The Relationship between the Illegal Cultivation of Hard-Drug Plants and Revolutionary Wars, Ethnic Conflicts, and Corruption

This research analyzes the relationship between the illegal cultivation of hard-drug plants and the two factors of internal armed conflicts and corruption. The majority of the literature suggests that internal wars and corruption have a positive impact on the illegal cultivation. However, there are some other studies that reject any connection between them and imply an impact of weak state mechanism with no or little conflicts. Moreover, most of the discussions revolve around the case studies and there are too few studies systematically analyze and try to find a pattern between these phenomena. Trying to fill this gap, this study breaks down the internal armed conflicts as revolutionary and ethnic wars and illegal hard-drug plants as opium poppy and coca bush, and then, examines the connection between them. This study also breaks down the illegal cultivation as the presence and magnitude and the internal wars as the presence and intensity. The panel data include observations that cover 131 countries and the years between 1990 and 2008. The results support the impact of internal wars on the illegal cultivation rather than the situation of no relationship or weak state mechanism with no or little impact, and partially support the impact of corruption on the illegal cultivation. The findings revealed that presence of revolutionary wars have a positive impact on the presence of illegal cultivation of opium poppy and coca bush while the presence of ethnic wars do not. Additionally, corruption does not have a positive impact on the presence of opium poppy or coca bush cultivation. On the other hand, it was revealed that the more intense revolutionary war the larger coca bush cultivation and the more intense ethnic war the larger opium poppy cultivation. Additionally, corruption has a positive impact on the magnitude of opium poppy cultivation but not on the magnitude of coca bush cultivation.;Keywords: Revolutionary wars, ethnic conflicts, corruption, natural resources, illegal cultivation of hard-drug plants, coca bush, opium poppy, panel data.