What role do greed and grievance play in civil war - Essay Example

Download file to see previous pages On the one hand revolts could develop because the insurgents desire riches by seizing control over resources; on the other hand they could emerge because insurgents want to cleanse the society from corruption, injustice, and abuse perpetrated by the incumbent regime. Current evidence and theories demonstrate that civil wars are based on motivations that reveal an interaction between greed and grievance.
The more broadly recognised arguments largely stress the grievance thesis, which speculates some kind of political or resource scarcity or dispossession. In contrast, the greed theory explains that dissidents rise up in quest of self-centred economic gain. Valuable and major resources such as timber, diamonds, and oil constitute the base of the disputable commodities over which dissidents contest their governments. Furthermore, the concept of ‘greed’ works as a suitable name to define self-centred motives and the assets obtainable to fulfil certain benefits. Basically, a solid resource support works as a device for mobilisation.
Numerous academics studying civil strife since the Cold War have a tendency to place emphasis on the costs or material aspects of civil war and to view this kind of conflict as a disturbance of ‘normal’ political, economic, and social dynamics in a society. However, participants in such conflict usually have a rooted motive in prolonging it—wars usually fulfil an array of economic and political interests, particularly within unstable, fragmented, or weak states. The weakness of economic performance in the long-run is directly and strongly associated with defective, dysfunctional systems that generate conflicts and dilemmas of their own, as well as an oppressive society and extensive rent seeking, which could be promoted by the existence of particular kinds of resource rents.
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