Back to basics [Strategy of Conflict]

From a 2006 article by Roger Myerson titled "Learning From Schelling's Strategy of Conflict":  

. . . [T]he same forces that help people to achieve consistent coordinated expectations in a successful society can become forces for inconsistency of expectations across societies in international relations. Indeed, in international conflicts throughout history, people on each side have regularly failed to understand the other side's perception of justice in their conflict. (p. 13).

. . . [I]nstitution's rules are rationally enforceable iff the utility maximizing best responses for any player are always legal strategies whenever the other players are all expected to use legal strategies (possibly with randomization). (p. 15).

. . . And we still need to learn Schelling's basic lesson that, in a realistic analysis of international conflict, we should consider our adversaries as rational intelligent decision-makers, whose interests are different from ours, but with whom we share a fundamental problem of coordinating mutual strategic expectations. (p- 23).

Actually the article is not basic at all, and it made me remember very useful concepts such as "focal points" in the context of international conflict.  

The Long-Run Effects of the Scramble for Africa

From a paper by Stelios Michalopoulos & Elias Papaioannou 

. . . civil conflict is concentrated in the historical homeland of partitioned ethnicities. We also document that violence against civilians (child soldiering, village burning, abductions, rapes) and territorial changes between rebel groups, militias, and government forces are more prevalent in the homelands of split groups [from the abstract].

The authors . . .

[E]xploit a new rich geocoded dataset that reports information on more than 43, 000 conflict events over the period 1997−2010 [p. 31].

More specifically . . .

Our most conservative estimates suggest that civil conflict intensity is approximately 30% higher in areas where partitioned ethnicities reside as compared to the homelands of ethnic groups that have not been separated by the national borders. We further find that homelands of partitioned groups experience a 5% to 10% higher likelihood of a territorial control change between the government and rebel groups. It is not only army fighting that is concentrated in the homelands of partitioned groups. Violence against civilians is roughly 40% higher in regions where split groups reside. The evidence thus uncovers the on-going violent repercussions of the colonial border design [p. 2].

HT: Jacob A. Jordaan 

U.S. Food Aid and Civil Conflict

We study the effect of U.S. food aid on conflict in recipient countries. Our analysis exploits time variation in food aid shipments due to changes in U.S. wheat production and cross-sectional variation in a country's tendency to receive any U.S. food aid. According to our estimates, an increase in U.S. food aid increases the incidence and duration of civil conflicts, but has no robust effect on inter-state conflicts or the onset of civil conflicts. We also provide suggestive evidence that the effects are most pronounced in countries with a recent history of civil conflict.

That is from a paper by Nathan Nunn & Nancy Qian. 

How does exposure to violence affect behavior?

[I]ndividuals who have either experienced violence themselves, or who live in communities that have been violently attacked, display more altruistic behavior, are more risk seeking, and act less patiently.

Long term consequences:

[In Burundi] civil war violence that occurred between 1993 and 2003 has a clear impact on individual behavior in 2009.

The thesis of poverty traps after civil wars is under scrutiny. 

That is from the paper "Violent Conflict and Behavior: a Field Experiment in Burundi," by Voors et al. (AER, April 2012). A draft is here.