Armed groups: Competition and political violence
Journal
Journal of Development Economics
ISSN
0304-3878
Type
journal article
Date Issued
2023-05
Author(s)
Abstract
We show that the proliferation of armed groups increases the amount of organized political violence. The natural death of a tribal leader provides quasi-experimental variation in the number of armed groups across districts in Pakistan. Employing event study designs and IV-regressions allows us to isolate the effect of the number of armed groups on political violence from locational fundamentals of conflict, e.g., local financing and recruiting opportunities or government capacity. In line with the idea that armed groups compete for resources and supporters, we estimate semi-elasticities of an additional armed group on political violence ranging from 50 to 60%. Introducing a novel proxy for government counter-insurgency efforts enables us to show that this increase is driven by insurgency groups and not the state. Moreover, we show that groups splitting-up compensate for their capacity loss by switching to non-capital intensive attacks.
Language
English
Keywords
Political violence
Competition
Armed groups
Conflict
Terrorism
Double-counting
HSG Classification
contribution to scientific community
Refereed
Yes
Publisher
Elsevier BV
Volume
162
Subject(s)
Division(s)