Political Economy of an Armed Conflict: An Analysis of Civil War in Sierra Leone

Abstract

The political economy of armed conflicts creates many opportunities to examine any armed conflict
from variety of dimensions, mark the underlying causes, and how many intervening variables
influence the conflict resolution and peace building process. The political economy of a civil war
like in Sierra Leone can be tough to study as there have been the domination of both political and
economic factors, where diamonds turned out to be a resource curse. Meanwhile other significant
factors such as ethno-religious dimensions, socio-economic injustice, and unstable political
environment worked as catalysts for the armed conflict. This paper attempts to explore all
fundamental dimensions and elements of armed conflict in Sierra Leone with a view to offering an
in-depth analysis of its political economy. The paper uses the theoretical concepts from “greed
versus grievance” and “rent seeking behavior” to build the framework; and analyzes the elements of
ethnicity, culture and governance with regard to civil war. It shows the way diamonds became a
resource curse in Sierra Leone.