Fractionalization and the Fight over Natural Resources: Ethnicity, Language, Religion, and the Onset of Civil War

We use three different measures of fractionalization (with varying potential for\nmembers of one fraction to “mendaciously” pass for a member of another) to revisit the\ncorrelation between natural resources and the onset of conflict. The combination of ethnic\nfractionalization and resource wealth seems to translate into a greater risk of war, but the\nsame is not true for linguistic and religious fractionalization. This is consistent with the\n“greed hypothesis” as a driver of conflict. However, we also find that the direct effect of\nresource wealth tends to attenuate the risk of war, and the net effect of resources on conflict\nis ambiguous.