Should economists care about civil war?

One might think so. An episode of civil war, not its absence, is the norm in most countries. That war is often the nation’s singular historical event, with its effects felt generations later. That is as true for America as it is Guatemala or Uganda.

If any economist studies war, it should be those kooky development economists, right? Ted Miguel and I recently did a survey of 63 development economics course syllabi from leading U.S. universities. Only 13 percent of undergraduate courses (and 24 percent of graduate ones) mention the topics “war”, “conflict” or “violence”.

What’s more, two of the most respected and widely taught undergraduate Development Economics textbooks–one by Ray, the other by Todaro–do not even contain the words “war”, “conflict” or “violence” in their subject index.

(My CGD colleague Steve Radelet, who has an equally best-selling textbook, was gleeful when I told him about Ray and Todaro’s omission. “We mentioned it once!” he crowed.)

That’s all begun to change. Civil war is moving to the mainstream in economics. The trouble is, many economists can still only think of one contributor: Paul Collier.

That is a shame. Not because of Paul Collier–he more than anyone is responsible for the current enthusiasm, and he remains the most prolific producer. Rather, it’s a shame because of the vast amount of amazing but under-recognized new work being done, especially by a young crop of political scientists and economists running around war zones.

Ted and I set out to chart the new territory in a new working paper that will come out in the Journal of Economic Literature sometime next year. Almost everything you ever wanted to know about civil war research is here, in bulky but (we hope) entertaining form.

I say almost because historians and sociologists will be disappointed; their work is deeply important, but a paper must scope itself somewhere. But we’re minute in our coverage of the economics and political science lit, we hope. It’s a start.

What becomes apparent is how much the discipline has been asking the same narrow set of questions and using the same mediocre techniques. What’s more exciting are the handful who don’t. We hope you’ll read and comment.

Update: If you’re into the more historical-sociological view (and want to hear from a rational choice skeptic) then Chris Cramer’s new book–Violence in Developing Countries–is a great volume. The greatest pity is the title change: the original UK version was called “Civil War is Not a Stupid Thing”.