A critique of “resource-based” theories of colombia’s civil war

Abstract

In recent years, several Colombian scholars have studied this country’s civil conflict through the lenses of economic reasoning and state-of-the-art statistical testing. Their analyses place most of the explanatory burden of the conflict on the existence of lootable resources and organized crime, not on any specific socio-economic factor of Colombia’s reality (“objective causes”). This paper criticizes their claims while accepting their criteria and methods. In particular, it contends that their formal approach to civil conflicts is flawed, a flaw that carries over to the type of empirical tests conducted and that there are several gaps in the reasoning from statistical results to the overall interpretation of the conflict.

En los últimos años, varios académicos colombianos han estudiado el conflicto civil de este país a través de la lente del razonamiento económico y el examen estadístico de punta. Sus análisis ubican la mayor parte de la carga explicativa del conflicto en la existencia de recursos saqueables y crimen organizado, en vez de atribuirla a cualquier otro factor socioeconómico de la realidad colombiana (“causas objetivas”). Este trabajo critica sus posiciones aunque acepta sus criterios y métodos. En particular, sostiene que su enfoque formal hacia los conflictos civiles es impreciso, imprecisión que se debe al tipo de exámenes empíricos.