Resources and Governance in Sierra Leone’s Civil War

Abstract

We empirically investigate the role of natural resources, and governance in explaining variation in the intensity of conflict during the 1991-2002 civil war in Sierra Leone. As a proxy for governance quality we exploit exogenous variation in political competition at the level of the chieftaincy. As a proxy for resources we use data on the location of pre-war mining sites. Our main result is that neither governance nor resources robustly explains the onset or duration of violence during the civil war in Sierra Leone.

Decentralised development co-operation

“…For example, the Netherlands VNG International (International Co-operation Agency of the Association of Netherlands Municipalities) provides capacity building and technical assistance for local governments in 33 countries, including in the context of fragility, migration and forced displacement. Yet, activities are considered too small to merit reporting (22 million EUR in 2017) (VNG International, 2018 [68]).…”

Turkish foreign direct investment and peace in Somalia: a new political stabilization policy

“…Africa is associated with armed conflicts and most of the conflicts are centered on resources. Similar to other African conflicts, Somalia’s conflict is believed to be linked to conflict of resources (Raleigh, 2010; Bradbury, 1994; Elmi and Barise, 2006; Osman, 2007; Shortland et al , 2013; Ingiriis, 2012; Voors et al , 2017). Following the state collapse in Somalia, physical resources became limited, infrastructure remain ill developed, education opportunities are scarce, access to health services is difficult and to achieve a stable daily food is a dream for many households (Ahmed, 1999; Lindley, 2009; François and Sud, 2006; Akpınar, 2013; Ozkan and Orakci, 2015).…”

The Resource Curse - What Have We Learned from Two Decades of Intensive Research: Introduction to the Special Issue

“…First, the resource curse can take place at multiple levels (at the country, regional or local level) and many of its effects are not directly quantifiable (for instance the impacts on social and cultural capital; see Gilberthorpe & Rajak, 2017) -it is for this reason, that a multiscale, multi-disciplinary approach is necessary. The experience of resource-rich regions (for example, in terms of economic performance or conflict) is often different to the overall experience of the country to which they belong (see Voors, Bulte, Papaioannou, & van der Windt, 2017;Porter and Watts, 2017). Second, the resource curse is by no means an iron law -several countries, regions and communities have avoided the curse by encouraging economic diversification, investment and an equitable distribution of accrued rents (Auty, 2017;Porter & Watts, 2017.…”

“…The paper by Voors, Bulte, Papaioannou and van der Windt (2017) contributes to the literature on conflict and natural resource availability by linking within-country spatial and temporal patterns in conflict data (in the lines suggested by van der Ploeg & Poelhekke (2017)) to the quality of governance at the chiefdom level and to georeferenced locations of pre-war diamond mines. The innovation and contribution of their paper lies in investigating the motivations behind conflict at a disaggregated level, utilising local measures of governance and resource availability that are often unavailable for developing countries.…”