Conflict, geography, and natural resources: The political economy of state predation in africa

Polity

Volumn 41, Issue 4, 2009, Pages 465-488

  Thies, Cameron G ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF IOWA   (United States)

Author keywords

Interstate conflict; Natural resource wealth; Political geography; Predatory theory; Sub Saharan Africa

Indexed keywords

EID: 70350070286     PISSN: 00323497     EISSN: 17441684     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1057/pol.2008.32     Document Type: Article

References (125)

1. Douglass C. North, Structure and Change in Economic History (New York: W.W. Norton, 1981), 21.
2. This definition of the state common to most predatory approaches differs in important ways from those that focus on the social contract between the state and its citizens. For example, Max Weber defines the state as an organization that successfully "claims a monopoly on the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory." Legitimacy is therefore central to social contract approaches, while only considered a by-product of state action (at best) in predatory approaches. See Max Weber, "The Profession and Vocation of Politics," in Political Writings, ed. Peter Lassman and Ronald Speirs (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994).
3. North, Structure and Change in Economic History, 23.
4. Charles Tilly, Coercion, Capital, and European States, AD 990-1992 (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1992), 96-97.
5. Predator-prey models emerged independently in a number of disciplines, including ecology, epidemiology and economics. See, for examples of both mathematical and verbal models, Fred Brauer and Carlos Castillo-Chavez, Mathematical Models in Population Biology and Epidemiology (Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag, 2000);
6. H. I. Freedman, Deterministic Mathematical Models in Population Ecology (New York: Marcel Dekker, 1980);
7. and James K. Galbraith, "The Predator State," Mother Jones 31(May/June 2006): 30-31.
8. Mancur Olson, "Dictatorship, Democracy and Development," American Political Science Review 87 (September 1993): 567-576
9. See, for example, Richard Bean, "War and the Birth of the Nation State," Journal of Economic History 33 (March 1973): 203-21;
10. Brian M. Downing, The Military Revolution and Political Change: Origins of Democracy and Autocracy in Early Modern Europe (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992);
11. Margaret Levi, "The Predatory Theory of Rule," Politics and Society 10 (1981): 431-65;
12. Michael Mann, The Sources of Social Power, Volume 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986);
13. and Charles Tilly ed., The Formation of National States in Western Europe (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975).
14. See John L. Campbell, "The State and Fiscal Sociology," Annual Review of Sociology 19 (1993): 163-85;
15. Edgar Kiser and April Linton, "Determinants of the Growth of the State: War and Taxation in Early Modern France and England," Social Forces 80 (December 2001): 411-48;
16. and Karen A. Rasler and William R. Thompson, "War Making and State Making: Governmental Expenditures, Tax Revenues, and Global Wars," American Political Science Review 79 (June 1985): 491-507.
17. Charles Tilly ,"War Making and State Making as Organized Crime," in Bringing the State Back In, ed. Peter Evans, Dietrich Rueschemeyer, and Theda Skocpol (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 180.
18. See Youssef Cohen, Brian R. Brown, and A. F. K. Organski, "The Paradoxical Nature of State Making: The Violent Creation of Order,"American Political Science Review 75 (December 1981): 901-10;
19. Keith Jaggers, "War and the Three Faces of Power: War Making and State Making in Europe and the Americas," Comparative Political Studies 25 (April 1992): 26-62;
20. Andrew Kirby and Michael D. Ward, "Modernity and the Process of State Formation: An Examination of 20th Century Africa," International Interactions 17 (May 1991): 113-26;
21. Richard Stubbs, "War and Economic Development: Export-Oriented Industrialization in East and Southeast Asia," Comparative Politics 31 (April 1999): 337-55;
22. and Cameron G. Thies, "War, Rivalry and State Building in Latin America," American Journal of Political Science 49 (July 2005): 451-465
23. See Miguel Angel Centeno, Blood and Debt: War and the Nation-State in Latin America (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2002);
