Replication Data for: The Hard Power of Natural Resources: Oil and the Outbreak of Militarized Interstate Disputes

According to conventional wisdom, strategic natural resources like oil are harmful to international peace. Nonetheless, there is little comparative work on the link between resource abundance and interstate conflicts. Analyzing the impact of oil on militarized interstate disputes on both a monadic and dyadic level of analysis for the period from 1946 to 2001, this paper shows that oil in fact influences the conflict potential between countries. Results of logistic regressions suggest that countries enjoying a high oil production in absolute terms are more likely to be involved in disputes. We find that oil production is associated with a higher risk of initiating conflict while countries enjoying a high oil production (or high oil reserves) are more frequently the target of military actions. Relative measures of oil abundance such as per capita oil pr oduction, in contrast, do not affect countries’ dispute proneness. Increased militarization, the internationalization of intrastate violence as well as the indulgence of an oil-dependent world community – rather than domestic political mechanisms inherent to the rentier state – are likely to explain our findings.