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Chapter 1 : On the Causes of Civil War Anke Hoeffler Draft Chapter for the Oxford Handbook of the Economics of Peace and Conflict 1

Since World War II about 16 million people have been killed in ‘civil’ wars. What causes these civil wars? Why is there costly violent conflict when most people would be better off by settling their disputes peacefully? What makes individuals take up arms and risk their lives in an insurgency? Economists, among other social scientists, have tried to investigate these important questions by using economic theory as well as empirical tests. These analytical searches are driven by the hope that if we can gain a better understanding of the causes of civil war we may be able to prevent future violent conflict and help to resolve ongoing wars. This first chapter of the Handbook provides an overview of the existing research efforts. It starts with a discussion of the theory and then provides an examination of the empirical evidence. In most cases the empirical tests are not rooted in theory and the results do not allow us to distinguish between rival theoretical explanations. Defining and measuring various theoretical concepts, such as for example motivation and opportunity, is problematic and adds to the difficulties of interpreting the empirical results. Although there is still a disconnect between the theory and the empirics of the causes of civil war there is now a large body of empirical studies. In this very active research area economists and political scientists study the causes of war by examining individuals, groups and nation states. The cross-country studies on the causes of war constitute the largest part of the empirical research and some robust patterns seem to be emerging. Countries are more likely to experience a civil war when they had a war in the past, their income is low, they have poor growth and a large population. Other measures have a less robustly correlated with the outbreak of war and this will be discussed in detail in section 3 in this chapter.