Economic Subversion in Civil Wars: Evidence from Colombia

• In Event: Poster Session: Frontiers in Conflict Processes

Abstract

In irregular wars, rebel groups that are too weak to defeat the state outright will focus their efforts on slowly eroding the \textit{physical} and \textit{economic} security of the state. A huge literature on terrorism, the targeting of civilians, and guerrilla tactics speaks to the deliberate erosion of physical security, but we have little empirical research on how rebels work to undermine the civilian economy. We provide an early entry in this research area by arguing that, in weak states, rebel groups will choose (at the margin) to target locations that are strategically valuable to the national economy. We leverage historical data from the Colombian conflict to show a robust correlation between how important a municipality is to the country's domestic trade and where rebel groups use economically disruptive tactics, such as land piracy.

Authors

• Anya Stewart, UC Davis

• Juan Fernando Tellez, University of California, Davis