Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/145287 
Authors: 
Year of Publication: 
2016
Series/Report no.: 
IZA Discussion Papers No. 9996
Publisher: 
Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA), Bonn
Abstract: 
When do opposition groups decide to mount a terrorism campaign and when do they enter an open civil conflict against the ruling government? This paper models an opposition group's choice between peace, terrorism, and open conflict. Terrorism emerges if executive constraints are intermediate and rents are sizeable. Open conflict is predicted to emerge under poor executive constraints. Analyzing country-level panel data firmly supports these hypotheses, even when relying on within-country variation only in a fixed-effects framework. In particular, both the incidence of terrorism and the likelihood of terrorism onset increase under intermediate executive constraints (following an inverted U-shape) and if large rents are available from natural resources, oil, or foreign development assistance. A one-standard-deviation increase in rents raises casualties by approximately 15 percentage points. Related to civil conflict, moving from an authoritarian regime to comprehensive executive constraints is associated with a decrease in the number of battle-related deaths by approximately 74 percentage points. These findings can help us to better understand and anticipate the underlying decision of opposition groups and their choice between peace, a terrorism campaign, and open conflict.
Subjects: 
conflict
executive constraints
foreign aid
natural resource rents
oil rents
political institutions
rents
terrorism
JEL: 
D74
F35
O11
P47
Q34
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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