How State Presence Leads to Civil Conflict

Political scientists and policy-makers have long argued that state weakness leads to civil conflict while enhancing state power helps prevent violence. Why, then, has increased state capacity worldwide recently coincided with more civil conflicts? This study argues that enhanced state presence at the sub-national level—a symptom of growing state capacity—may induce violent resistance from the established non-state powers such as local leaders and communities in the short term. Empirically, I conduct two analyses, one at the province level and the other at the ethnic group level. To measure state presence, I use accuracy of census data in the first analysis and global ground transportation data in the second analysis. Results demonstrate that increased state presence triggers civil conflict, particularly in the first five years of such increasing state presence, and this effect is stronger in remote and ethnically heterogeneous regions. Evidence also suggests that ethnic groups settled in peripheral regions are prominent resisters to state penetration. This paper thus expands prior understanding of the role of state power in civil conflicts.