Per Capita Income: The evidence here is mixed. Three of the four states that
engaged in civil wars, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia, were in the lowest quartile in
terms of per capita income. Tajikistan, however, experienced a particularly nasty civil
war between Communist and Islamic Fundamentalist elements, but was in the highest
quartile in terms of per capita income. Other states’ per capita incomes, combined with
their polity scores, fit expectations – those states with per capita incomes below the top
quartile that did not experience war were either autocracies or democracies. Though the
majority of the states fit expectations, the Tajikistan result really brings this hypothesis
into question. Other hypotheses that might intuitively explain Tajikistan’s higher per
capita income combined with war (for example, if Tajikistan had extensive oil or non-
fuel mineral exports that artificially inflated per capita income) did not hold. Tajikistan’s
primary export, cotton, does not explain this result.
Population: At least in the Soviet successor states, there is no support for this
hypothesis. All of the states that experienced war had less than the average population of
successor states (all were located between the lowest quartile and average). If anything,
these results indicate the exact opposite relationship between population and war than
that proposed by the hypothesis. Once one factors in polity ratings, there is marginal
support for this hypothesis, since the largest states, Ukraine and Uzbekistan, are
democratic and autocratic, respectively. This could explain why these large population
states did not have civil wars, it does not explain, however, why states with small
populations were the ones to experience civil wars in this admittedly limited sample.
Primary Exports: In the successor states, there is once again little support for this
hypothesis, despite the findings of Collier & Hoeffler, Fearon & Laitin, and Ross.
Azerbaijan is the only state that fits the profile. Oil comprises 90% of this anocracy’s
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