24. Michael C. Desch, "War and Strong States, Peace and Weak States?" International Organization 50 (Spring 1996): 237-68;
25. and Ian Lustick, "The Absence of Middle Eastern Great Powers: Political 'Backwardness' in Historical Perspective," International Organization 51 (Autumn 1997): 653-683
26. Jeffrey Herbst, "War and the State in Africa," International Security 14 (Spring 1990): 117-139
27. See Jeffrey Herbst, "The Creation and Maintenance of National Boundaries in Africa," International Organization 43 (Autumn 1989): 673-92;
28. and Herbst "War and the State in Africa."
29. Robert H. Jackson and Carl G. Rosberg, "Why Africa's Weak States Persist: The Empirical and the Juridical in Statehood," World Politics 35 (October 1982): 1-24.
30. Cameron G. Thies, "State Building, Interstate and Intrastate Rivalry: A Study of Post-Colonial Developing Country Extractive Efforts, 1975-2000," International Studies Quarterly 48 (March 2004): 53-72;
31. and Cameron G. Thies, "The Political Economy of State Building in Sub-Saharan Africa," Journal of Politics 69 (August 2007): 716-731
32. Tilly ,"War Making and State Making as Organized Crime."
33. See Thies, "State Building, Interstate and Intrastate Rivalry"
34. Thies, "War, Rivalry, and State Building in Latin America"
35. Cameron G. Thies, "Public Violence and State Building in Central America," Comparative Political Studies 39 (December 2006): 1263-82;
36. and Thies, "The Political Economy of State Building in Sub-Saharan Africa."
37. Donald Rothchild and Victor A. Olorunsola, eds., State Versus Ethnic Claims: African Policy Dilemmas (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1983).
38. Mohammad Ayoob, The Third World Security Predicament: State Making, Regional Conflict, and the International System (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1995), 169.
39. Pierre Englebert, State Legitimacy and Development in Africa (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2000).
40. Herbst "War and the State in Africa," 129.
41. Jeffrey Herbst, States and Power in Africa: Comparative Lessons in Authority and Control (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), 126.
42. North, Structure and Change in Economic History.
43. North, Structure and Change in Economic History, 21.
44. Herbst, States and Power in Africa.
45. Herbst, States and Power in Africa, 25.
46. Tilly, Coercion, Capital, and European States, 54.
47. Herbst, States and Power in Africa, 19.
48. See Christopher Clapham, Africa and the International System: The Politics of State Survival (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996);
49. Steven R. David, "Explaining Third World Alignment," World Politics 43 (January 1991): 233-56;
50. and Herbst, States and Power in Africa.
51. Herbst, States and Power in Africa, 145-161
52. Herbst, States and Power in Africa, 161-170
53. Herbst, States and Power in Africa, 173.
54. Catherine Boone, Political Topographies of the African State: Territorial Authority and Institutional Choice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003).
55. Herbst, States and Power in Africa, 182-192
56. Herbst, States and Power in Africa, 231.
57. See, for example, Downing, The Military Revolution and Political Change; and Mann, The Sources of Social Power.
58. Herbst, States and Power in Africa, 242-244
59. Herbst, States and Power in Africa, 243.
60. Tilly, Coercion, Capital, and European States.
61. See, for example, Jeffrey Herbst, "Economic Incentives, Natural Resources and Conflict in Africa," Journal of African Economies 9 (October 2000): 270-94;
62. and James Ron, ed., "Paradigm in Distress? Primary Commodities and Civil War," Journal of Conflict Resolution 49 (August 2005): 443-450
63. James D. Fearon, "Primary Commodity Exports and Civil War," Journal of Conflict Resolution 49 (August 2005): 483-507.
64. Paul Collier, Economic Causes of Civil Conflict and their Implications for Policy (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2000).
65. See Terry L. Karl, The Paradox of Plenty: Oil Booms, Venezuela, and Other Petro-States (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997);
66. and Michael L. Ross, "Does Oil Hinder Democracy?" World Politics 53 (April 2001): 325-361
67. Philippe Le Billon, "The Political Ecology of War: Natural Resources and Armed Conflicts," Political Geography 20 (June 2001): 561-584
