The Contribution of Geographical Factors to the Intensity and Duration of Civil War: New Evidence from Colombia

By Santiago Montenegro & Álvaro Pedraza

This paper examines and presents new empirical evidence on the impact of geographical sanctuaries, rough terrain, and external frontiers on the intensity and duration of armed political conflict. The paper a) analyzes political violence at the local level, in contrast to most studies that address this phenomenon at the national level; b) explores the determinants of political violence using explanatory variables that encompass both the “motives” and the “opportunities” approaches to political violence; and c) uses extensive geo-referenced data on illegal armed-group activities for Colombia between 1984 and 2012 to identify the variables that are correlated with the intensity and persistence of the conflict. We find that insurgency is most intense and prolonged in municipalities characterized by mountainous terrain, dense forests and jungles, fewer accessible rivers and roads, and proximity to neighboring countries. These results are consistent with the hypothesis that the cost of effectively providing public goods, such as security, increases with the roughness of the territory.