The Resource Curse Reconsidered

It is often noted in resource curse literature that agricultural economies are less conflict-prone than countries managing mobile, high-value resources. In the vast literature linking resource endowment and conflict, cash crop economies are often considered immune to civil violence, believed to stand apart from the many horrific episodes of violence and civil war centered on "lootable" wealth (such as alluvial diamonds, tin, tungsten, or other conflict minerals). But many incidents of violence-especially local violence-are in fact occurring in cash crop economies. Drawing on newspaper accounts, policy analyses, ethnographic interviews, and in-depth reports by international organizations, I examine an episode of local violence in 2010 in Kyrgyzstan. Through this case study, the article provides a better understanding of local violence in cash crop economies that can apply to other weak states.Keywords: Kyrgyzstanlocal violencemobilizationrent seekingresource curse AcknowledgmentsThe author wishes to thank two anonymous reviewers for the useful feedback in revising this article.NotesWeak states are those whose juridical sovereignty is not matched by their empirical sovereignty. In particular, these states lack "infrastructural power," the capacity to implement policies in society. Robert H. Jackson and Carl G. Rosberg, "Why Africa's Weak States Persist: The Empirical and the Juridical in Statehood," World Politics 35, no. 1 (October 1982): 1-24; Michael Mann, The Sources of Social Power: The Rise of Classes and Nation-States, 1760-1914, Vol. II (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993).Paul Collier and Anke Hoeffler, "Greed and Grievance in Civil War," Oxford Economic Papers 56, no. 4 (2004): 563-596; "Greed and Grievance in Civil War," World Bank Working Paper Series 2000-18 (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2000).Pierre Englebert and James Ron, "Primary Commodities and War: Congo-Brazzaville's Ambivalent Resource Curse," Comparative Politics 37, no. 1 (2004): 61-81; James D. Fearon, "Primary Commodity Exports and Civil War," Journal of Conflict Resolution 49, no. 4 (2005): 483-507; Michael L. Ross, "What Do We Know about Natural Resources and Civil War?" Journal of Peace Research 41, no. 3 (2004): 337-356; Richard Snyder and Ravi Bhavnani, "Diamonds, Blood, and Taxes: A Revenue-Centered Framework for Explaining Political Order," Journal of Conflict Resolution 49, no. 4 (2005): 563-597. See also, Macartan Humphreys, Jeffrey D. Sachs, and Joseph E. Stiglitz, eds., Escaping the Resource Curse (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007); Paul Collier, The Plundered Planet: Why We Must - and How We Can - Manage Nature for Global Prosperity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011).Jeremy Weinstein, for instance, argues that rebel groups governing cash crop economies are more inclusive toward the local population: "where the realization of revenues from economic endowments requires civilian labor, rebel groups tend to build structures that are more broadly participatory." Jeremy Weinstein, Inside Rebellion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 173.Ross, "What Do We Know About Natural Resources and Civil War?" (see note 3 above).Philippe Le Billon, "The Political Ecology of War: Natural Resources and Armed Conflict," Political Geography 20 (2001): 561-584.Macartan Humphreys, "Natural Resources, Conflict, and Conflict Resolution," Journal of Conflict Resolution 49, no. 4 (August 2005): 508-537.Matthias Basedau and Jann Lay, "Resource Curse of Rentier Peace? The Ambiguous Effects of Oil Wealth and Oil Dependence on Violent Conflict," Journal of Peace Research 46, no. 6 (November 2009): 757-776.Kevin M. Morrison, "Nontax Revenue, Social Cleavages, and Authoritarian Stability in Mexico and Kenya: 'Internationalization, Institutions, and Political Change Revisited,'" Comparative Political Studies 44, no. 6 (2011): 719-746; Kevin M. Morrison, "Oil, Nontax Revenue, and the Redistributional Foundations of Regime Stability," International Organization 63 (2009): 107-138.For more on rents, see Gordon Tullock, The Social Dilemma (Blacksburg, VA: University Publications, 1974); "Rent Seeking as a Negative-sum Game," in James M. Buchanan, Robert D. Tollison, Gordon Tullock, eds., Toward a Theory of a Rent-Seeking Society (College