NATURAL RESOURCES AND TERRITORIAL CONTENDERS : A Quantitative Study on the Effects of Natural Resources on Separatists’ Survival

Sammanfattning: Territorial armed conflicts contradict the rule of sovereignty and territorial integrity but are also supported by the law of self-determination. In this grey area of international politics, separatist movements have become significant drivers of armed conflict. Additionally, natural resources’ prolonging effects on conflict duration have been widely researched and confirmed by various different findings. This study aims to combine and explore these two themes and their relations to each other, and unlike previous studies, apply the analysis on an actor level rather than conflict level. This study proposes two hypotheses, where H1 states that territorial contenders’ use of natural resources increase the group’s survival span compared to those that do not, and H2 hypothesis that non-lootable resources are more responsible for this effect than non-lootable resources. The hypotheses are tested through OLS regressions and a Robustness test on data derived from the UCDP Dyadic Dataset, the Rebel Contraband Dataset, the UCDP External Support Dataset, the FORGE dataset and the Non-State Actor dataset. The first hypothesis finds support in the empirical analysis, while the second hypothesis does not. Due to several limitations of the study, the validity of the results is questionable. Still, the findings provide new understanding of territorial contenders and natural resources effects in conflict settings.