A Study of the Causal Factors of Civil War in the 1990s
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Authors
Lierz, Stefanie
Issue Date
2009-07-14
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Thesis
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en_US
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Abstract
In recent decades there has been a rise in intrastate conflicts. This thesis explores the causes of civil war, focusing on ethnic, religious, institutional and economic factors contributing to or alleviating internal conflict. I regress the occurrence of civil war on ethnic and religious heterogeneity, the number of import and export partners a country has, and the number of international organizations in which a state participates. I hypothesize that ethnic and religious heterogeneity have a positive and significant relationship with civil war, the number of import/export partners has a negative and significant relationship with civil war, and membership in international organizations exerts a negative and significant effect on the likelihood of civil war. I used data from three different sources: the Correlates of War Project, Fearon and Laitin, and Collier and Hoeffler. Ethnic heterogeneity was the only variable that was statistically significant in all three datasets. Religious heterogeneity was close to significant in two of them. Neither the number of import/export partners nor membership in international organizations were significant in any model. Some of the control variables were statistically significant, including the percentage of GDP that a country spends on its military and population growth.
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Creighton University
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Lierz-thesis.pdf