Station, TX: A&M University Press, 1980), 16-36.On the timing, sequence, and duration of causal mechanisms, see Anna M. Grzymala-Busse, "Time Will Tell: Temporality and the Analysis of Causal Mechanisms and Processes," Comparative Political Studies 44, no. 9 (2011): 1267-1297.Severine Autesserre, The Trouble with the Congo: Local Violence and the Failure of International Peacebuilding (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010).Jason Seawright and John Gerring, "Case Selection Techniques in Case Study Research: A Menu of Qualitative and Quantitative Options," Political Research Quarterly 61, no. 2 (2008): 294-308.Alexander L. George and Andrew Bennett, Case Studies and Theory Development in the Social Sciences (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press 2005), 23.Total cases of contemporary weak states were drawn from the 2008 Failed State Index ranking of the 60 or so weakest states. Then, cases with "lootable" wealth have been removed. All states have some mix of cash crops and other economic resources. The category of cash crop economies is defined as those without deposits of "lootable" wealth. See The Fund for Peace (2008) for full list; see Richard Snyder, "Does Lootable Wealth Breed Disorder? A Political Economy of Extraction Framework," Comparative Political Studies 39, no. 8 (October 2006): 943-968.Nicholas Sambanis, "Using Case Studies to Expand Economic Models of Civil War," Perspectives on Politics 2, no. 2 (2004): 259-279.Peter Andreas and Joel Wallman, "Illicit Markets and Violence: What Is the Relationship?" Crime, Law and Social Change 52, no. 3 (2009): 228.Scott Straus, "Wars Do End! Changing Patterns of Political Violence in Sub-Saharan Africa," African Affairs 111, no. 443 (2012): 194-195.Catherine Boone, "Electoral Populism Where Property Rights Are Weak: Land Politics in Contemporary Sub-Saharan Africa," Comparative Politics 41, no. 2 (2009): 183-201; Scott Straus, "'It's sheer horror here!': Patterns of Violence during the First Months of Cote d'Ivoire's Post-Electoral Crisis," African Affairs 110, no. 440 (2011): 481-489.Donal Cruise O'Brien, Saints and Politicians: Essays in the Organization of a Senegalese Peasant Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975).Marc Evans, "Ni paix ni guerre: The Political Economy of Low-Level Conflict in the Casamance," in S. Collinson, ed., Power, Livelihoods and Conflict: Case Studies in Political Economy Analysis for Humanitarian Action (London: Overseas Development Institute, 2003), 37-52.Nicholas Van De Walle, "Rice Politics in Cameroon: State Commitment, Capability, and Urban Bias," Journal of Modern African Studies 27, no. 4 (1989): 579-599; Susanne Muller, "The Political Economy of Kenya's Crisis," Journal of East African Studies 2, no. 2 (2008): 185-210; International Crisis Group, "Nepal's Troubled Tarai Region," Asia Report No. 136 (Brussels: International Crisis Group, July 9, 2007).Georgi M. Derlugian, "Abkhazia: A Summary of Ethnic Conflict," in J. Gary Jenkins and Esther E. Gottlieb, eds., Identity Conflicts: Can Violence Be Regulated? (New York: Transaction Publishers, 2007), 177-180.Zsal Anjaparidze, "Infighting Plagues Abkhaz Separatist Camp," Eurasian Daily Monitor 1, no. 39 (June 24, 2004); Inal Khashiq, "Abkhazia's Political Roulette Goes On," Caucasus Reporting Service 222 (November 17, 2004); Georgi M. Derlugian, "Abkhazia: A Broken Paradise," in Monica Narula, Shuddhabrata Sengupta, Jeebesh Bagchi, and Ravi Sundaram, eds., Sarai Reader 07: Frontiers (Delhi: CSDS, 2007), 65-82.Joel S. Migdal, Strong Societies and Weak States: State Capabilities in the Third World (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988), 255-256.Frances Hagopian, Traditional Politics and Regime Change in Brazil (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996); Catherine Boone, Merchant Capital and the Roots of State Power in Senegal, 1930-1985 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992); Thomas Callaghy, The State-Society Struggle: Zaire in Comparative Perspective (New York: Columbia University Press, 1984).Catherine Boone, Political Topographies of the African State: Territorial Authority and Institutional Choice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003); Victor V. Magagna, Communities of Grain: Rural Rebellion in Comparative Perspective (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991); Robert