Date of Award

1-1-2016

Document Type

Masters Thesis

Degree Name

M.A.

Organizational Unit

Josef Korbel School of International Studies

First Advisor

Joseph Szyliowicz, Ph.D.

Second Advisor

Lewis K. Griffith

Third Advisor

Andrea Stanton

Keywords

Civil war, Intrastate conflict, Muslim world, Oil resources, Repression, Terrorism

Abstract

An influential conventional wisdom holds that oil causes intrastate conflict and that oil in particular explains the prevalence of domestic political violence in the Muslim world. I show that the relationship between oil and intrastate conflict in the empirical literature is more ambiguous than commonly assumed. I test to see if the various measures of the oil resource predict any dimension of intrastate conflict in the Muslim world. My results show oil resources are associated with lower levels of civil conflict, repression and terrorism in Muslim-majority countries. This supports the 'rentier state' perspective which states that regimes with significant oil resources mitigate conflict by strengthening the state relative to the populace and by distributing rent. Lastly, I argue the reasons for the concentration of conflict in Muslim world are not understood but the fact that Muslim 'rentier states' are able to effectively mitigate conflict offers some clues.

Publication Statement

Copyright is held by the author. User is responsible for all copyright compliance.

Rights Holder

Kumail Wasif

Provenance

Received from ProQuest

File Format

application/pdf

Language

en

File Size

61 p.

Discipline

Political Science

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