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A Review of the Social Science Literature on the Causes of Conflict

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A Review of the Social Science Literature on the Causes of Conflict Research Report Understanding Conflict Trends A Review of the Social Science Literature on the Causes of Conflict Stephen Watts, Jennifer Kavanagh, Bryan Frederick, Tova C. Norlen, Angela O’Mahony, Phoenix Voorhies, Thomas S. Szayna Prepared for the United States Army Approved for public release; distribution unlimited ARROYO CENTER For more information on this publication, visit www.rand.org/t/rr1063z1 Published by the RAND Corporation, Santa Monica, Calif. © Copyright 2017 RAND Corporation R® is a registered trademark. Limited Print and Electronic Distribution Rights This document and trademark(s) contained herein are protected by law. This representation of RAND intellectual property is provided for noncommercial use only. Unauthorized posting of this publication online is prohibited. Permission is given to duplicate this document for personal use only, as long as it is unaltered and complete. Permission is required from RAND to reproduce, or reuse in another form, any of its research documents for commercial use. For information on reprint and linking permissions, please visit www.rand.org/pubs/permissions.html. The RAND Corporation is a research organization that develops solutions to public policy challenges to help make communities throughout the world safer and more secure, healthier and more prosperous. RAND is nonprofit, nonpartisan, and committed to the public interest. RAND’s publications do not necessarily reflect the opinions of its research clients and sponsors. Support RAND Make a tax-deductible charitable contribution at www.rand.org/giving/contribute www.rand.org Preface The recent spike in violence in places like Syria, Ukraine, and Yemen notwithstanding, the number of conflicts worldwide has fallen since the end of the Cold War, and few of those that remain are clashes between states. Most contemporary conflicts are insurgencies and civil wars. A growing consensus holds that the traditional causes of state-on-state conflicts have become less relevant as seizing territory for ideological or power reasons has become less attractive, and shifts in international norms and rapid availability of information have made coercive control of populations less tenable. Whether these trends represent temporary phenomena or a permanent change remains an open question. Speculation that such forces as globalization, resource scarcity, or climate change will fuel new conflicts is largely unsupported by evidence. This report marshals the results of an extensive review of the literature on the sources and patterns of conflict both during and after the Cold War. It should be of interest to those involved in strategic defense planning, force structure, and force employment. It is intended to stand alone as a review of the social science literature on violent conflict, but it is also intended to serve as an appendix to the RAND report titled Conflict Trends and Conflict Drivers: An Empirical Assessment of Historical Conflict Patterns and Future Conflict Projections.1 Both reports resulted from a project titled Emergence of New Conflict Trends. The project’s objective is to use empirical evidence to identify post–Cold War operational trends in armed conflict and the global strategic trends that characterize and influence the environments in which conflict takes place. It seeks to identify any trends that might portend a change toward state-on- state conflicts. This research was sponsored by the Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff, G-2 (Intelligence), Headquarters, Department of the Army, and conducted within RAND Arroyo Center’s Strategy and Doctrine Program. RAND Arroyo Center, part of the RAND Corporation, is a federally funded research and development center sponsored by the United States Army. The Project Unique Identification Code (PUIC) for the project that produced this document is RAN136469. 1 Thomas S. Szayna, Angela O’Mahony, Jennifer Kavanagh, Stephen Watts, Bryan Frederick, Tova C. Norlen, and Phoenix Voorhies, Conflict Trends and Conflict Drivers: An Empirical Assessment of Historical Conflict Patterns and Future Conflict Projections, Santa Monica, Calif.: RAND Corporation, RR-1063-A, 2017. iii Table of Contents Preface ........................................................................................................................................... iii Tables ........................................................................................................................................... xii Summary ...................................................................................................................................... xiii Acknowledgments ........................................................................................................................ xvi Abbreviations ............................................................................................................................. xvii Part 1 ................................................................................................................................................ 1 1. Introduction ................................................................................................................................. 2 Background ............................................................................................................................................... 2 Purpose and Structure ................................................................................................................................ 2 Applying the Literature Review to the Study of Conflict Trends ............................................................. 5 Caveats ...................................................................................................................................................... 8 Part 2 .............................................................................................................................................. 10 2. Introduction to Interstate Conflict ............................................................................................. 11 Introduction ............................................................................................................................................. 11 Overview of the Literature ...................................................................................................................... 11 Democracy .......................................................................................................................................... 11 Economic Interdependence ................................................................................................................. 11 Wealth ................................................................................................................................................. 12 Demographic and Social Changes ...................................................................................................... 12 International Organizations ................................................................................................................. 12 Territorial Integrity .............................................................................................................................. 13 Nuclear Weapons ................................................................................................................................ 13 Technology .......................................................................................................................................... 13 U.S. Hegemony ................................................................................................................................... 13 Realist Factors ..................................................................................................................................... 14 Definitions and Data ................................................................................................................................ 14 Major Findings ........................................................................................................................................ 15 Implications for Global Trends and Future Conflict ............................................................................... 16 Breakdown in Consensus .................................................................................................................... 16 Increase in Weak State Capacity ......................................................................................................... 17 Messy Democratization ....................................................................................................................... 17 Demographic Pressures ....................................................................................................................... 17 Environmental Pressures ..................................................................................................................... 18 3. Democracy and Conflict ............................................................................................................ 19 Overview ................................................................................................................................................. 19 Summary of the Effects of This Variable ................................................................................................ 20 iv Hypotheses and Literature Review ........................................................................................................
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