Foreign Aid and Severity of Civil Conflict in Sub-Saharan Africa

초록

Under what conditions does civil conflict in Sub-Saharan Africa become severe? This article seeks to reveal the relationship between the size of ODA and the severity of civil conflict in Sub-Saharan Africa. We claim that a large volume of ODA is likely to deter civil conflict from escalating. Western donors’ concern for economic interests can prompt embattled rulers who receive a large amount of ODA to refrain from projecting force brutally and escalating the conflict. The effect of ODA size, however, hinges on type of civil conflict and regime type. A large volume of ODA staves off the escalation of civil conflict if the government combats secessionist insurgents and embraces some degree of democracy. We conduct OLS analyses to test our argument. The statistical results generally confirm our argument, which implies that donors need to increase ODA in order to prevent civil conflict in a recipient state from raging on, but this policy is effective for secessionist conflict and in democratic states.

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