Magnus and Margareta Sollenberg (2011). “Gathering Conflict Information Using News Resources” in Understanding Peace Research: Methods and Challenges, Kristine Höglund and Magnus Öberg eds, New York and London: Routledge, 2011.


Papers

Fjelde, Hanne 2009. Sub-National Determinants of Non-State Conflicts in Nigeria, 1991 – 2005. Presented to the International Studies Association 2009 Meeting, New York, NY  15-18 February, 2009 and at the Jan Tinbergen conference, Networks of European Peace Scientists, Amsterdam, June, 2009.

Fjelde, Hanne (2010). Economic Inequality and Intergroup Conflict in Africa,” with Gudrun Østby. Paper presented at the American Political Science Association Annual Meeting, Washington DC, September 1-4, 2010; at the Conference on Inequality, grievances and Civil War, 9-11 September, Zürich; and at the Annual Meeting of the Peace Science society (International) Forth Woth, Texas, October 2010.

Fjelde, Hanne (2011). “Economic Shocks and Rebellion in Africa.” Unpublished, manuscript.

Sollenberg, Margareta (2010). “Aid, Institutions and Armed Conflict.” Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Intenational Studies Association, New Orleans, February, 2010.

Sollenberg, Margareta (2010). “Aid and Political Instability, 1960-2008.” Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Intenational Studies Association, New Orleans, February, 2010.

Sollenberg, Margareta (2009). “Foreign Aid and Armed Conflict, 1960-2004.” Paper presented at the 50th Annual Convention of the International Studies Association, New York Feb 15, 2009

Öberg, Magnus (2008). Conceptualizing a Global Coup Events Dataset: A Coup D’Essai, paper presented at the Research Seminar, Department of Peace and Conflict Research, Uppsala University, May 22, 2008.

Öberg, Magnus (2011). Challenges from within: Introducing the Uppsala Coup Events Dataset. Paper presented at the Conference on Quantitative Peace Research, University of Greifswald, Germany, 21-22 October, 2011, and at the 52nd International Studies Association Convention, Montreal, Canada, 16-19 March, 2011.

Öberg, Magnus and Erik Melander (2010). Autocracy, Bureaucracy, and Civil Conflict. Paper presented and at the 5th ECPR General Conference, Potsdam Germany, September 2009, and at the American Political Science Association Annual Meeting, Washington DC, September 1-4, 2010.