Replication data for: Ethnicity, Insurgency, and Civil War by Fearon and Laitin

An influential conventional wisdom holds that civil wars proliferated rapidly with the end of the Cold War and that the root cause of many or most of these has been ethnic and religious antagonisms.We show that the current prevalence of internal war is mainly the result of a steady accumulation of protracted conflicts since the 1950s and 1960s rather than a sudden change associated with a new, post-ColdWar international system.We also find that after controlling for per capita income, more ethnically or religiously diverse countries have been no more likely to experience significant civil violence in this period. We argue for understanding civil war in this period in terms of insurgency or rural guerrilla warfare, a particular form of military practice that can be harnessed to diverse political agendas. The factors that explain which countries have been at risk for civil war are not their ethnic or religious characteristics but rather the conditions that favor insurgency. These include poverty—which marks financially and bureaucratically weak states and also favors rebel recruitment—political instability, rough terrain, and large populations.学界颇具影响力的主流观点认为，冷战结束后内战数量激增，且其中多数乃至绝大多数的根源在于民族与宗教对立。本研究表明，当前国内战争的高发态势，主要是20世纪50至60年代以来迁延不决的冲突持续累积的结果，而非冷战后全新国际体系所催生的突变。我们还发现，在控制人均收入变量后，民族或宗教多样性更高的国家，在该时期并未更容易爆发大规模内战暴力事件。本研究主张，应从叛乱或乡村游击战的视角理解该时期的内战——这是一种可被服务于多元政治诉求的特殊军事作战形式。能够解释哪些国家面临内战风险的因素，并非其民族或宗教属性，而是有利于叛乱滋生的各类条件。这些条件包括贫困——贫困既会导致国家财政与行政能力孱弱，又便于反叛势力招募兵员——、政治不稳定、地形崎岖以及人口规模庞大。