The existing literature identifies natural resource wealth as a major determinant of civil war. The dominant causal link is that resources provide finance and motive (the “looting rebels†model). Others see natural resources as causing “political Dutch disease,†which in turn...

Recent research identifies state capacity as a crucial determinant of civil peace. Scholars often interpret the association between wealth and peace as state capacity effects, but they have not clearly distinguished the impact of administrative reach and capacity for coercion from those effects...

Empirical studies on the causes of civil war robustly show that poor countries are more likely to suffer civil war than rich ones. However, the interpretations of this finding differ. The literature proposes three different causal mechanisms: (1) poverty leads to grievances; (2) income proxies...

If terror attacks from groups of one country are followed by similar attacks on the same target from groups of other similar countries, then this could be the consequence of contagion. However, just because one terror incident follows another does not necessarily imply that one is caused by the...