Replication Data for: Conditional Relationships between Drought and Civil War in sub-Saharan Africa

Environmental security scholars continue to debate the existence of generalizable linkages between civil war to scarcity-inducing weather. Drawing on the multidisciplinary literature on climate change adaptation, we claim the destabilizing consequences of environmental crises are dependent upon several conditions that affect a state’s susceptibility to scarcity-induced political violence. Our analysis of drought severity and civil war onset in sub-Saharan Africa (1962-2006) uncovers three relevant sociopolitical conditions: food security, ethnopolitical exclusion, and political stability. Drought does not exacerbate the high risk of war in the fractionalized, unstable, and food-insecure states thought to be especially susceptible. Instead, drought negates the peace-favoring attributes of stable states with less vulnerable and more homogenous populations. During severe drought, states with the lowest ex ante risk of civil war are no less likely to suffer war than recently unstable, ethnically divided, and food-insecure states.