What Can the Collective Action Problem Tell Us about the Recurrence of Civil War and the Long-term Stability of a Country? Page: 45
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Measuring the Independent Variables
To determine if the issues driving the initial war affected the likelihood of a subsequent
war or wars, several variables were included in the analysis. Stability variables include identity,
democracy (Polity score) and democracy (Polity score)2 squared. The first measures whether or
not the type of war was an identity war. The variable employed to measure this is the variable
"Wartype" which Doyle and Sambanis (2000a) coded as "1" if the type of war is an ethnic,
religious and/or identity conflict and "0" if it was ideological, revolutionary and/or another type
of war.
Two variables were used to measure a nation's level of the economic development, GDP
per capita and the infant mortality rate, both of which are standards in the literature. Economic
development is somewhat difficult to measure due to the fact that several of the countries in the
data set's GDP numbers are based on estimates because it is difficult and sometimes dangerous
to get the data when fighting is still going on. Doyle and Sambanis (2000b) use a variety of
sources to fill in the missing gaps; however, there may be some measurement problems.17 The
two primary sources are the World Bank (data is reported in 5-year period averages from 1960-
1995) and the Banks Crossnational Survey, 1949-1991. The next variable intended to measure
17 The sources used by Doyle and Sambanis (2000b) are the World Bank, Country Data and WDI; Banks
Crossnational Survey, 1949-1991; Penn World Tables 5.1 Barro and Sala-I-Martin (1995) for the years 1960, 1985,
and 1990.
World Bank data reported reflects 5-year period averages from 1960-1995. If war is more than 11 years from 1976,
1986, or 1996 they do not report World Bank data but rather the Bank' s Crossnational Survey.
GDP in the Banks Crossnational survey data is consistently lower than that of the World Bank data for the same
countries and years. Doyle and Sambanis (2000b) used the Banks Crossnational survey data for the following
countries: Algeria I, Argentina, Bolivia, Cambodia (data for the first observation is used in the second), China I & II,
Columbia I, Costa Rica, Cuba, Cyprus, Dominican Republic, Ethiopia, Guatemala I, India I, Indonesia I & II & III,
Iraq I & II, Korea I & II, Laos, Lebanon I & II, Paraguay, Philippines I, Rwanda I, Sudan I, Uganda I, and Yemen II.
Banks' Crossnational survey data are not necessarily for the beginning year of the war, but the year closest to that
was selected (Doyle and Sambanis 2000b).45
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Kohler, Matthew. What Can the Collective Action Problem Tell Us about the Recurrence of Civil War and the Long-term Stability of a Country?, thesis, December 2005; Denton, Texas. (https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc4955/m1/49/: accessed July 17, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, UNT Digital Library, https://digital.library.unt.edu; .