68. Nathan Jensen and Leonard Wantchekon, "Resource Wealth and Political Regimes in Africa," Comparative Political Studies 37 (September 2004): 816-841
69. Le Billon, "The Political Ecology of War," 567.
70. William Reno, Warlord Politics and African States (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1998).
71. Le Billon, "The Political Ecology of War," 567.
72. Herbst, "Economic Incentives, Natural Resources and Conflict in Africa."
73. Thies, "The Political Economy of State Building in Sub-Saharan Africa."
74. See Campbell, "The State and Fiscal Sociology";
75. Centeno, Blood and Debt;
76. Kiren Aziz Chaudhry, The Price of Wealth: Economies and Institutions in the Middle East (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1997);
77. Jose Antonio Cheibub, "Political Regimes and the Extractive Capacity of Governments: Taxation in Democracies and Dictatorships," World Politics 50 (April 1998): 349-76;
78. Christine Fauvelle-Aymar, "The Political and Tax Capacity of Government in Developing Countries," Kyklos 52 (1999): 391-413;
79. A. F. K. Organski and Jacek Kugler, The War Ledger (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980);
80. Ming-Chang Tsai, "State Power, State Embeddedness, and National Development in Less Developed Countries: A Cross-National Analysis," Studies in Comparative and International Development 33 (Winter 1999): 66-88;
81. and Thies, "State Building, Interstate and Intrastate Rivalry."
82. Evan S. Lieberman, "Taxation Data as Indicators of State-Society Relations: Possibilities and Pitfalls in Cross-National Research," Studies in Comparative and International Development 36 (Winter 2002): 89-115.
83. Kristin Johnson and Marina Arbetman Rabinowitz, "Relative Political Capacity Model & Data Description," Paper prepared for the Workshop on Political Economy, Claremont Graduate University, October 7, 2005.
84. Thies, "The Political Economy of State Building in Sub-Saharan Africa."
85. Paul E Diehl and Gary Goertz, War and Peace in International Rivalry (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000).
86. Diehl and Goertz, War and Peace in International Rivalry, 4.
87. Diehl and Goertz, War and Peace in International Rivalry, 44-45. Enduring rivalries in sub-Saharan Africa include Congo-DRC/Zaire (1963-1997), DRC/Zaire-Zambia (1971-1994), Ethiopia-Somalia (1960-1987), Ethiopia-Sudan (1967-1997), Ghana-Togo (1961-1994), Kenya-Uganda (1965-1997), and Zambia-Zimbabwe (1965-1986). There are 24 proto-rivalries in this time period.
88. Thies, "The Political Economy of State Building in Sub-Saharan Africa."
89. Ted Robert Gurr, Barbara Harff and Monty G. Marshall, Codebook: Internal Wars and Failures of Governance, 1954-1996 (McLean, VA: Science Applications International Corporation, 1997).
90. Internal ethnic conflict occurs in Angola (1975-2001), Burundi (1972, 1988-2001), Chad (1965-1994), DRC/Zaire (1960-1965, 1977-1978, 1992-2001), Ethiopia (1961-1991, 1999-2000), Kenya (1964-1966, 1991-1993), Mali (1990-1995), Nigeria (1966-1970), Rwanda (1963-1966, 1990-1998, 2001), Senegal (1992-1999), Somalia (1988-2001), South Africa (1987-1996), Sudan (1956-1972, 1983-2001), Uganda (1980-1991), and Zimbabwe (1981-1987). DeRouen and Bercovitch have recently proposed a measure of enduring internal rivalry constructed along similar lines to the enduring rivalry variable developed by Diehl and Goertz to measure long-term, hostile interstate relationships.
91. See Karl R. DeRouen and Jacob Bercovitch, "Enduring Internal Rivalries: A New Framework for the Study of Civil War," Journal of Peace Research 45 (November 2008): 55-74.
92. Many African countries are coded as having enduring internal rivalries, including Angola, Burundi, Ethiopia, Mozambique, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Somalia, South Africa, Sudan, and Uganda. The correlation between my measure of internal ethnic conflict and the enduring internal rivalry variable is 0.48, indicating substantial overlap. Given the salience of ethnicity in the African context, this paper is particularly concerned with the internal threat posed by ethnically organized opposition to the state, rather than all such threats. Substituting the enduring internal rival measure for the measure of ethnic conflict used in the paper produces a similar significant, positive effect on extraction. These results are available from the author. 61.
93. Herbst, States and Power in Africa, 161.
