Repression, Dissent, and the Onset of Civil War

Abstract

The prevailing scholarly wisdom is that weak states, or resource-poor states, are the most prone to civil war. Yet many weak states never experience civil war. Why then are some weak states prone to civil war while others are not? The author offers a theory that explains how dissidents and states interact to jointly produce civil war. In sum, states that repress their citizens are the most likely to kill citizens and to generate dissident violence. This insight resolves an academic puzzle and when tested provides a model with better predictive ability than previous models.