Zeitschrift für Politikwissenschaften und öffentliche Angelegenheiten
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â�?�?Investigating the Causes of Civil Wars in Sub-Saharan Africaâ�? Case Study: The Central African Republic and South Sudan

Agberndifor Evaristus

Civil wars are not new and they predate the modern nation states. From the time when nations gathered in welldefined or near defined geographical locations, there has always been internal wrangling between the citizens and the state for reasons that might not be very different from place to place. However, the tensions have always mounted up such that people took to the streets first to protest and sometimes, the immaturity of the government to listen to the demands of the people radicalized them for bloodshed. This paper shall empirically examine the cause of civil wars in Sub-Saharan Africa having at the back of its thoughts that civil wars are most times associated to political, economic and ethnic incentives. This paper shall try in empirical terms using data from already established research to prove these points. Firstly, it shall explain its independent variables which apparently are some underlying causes of civil wars. Secondly, it shall consider the dense literature review of civil wars and shall look at some definitions, theories of civil wars and data presented on a series of countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. Lastly, it shall isolate two countries that will make up its comparative analysis and the explanations of its dependent variable by which it shall seek to understand what caused the outbreaks of civil wars in those two countries. The arguments to be made about the causes of civil wars in the isolated cases shall either prove or disprove the hypothesis of the study and this will in effect have an effect on the formulation of a theory.