CIVIL WAR DIFFERS RADICALLY FROM BOTH INternational war and communal violence. Unlike international war, it is fought outside any structure of rules and entirely within the territory of the society. Unlike communal violence, it implies a rebel organization equipped with armaments and staffed with full-time recruits. Such rebel armies usually have little option but to live off the land. These features typically escalate the social costs of civil war above the costs of either international war or communal violence. For example, the same conflict between Eritrea and Ethiopia generated both a civil war and, following Eritrean independence, an international war...

THIS CHAPTER FOCUSES ONLY ON THE EFFECTS OF civil war within the country that is directly affected. War has economic and social costs. Some of these accrue to the combatants, but many affect people who have no part in the decisions that create and sustain the conflict. Furthermore, many of the adverse consequences of a conflict occur only once it is over and are probably ignored in combatants’ decisions. We begin with the costs that arise during conflict and then turn to the legacy effects.

THIS SECTION DISTINGUISHES BETWEEN THE ECONOMIC and social costs of conflict.

During a civil war...

CHAPTER 1 SHOWED THAT FOR THE COUNTRIES directly affected, civil war is development in reverse, therefore preventing civil war is important for those concerned about the development of low-income countries. However, the constituency for action to prevent war is potentially much larger than this, because civil war has spillover effects for both neighboring countries and the entire international community. This chapter first considers the neighborhood effects and then turns to the global effects.

PEACEFUL COUNTRIES THAT ARE ADJACENT TO COUNTRIES ENgaged in civil war suffer from direct and long-term effects caused by the civil wars of their neighbors.

Civil wars...

CIVIL WAR IS FUELED PARTLY BY THE CIRCUMstances that account for the initial resort to largescale organized violence, and partly by forces generated once violence has started and that tend to perpetuate it. We refer to the initial circumstances as the root causes and to the perpetuating forces as the conflict trap.

Most people think that they already know the root causes of civil war. Those on the political right tend to assume that it is due to longstanding ethnic and religious hatreds, those in the political center tend to assume that it is due to a lack of democracy...

THIS CHAPTER TURNS FROM A MICRO-LEVEL ANALYsis of what circumstances are conducive to rebellion to a macro-level analysis of what determines the global incidence of civil war. It looks at how the incidence of civil war has changed over time and space and attempts to account for these changes in terms of the underlying causes of civil war identified in chapter 3. Civil war is increasingly concentrated in relatively few conflict-prone countries, many of them in Africa. We use the macro-level analysis to investigate how economic development is changing the overall incidence of civil war. Development has not been reaching...

PART I DEMONSTRATED THAT THE BULK OF THE COSTS of civil war, both social and economic, do not accrue to the active participants. A distinct possibility is that the participants will do well out of war while inflicting massive damage. Nor are the victims of civil war confined to those living in the combat-affected country. Civil war is a regional public bad: it reduces incomes and raises mortality elsewhere in the region. It is also a global public bad: through hard drugs, disease, and terrorism it inflicts death, misery, and economic loss among people who know nothing of the conflict....

WITHOUT PURPOSIVE INTERNATIONAL action the incidence of civil war will remain high. Based on past trends, global growth will contribute little to a more peaceful world. The rationale for international action is that more widespread peace would confer global benefits. Civil wars inflict immense social costs, but these costs are largely incidental to the combatants and leaders who determine whether they start and end. For the countries directly affected, civil war is development in reverse. Hence a core part of the international constituency for action to reduce the incidence of civil war consists of those who support a reduction in...