94. Herbst, States and Power in Africa, 247.
95. Herbst, States and Power in Africa, 243.
96. Herbst, States and Power in Africa, 192.
97. Fearon, "Primary Commodity Exports and Civil War";
98. Ola Olsson and Heather Congdon Fors, "Congo: The Prize of Predation," Journal of Peace Research 41 (May 2004): 321-336
99. Paivi Lujala, Nils Petter Gleditsch, and Elisabeth Gilmore, "A Diamond Curse? Civil War and a Lootable Resource," Journal of Conflict Resolution 49 (August 2005): 538-562
100. Macartan Humphreys, "Natural Resources, Conflict, and Conflict Resolution: Uncovering the Mechanisms," Journal of Conflict Resolution 49 (August 2005): 508-537
101. One might expect that several of the variables in this analysis are affected by multicollinearity. Gujarati suggests that variance inflation factor (VIF) scores higher than 10 are an indicator of this condition. See Damodar N. Gujarati, Basic Econometrics, 4th ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill Irwin, 2003), 362. The VIF scores demonstrate collinearity between age (score of 17) and its squared term (19), and GDP per capita (22) and its squared term (16), and citizenship (11) and the interaction term with national design (14), as one would expect. This affects the test of statistical significance for these terms, actually making the likelihood of finding statistical significance more difficult. The VIF scores for all of the other variables in the analysis are 5 or lower.
102. For the former, see Tilly ,"War Making and State Making as Organized Crime";
103. and Olson, "Dictatorship, Democracy and Development."
104. For the latter, see Cheibub, "Political Regimes and the Extractive Capacity of Governments";
105. and Thies, "The Political Economy of State Building in Sub-Saharan Africa."
106. Thorsten Beck, George Clarke, Alberto Groff, Philip Keefer, and Patrick Walsh, "New Tools in Comparative Political Economy: The Database of Political Institutions," World Bank Economic Review 15 (April 2001): 165-176
107. Robert W Jackman, Power Without Force: The Political Capacity of Nation-States (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1993).
108. Jackman, Power Without Force, 93.
109. See Cheibub, "Political Regimes and the Extractive Capacity of Governments."
110. See Cheibub, "Political Regimes and the Extractive Capacity of Governments";
111. and Fauvelle-Aymar, "The Political and Tax Capacity of Government in Developing Countries."
112. Lieberman, "Taxation Data as Indicators of State-Society Relations," 98.
113. See, for example, Robert H. Bates, Prosperity and Violence: The Political Economy of Development (New York: W W Norton, 2001);
114. Karen Remmer, "Does Foreign Aid Promote the Expansion of Government?" American Journal of Political Science 48 (February 2004): 77-92;
115. and Lewis Snider, "The Political Performances of Third World Governments and the Debt Crisis," American Political Science Review 84 (December 1990 1263-1280
116. The thirty-six states of sub-Saharan Africa included in the analysis are Angola, Benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Dem. Republic of the Congo, Republic of Congo, Cote d'Ivoire, Ethiopia, Gabon, Gambia, Ghana, Kenya, Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Mauritania, Mauritius, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Somalia, South Africa, Sudan, Swaziland, Tanzania, Togo, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.
117. See Pierre Englebert, "Solving the Mystery of the AFRICA Dummy," World Development 28 (October 2000): 1821-35;
118. and Douglas Lemke, "African Lessons for International Relations Research," World Politics 56 (October 2003): 114-138
119. Nathaniel Beck and Jonathan N. Katz, "What to Do (And Not to Do) With Time-Series Cross- Section Data," American Political Science Review 89 (September 1995): 634-647
120. Thies, "The Political Economy of State Building in Sub-Saharan Africa."
121. Tilly ,"War Making and State Making as Organized Crime."
122. Herbst, States and Power in Africa.
123. Thomas Brambor, William Roberts Clark, and Matt Golder, "Understanding Interaction Models: Improving Empirical Analysis," Political Analysis 13 (May 2005): 1-20.
124. Lieberman, "Taxation Data as Indicators of State-Society Relations," 98.
125. Christopher H. Achen, "Why Lagged Dependent Variables Can Suppress the Explanatory Power of Other Independent Variables," Political Methodology Annual Meeting, UCLA, July 20-22, 2000.