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Journal of International Security Studies

33 Public Goods Provision and Civil Conflict Recurrence

LU Lingyu
[Abstract] According to Neo-Instituional Economics, different types of public
goods are provided to the citizenry as a reward for their compliance with the existing
political order as well as their due tax-paying. Long-term improper or insufficient
provision of political and socio-economic goods is supposed to incur “resentment”
among citizens, undermine the legitimacy of the political order, open a window of
opportunity for mobilization and recruitment of the masses by armed anti-government
groups, and eventually give rise to civil conflicts. Grievances, however, do not
vanish automatically with the termination of a war. Whether the grievances of
ordinary war participants can be addressed or not depends on the changes in the
provision of public goods. Either ruling groups or rebel forces need to improve the
provision of public goods as a means to success. It is also a key factor that
determines whether the civil conflict will resurge. The “survival analysis” based on
the Armed Conflict Database (1947-2008) lends support to the main hypothesis of
this essay that public goods provision significantly reduces the risk of civil conflict
recurrence. The empirical research also demonstrates that peace building is mainly a
domestic political process, in which the impacts of international wars and economic
interdependence are mild although significant. The provision of domestic political
goods, particularly political participation and competition, plays a far greater role in
preventing the recurrence of conflicts than that of other types of public goods.
Compared to economic goods, social welfare goods generate timely and more
pronounced effects that are conducive to peace. In addition, the recurrence of ethnic
conflicts is empirically subject to more types of public goods provision than that of
non-ethnic ones. As a result, ethnic conflicts are relatively more easily resolved and
stand a good chance of achieving lasting peace.
[Keywords] public goods provision, civil conflicts, conflict recurrence, conflict traps
[Author] LU Lingyu, Professor, School of Politics and Public Administration, East
China University of Political Science & Law (Shanghai, 201620).

64 The Onset of Ethnic War: A General Theory
TANG Shiping

[Abstract] This paper develops a general theory about the onset of ethnic war, with
two analytic innovations: a mechanism-based approach toward social facts and an
emphasis on dynamic interactions. With two meta-mechanisms, namely the security
dilemma/spiral model and intergroup-intragroup interactions, as meta-synthesizers,
the paper brings together numerous factors and mechanisms scattered in the current

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