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Greed and Grievance in Civil War

1999; Linguagem: Inglês

10.1596/1813-9450-2355

1813-9450

Paul Collier, Anke Hoeffler, Paul Collier,

Corruption and Economic Development

Introduction'Civil war is both a tragedy and an impediment to development, affecting most of the world's poorest countries.It is now far more common than international conflict: of the 27 major armed conflicts listed in the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute Yearbook for 1999 (SIPRI 1999), all but two were internal.In Section 2 we compare two contrasting motivations for rebellion: greed and grievance.Most rebellions are ostensibly in pursuit of a cause, supported by a narrative of grievance.However, since grievance-assuagement through rebellion is a public good which a government will not supply, economists would predict that such rebellions would be rare.Empirically, many rebellions appear to be linked to the capture of resources: diamonds in Angola and Sierra Leone, drugs in Colombia, and timber in Cambodia.We set up a simple rational choice model of greed-rebellion and contrast its predictions with those of a simple grievance model.A second empirical regularity is that some countries are prone to repeat conflict.This may be either because their underlying characteristics make them highly conflict-prone, or because of a feedback effect whereby conflict generates grievance which in turn generates further conflict.We show why such a feedback effect might be present in greed-motivated rebellions as well as in grievance-rebellions. Finally, we consider an integrated model in which the motivation for rebellion is both greed and grievance.