Jonathan Honig

Third-party states considering whether to militarily intervene in an outside civil war may make the decision to act based on perceived self-interest in the valuable natural resources which may be found in a civil war-afflicted state. That being said, what characteristics of a third-party state are associated with policies of military interventionism? Drawing from selectorate theory, I hypothesize that the type of domestic regime in a potentially interventionist thirdparty state will affect when that country decides to adopt public policies leading to military intervention in an external civil war. My analysis examines the effect of natural resources, specifically petroleum and coltan, on which type of regime will intervene given those resources are located in the state experiencing the civil war. In line with my three hypotheses, I find that democracies will intervene more readily in countries which are oil producers and are experiencing a civil war, autocracies will intervene more readily in countries with known oil reserves (but not necessarily home to oil production), and similarly autocracies are more likely to intervene in coltan-possessing countries in the hope of gaining control over this valuable and easy to extract mineral when compared to their more domestic audience-sensitive democratic counterparts. The results largely support my theory that democracies will more readily act to support the energy system as a whole by intervening where vulnerable infrastructure and personnel associated with petroleum production are already in place, but are now in danger, in order to maintain a relatively comfortable standard of living for their populace. On the other hand, autocracies will intervene more readily where there are unclaimed and vulnerable known deposits of coltan and petroleum in order to reward their elites.

Jonathan Honig is a third-year Ph.D. Candidate and Teaching Associate in the Political Science Department at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. His research interests include foreign policy, conflict mediation, global security, civil wars, dictatorships, and the role of natural resources in conflict. He received his Master’s degree in Media and Communications, as well as his Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration, both at Middle Tennessee State University.