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Post-Conflict Risks
Paul
Collier,
CSAE, University of Oxford
Anke
Hoeffler,
CSAE, University of Oxford
Måns
Söderbom,
CSAE, University of Oxford
WPS/2006-12
ABSTRACT:
Post-conflict societies face two distinctive challenges: economic recovery and risk
reduction. Aid and policy reforms have been found to be highly effective in the economic
recovery. In this paper we concentrate on the other challenge, risk reduction. The postconflict
peace is typically fragile: around half of all civil wars are due to post-conflict
relapses. Both external actors and the post-conflict government must therefore give
priority to reducing the risk of conflict. Our statistical results suggest that economic
development does substantially reduce risks, but it takes a long time. We also find
evidence that UN peacekeeping expenditures significantly reduce the risk of renewed
war. The effect is large: doubling expenditure reduces the risk from 40% to 31%. In
contrast to these results we cannot find any systematic influence of elections on the
reduction of war risk. Therefore, post-conflict elections should be promoted as
intrinsically desirable rather than as mechanisms for increasing the durability of the postconflict
peace. Based on these results we suggest that peace appears to depend upon an
external military presence sustaining a gradual economic recovery, with political design
playing a somewhat subsidiary role. Since there is a simple and statistically strong
relationship between the severity of post-conflict risks and the level of income at the end
of the conflict this provides a clear and uncontroversial principle for resource allocation:
resources per capita should be approximately inversely proportional to the level of income in the post conflict country.
SUGGESTED CITATION:
Paul Collier, Anke Hoeffler, and Måns Söderbom,
"Post-Conflict Risks"
(August 17, 2006).
The Centre for the Study of African Economies Working Paper Series.
Working Paper 256.
http://www.bepress.com/csae/paper256
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