Critical review of Collier and Fearons articles - Essay Example

Fearon and Laitin had taken data for the period of 1945 to 1999 from 161 countries which had minimum half a million population. On the other hand, Collier and Hoeffler have focused on the data from 1960 to 1999 of 98 countries and have used econometric model to predict civil war. The paper would critically review the articles for the operational definitions and measurements of key theoretical concepts for their validity and reliability. The article broadly tries to examine the various factors that may lead to civil unrest and insurgency in countries across the across.

The authors have used the data on 161 countries for the period 1945 to 1999, made available from Singer and Small, 1994 and updated to include Kargil and Eritrean wars. They have consciously scrutinized and refuted the three popular beliefs which could have caused civil wars. They are: prevalence of civil war in 1990s was due to cold war and changing pattern of societies across the world after WWII; ethnic and religious diversity facilitate make countries vulnerable to internal conflicts and civil wars; and ethnic and political grievances are strong contenders for propelling civil wars.

The authors have concluded that the major cause that may lead to civil war and insurgency is the socio-economic conditions of the regions where poverty is rampant. The article has extensively looked at various factors of unrest like civil war, insurgency and ethnicity. Civil war is broadly defined as public revolt against the state policies that tries to overpower the state machineries of administration to gain leverage. Ethnicity describes the demographic segmentation of the population based on culture, race and color.

Insurgency is the most violent form of internal conflict where armed groups, using guerrilla techniques attack civilians and government machineries for their vested interests. Thus, insurgency primarily is associated with killing and threats to damage of public private property in order to