Brenner, "The Agrarian Roots of European Capitalism," Past and Present 97 (1982): 16-113; Michael Hechter and William Brustein, "Regional Modes of Production and Patterns of State Formation in Western Europe," American Journal of Sociology 85, no. 5 (1980): 1061-1094; Perry Anderson, Lineages of the Absolutist State (London: New Left Books, 1974); Barrington Moore, Jr., Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modern World (Boston: Beacon Press, 1966).Marcus Kurtz, "The Social Foundations of Institutional Order: Reconsidering War and the 'Resource Curse' in Third World State Building," Politics & Society 37, no. 4 (December 2009): 479-520; Kimuli Kasara, "Tax Me If You Can: Ethnic Geography, Democracy, and the Taxation of Agriculture in Africa," American Political Science Review 101, no. 1 (February 2007): 159-172.Samuel L. Popkin, The Rational Peasant: The Political Economy of Rural Society in Vietnam (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979); James C. Scott, The Moral Economy of the Peasant: Rebellion and Subsistence in Southeast Asia (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1977); Jeffrey M. Paige, Agrarian Revolution: Social Movements and Export Agriculture in the Underdeveloped World (New York: The Free Press, 1975); Eric R. Wolf, Peasant Wars of the Twentieth Century (New York: Harper and Row, 1969); E. J. Hobsbawm, Primitive Rebels: Studies in Archaic Forms of Social Movement in the 19th and 20th Centuries (New York: W. W. Norton, 1959).Agricultural production in weak states generates a form of capital that is highly immobile, because it is a) stationary (difficult to relocate), b) monitored by the state (difficult to conceal), and c) sensitive to tax (difficult to transfer into private wealth). Carles Boix, Democracy and Redistribution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), especially 38. Catherine Boone argues that rising competition for land in sub-Saharan Africa produces tensions that generate different forms of conflict. While conflicts arise over land across decades, in many cash crop economies competition is not over land (which rarely changes hands) but over the income, or rents, that can be accrued from controlling that land. Catherine Boone, Property and Political Order in Africa: Land Rights and the Structure of Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014).This analysis draws on my book, State Erosion: Unlootable Resources and Unruly Elites in Central Asia (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2013).Margaret Levi, Of Rule and Revenue (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1988).By the late Soviet period, 80 percent of industrial output was in northern regions (Chui, Issyk-kul, and Bishkek). Narodnoe khozaistvo Kyrgyzskoi SSR (Frunze: Goskomstat KyrSSR, multiple issues).Kathleen Collins, Clan Politics and Regime Change in Central Asia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006); Pauline Jones Luong, Institutional Change and Political Continuity in Post-Soviet Central Asia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).Olivier Ferrando, "Les Violences ethniques de juin 2010 au Kirghizstan: l'identité manipulée," Revue d'études comparatives Est-Ouest 41, no. 3 (September 2010): 109-136, 117.Eric McGlinchey, Chaos, Violence, Dynasty: Politics and Islam in Central Asia (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2011), 80-82.World Bank data on "Net official development assistance and official aid received (current US$)," http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/DT.ODA.ODAT.CD (accessed March 3, 2015).Index Mundi, http://www.indexmundi.com/agriculture/?country=kg&commodity=cotton&graph=production (accessed March 3, 2015).McGlinchey, Chaos, Violence, Dynasty (see note 36 above), 80-81. On the massive rents flowing into Akaev (and later Bakiev) coffers for American and Russian use of Manas Air Base, see Alexander Cooley, Base Politics: Democratic Change and the U.S. Military Overseas (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2008).Alexander Kupatadze, "Organized Crime before and after the Tulip Revolution: The Changing Dynamics of Upperworld-Underworld Networks," Central Asian Survey 27, no. 3 (2008): 279-299.Scott Radnitz, Weapons of the Wealthy: Predatory Regimes and Elite-Led Protests in Central Asia (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2010).Anna