Despite criticism on Paul Collier’s findings, greed trumps grievances in explaining causes of civil war. True or false? Discuss.
In addressing a given essay topic, students should critically engage with theory and bring empirical evidence to address the research question they have chosen. Essays must be fully and carefully referenced using one of the major conventions consistently. The essay should be done in APA 6 citation style. There should be a case study that would provide evidence to the findings. According to the structure of the course, it would be best to use at least 3 course readings that I will provide in the additional materials and some extra about greed and grievances in civil wars. The stance to take for a better grade would be that grievances do trump greed in explaining causes of civil wars. It would also be best if the example used to provide evidence comes from Eastern Europe. The recommended optional readings for this essay are:
Berdal, Mats. “Beyond greed and grievance-and not too soon.” Review of International
Studies 31, no. 4 (2005): 687.
Lecture 1: Introduction to Conflict and Cooperation in Global Politics
Lecture 2: Causes of violent conflict• Ross, M. L. (2004). What do we know about natural resources and civil war? Journal
of peace research, 41(3), 337-356.
• Nathan, L. (2008). The causes of civil war: the false logic of Collier and
Hoeffler. South African Review of Sociology, 39(2), 262-275.
• Côté, I., & Mitchell, M. I. (2017). Deciphering ‘sons of the soil’ conflicts: a critical
survey of the literature. Ethnopolitics, 16(4), 333-351.
