Civil war and U.S. foreign influence

Albornoz, Facundo; Hauk, Esther

Abstract

We study how foreign interventions affect civil war around the world. In an infinitely repeated game we combine a gambling for resurrection mechanism for the influencing country with the canonical bargaining model of war in the influenced country to micro-found sudden shifts in power among the domestic bargaining partners, which are known to lead to war due to commitment problems. We test two of our model predictions that allow us to identify the influence of foreign intervention on civil war incidence: (i) civil wars around the world are more likely under Republican governments and (ii) the probability of civil wars decreases with the U.S. presidential approval rates. These results withstand several robustness checks and, overall, suggest that foreign influence is a sizable driver of domestic conflict. © 2014 The Authors.

Citation

Albornoz, F., & Hauk, E. (2014). Civil war and U.S. foreign influence. Journal of Development Economics, 110, 64-78. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jdeveco.2014.05.002

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: May 11, 2014
• Online Publication Date: May 20, 2014
• Publication Date: 2014-09
• Deposit Date: Aug 2, 2016
• Publicly Available Date: Aug 2, 2016
• Journal: Journal of Development Economics
• Print ISSN: 0304-3878
• Electronic ISSN: 1872-6089
• Publisher: Elsevier
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 110
• Pages: 64-78
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jdeveco.2014.05.002
• Keywords: Civil war, Foreign influence, US politics
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/734999
• Publisher URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304387814000534
• Contract Date: Aug 2, 2016