Poverty, Its Correlates, and Their Effect on Civil War Outbreak

AbstractPoverty, poor economic conditions, and civil war are interconnected and cyclical - poverty and poor economic conditions facilitate the outbreak of civil war, which devastates the economy, which makes further violence more likely, and so on. The relationship between poverty, poor economic conditions, and the outbreak of civil war are complicated. In this paper I attempt to clarify those relationships. First, I survey the existing literature regarding how poverty interacts with weak state capacity, dependence on natural resource rents, income inequality, economic decline, patronage relationships, foreign aid, educational attainment, and youth populations to create the conditions for rebellion and civil war. Next, I use quantitative analysis to determine the size of the effect that these factors have on the global incidence of civil war. Finally, I conduct a case study of South Sudan to see if and how the factors contributed to the ongoing conflict there.

Author

• Cilke, Kate

Language

• en

Keyword

• civil war
• intrastate conflict
• causes of conflict
• South Sudan
• poverty

Date created

• 2014

Type of Work

• Master's Thesis

License

• All rights reserved

Rights statement

• In Copyright

GW Unit

• International Affairs

Degree

• M.A.

Advisor

• Spear, Joanna

Committee Member(s)

• Downes, Alexander B

Persistent URL

•  https://scholarspace.library.gwu.edu/etd/1z40ks89g