The Price of Prosperity : Investigating Oil Dependence, Ethnic Group Characteristics, and Civil Armed Conflict

This thesis aims to explain why some groups experience civil armed conflict over oil whilst others do not. Given the context argued by previous research which asserts that State oil-dependence significantly increases the risk for civil armed conflict onset, I hypothesize that group actors are likely to experience civil armed conflict over oil when they possess strong group organizational capabilities. I argue this because group actors who do not possess the military resources to go to war would rationally not do it considering the relatively low chance of success of resource-less war-waging. While State oil-dependence theoretically provides group actors with reasons and opportunities to fight by generating greed and grievances, greed and grievances alone are not able to provide the fighting capacity needed for a group to initiate civil war over oil. This implies a need for the group actor to be well-organized in order to have the capabilities to go to war over oil. This study employs a structured focused comparison of four empirical cases, and finds that group actors are likely to experience civil armed conflict over oil when they possess high levels of ethnic homogeneity and pre-existing organizational history