Matthew DiGiuseppe, Roos Haer, Babak RezaeeDaryakenari
{"title":"Farming then fighting: agricultural idle time and armed conflict","authors":"Matthew DiGiuseppe, Roos Haer, Babak RezaeeDaryakenari","doi":"10.1017/psrm.2024.6","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"\n Policymakers and scholars have long proposed that willingness to participate in armed conflict is influenced by citizens' income-earning opportunities. Testing this opportunity cost mechanism has led to mixed results. One reason for this might be the fact that current proxies can also serve as indicators to test grievance-based theories. In this study, we construct a more suitable measure. We use crop calendars and crop location data to build an index of agricultural idle time for first administration units on the African continent from 1990 to 2017. We test the explanatory power of this measure by examining its relationship with armed conflict. Our results show that agricultural idle time increases the probability of observing armed conflict by more than 20 percent.","PeriodicalId":47311,"journal":{"name":"Political Science Research and Methods","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.5000,"publicationDate":"2024-03-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Political Science Research and Methods","FirstCategoryId":"90","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1017/psrm.2024.6","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"POLITICAL SCIENCE","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Policymakers and scholars have long proposed that willingness to participate in armed conflict is influenced by citizens' income-earning opportunities. Testing this opportunity cost mechanism has led to mixed results. One reason for this might be the fact that current proxies can also serve as indicators to test grievance-based theories. In this study, we construct a more suitable measure. We use crop calendars and crop location data to build an index of agricultural idle time for first administration units on the African continent from 1990 to 2017. We test the explanatory power of this measure by examining its relationship with armed conflict. Our results show that agricultural idle time increases the probability of observing armed conflict by more than 20 percent.