Using case studies to expand the theory of civil war

This working paper considers the use of a comparative case study research design to make a scholarly contribution to the civil war literature by expanding and complicating economic models of civil war. The author extends and modifies the Collier-Hoeffler (CH) model by drawing causal inferences about the causes of civil war based on a set of comparative case studies that were designed to answer a set of questions that are central to the CH model.

The paper also has a methodological contribution in demonstrating how large-N quantitative research and qualitative case-study research designs can be usefully combined to address a substantively important problem.