Matveeva, "Violence in Kyrgyzstan, Vacuum in the Region. The Case for Russia-EU Joint Crisis Management," Working Paper (London: LSE Civil Society and Human Security Research Unit, 2011).Erica Marat, "Kyrgyzstan's Fragmented Police and Armed Forces," The Journal of Power Institutions in Post-Soviet Societies 11 (2011): 4.International Crisis Group [hereafter ICG], "Kyrgyzstan: A Hollow Regime Collapses," Asia Report No. 102 (April 27, 2010), 8.Ibid., 5.D. Solovyov, "4 Die in Raid by Kyrgyz Security Forces; Rights Groups Says Soldiers Beat Villagers," The Gazette, Montreal, June 22, 2010, 19A.Ferrando, "Les Violences ethniques de juin 2010 au Kirghizstan" (see note 35 above), 117-120. Similar struggles-bringing a spate of political assassinations-between competing elites occurred across Kyrgyzstan from 2005-2007. Alisher Khamidov, "Kyrgyzstan's Unfinished Revolution," China and Eurasia Forum Quarterly 4, no. 4 (2006): 39-43; Johan Engvall, "The State as Investment Market: An Analytical Framework for Interpreting Politics and Bureaucracy in Kyrgyzstan" (PhD Diss., Uppsala University, 2011).Ferrando, "Les Violences ethniques de juin 2010 au Kirghizstan" (see note 35 above), 119.Eric McGlinchey, "Exploring Regime Instability and Ethnic Violence in Kyrgyzstan," Asia Policy 12 (July 2011): 79-98.Matveeva, "Violence in Kyrgyzstan, Vacuum in the Region" (see note 42 above), 5; Kyrgyzstan Inquiry Commission [hereafter KIC], "Report of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry into the Events in Southern Kyrgyzstan in June 2010," OSCE: Kyrgyzstan Inquiry Commission (May 3, 2011), 13, 15.KIC, "Report of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry into the Events in Southern Kyrgyzstan in June 2010" (see note 50 above), 14-15.Ainagul Abdrakhmanov and Timur Toktonaliev, "Kyrgyz Leader Tries to Rally Support," Institute for War and Peace Reporting RCE Issue 608 (April 2010).Ibid., 15."What Role Did Crime Kingpins Play in Southern Kyrgyzstan's Violence?" June 23, 2010, www.eurasianet.org.ICG, "Kyrgyzstan: A Hollow Regime Collapses" (see note 44 above), 5.Marat, "Kyrgyzstan's Fragmented Police and Armed Forces" (see note 43 above), 5.KIC, "Report of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry into the Events in Southern Kyrgyzstan in June 2010" (see note 50 above), 20."K. Baibolov: V Jalal-Abade situatsiia polnost'yu kontroliruetsya provodyatsya operativno-sledstvennye i rozysknye meropriyatiya," Aki-press, June 14, 2010, http://kg.akipress.org/news:222431."Situatsiia v Oshe," Aki-press, June 16, 2010, http://kg.akipress.org/news:218151; "V sele Blagoveshchenka Jala-Abadskoi oblasti v magazine naigena protivotankovaya ruchnaya granata," Svodka, June 16, 2010, http://svodka.akipress.org/news:50981.ICG, "Kyrgyzstan: A Hollow Regime Collapses" (see note 44 above), 14.KIC, "Report of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry into the Events in Southern Kyrgyzstan in June 2010" (see note 50 above), 69.ICG, "Kyrgyzstan: A Hollow Regime Collapses" (see note 44 above), 13."V 4 zonakh Osha snaipery, soobshchaet komendatura goroda," Aki-press, June 16, 2010, http://kg.akipress.org/news:223781.Marat, "Kyrgyzstan's Fragmented Police and Armed Forces" (see note 43 above), 8.KIC, "Report of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry into the Events in Southern Kyrgyzstan in June 2010" (see note 50 above), 30-31.Markowitz, State Erosion: Unlootable Resources and Unruly Elites in Central Asia (see note 31 above), chapter 6.Koray Çaliskan, Market Threads: How Cotton Farmers and Traders Create a Global Commodity (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010); Carol Off, Bitter Chocolate: Investigating the Dark Side of the World's Most Seductive Sweet (Toronto: Random House of Canada, 2006); Robert H. Bates, Open-Economy Politics: The Political Economy of World Coffee Trade (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998); Gwendolyn Mikell, Cocoa and Chaos in Ghana (New York: Paragon, 1989).Additional informationNotes on contributorsLawrence P. MarkowitzLawrence P. Markowitz is affiliated with the Department of Political Science & Economics, Rowan University

Cash crop · Grievance · Resource curse · Mining and Resource Management · Natural Resources and Economic Development · Political Conflict and Governance

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