Power Distribution and Oil in the Sudan: Will the Comprehensive Peace Agreement Turn the Oil Curse into a Blessing?

摘要

Insights from A.F.K. Organski's work on parity and war provide robust and rich explanatory power in understanding international conflict. Several recent applications of this theoretical structure to sub national groups also demonstrate strong support for a parity conflict relationship between competing domestic parties (Benson et al 1997; Benson and Kugler 1998). In this paper, we demonstrate that this theoretical structure has general explanatory power in identifying the necessary conditions for conflict both between and within states, and serves as a useful tool in forecasting the prospects for conflict or cooperation. We study the regional distributions of capabilities in the Horn of Africa to account for the context of conflict in the Sudan and then evaluate the prospects for peace following the 2011 anticipated referendum on independence established in the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement. Two major findings emerge. The referendum will not affect the regional hierarchy in the Horn of Africa. However, the necessary conditions for conflict do emerge between Northern and Southern Sudan given the referendum, with most of the posited scenarios suggesting the possibility of renewal of the decades long North South conflict.