14 Some evidence is consistent with this alternative view. One is that weak constraints on leader‟s actions towards their own group are characteristic of conflict countries. Data already cited show that conflicts occur disproportionately in countries without competitive elections. Subjective measures of opportunistic behavior by governments (the rule of law and corruption indicators from International Country Risk Guide, available for 39 conflict countries) tell a similar story: they stood at 2.1 and 2.6 the year before conflict, compared to 3.8 and 3.5 for all non-conflict country/years (higher scores indicate greater rule of law and less corruption; the maximum is six).

Chassang and Padró i Miquel (2009) observe that a negative productivity shock reduces the reservation wages of potential military recruits. However, because shocks are transitory, they have a negligible effect on the value of future production around which conflicts are fought. Two groups each choose a subset of their members to fight the other group. Non-fighters continue to be productive, paying wages to fighters sufficient to cover their opportunity costs of foregoing productive activity. A negative economic shock reduces this opportunity cost more than it does the future rents from productive activity, triggering conflict.

However, this asymmetric effect depends on another, implicit assumption: that armed citizens refrain from using their military advantage to expropriate a share of all future rents. The greater the share of future rents that armed members of the group can capture, the less it is the case that temporary income shocks reduce the costs of conflict more than the stakes of conflict. This implicit assumption holds precisely in countries where armed forces are disorganized and less able to enforce their claims on future rents. Among countries where this is likely to be the case, the observed link between income shocks and conflict is predictably strong. Miguel, et al. (2004) show that negative income shocks, instrumented by rainfall, have a large, positive effect on the probability of civil war in SubSaharan Africa. They emphasize that this region is appropriate for their test because it relies heavily on rain-fed agriculture. It is also appropriate, however, because in this region, armed groups are particularly unable to enforce claims to future rents. In settings where they can, income shocks would be expected to have a smaller effect.

In OECD countries, the armed forces are exceptionally well-organized and yet do not make large claims on economic rents. The conditions under which armed forces exercise restraint in predating on the population are another area where more research is needed. However, one promising explanation for this restraint is the level of organization of unarmed citizens. In these countries, the capacity for collective action by citizens, whether through well-established political parties or local governments, allows them to more easily resist military efforts to extract a share of future rents. It also allows them to punish leaders who tolerate undisciplined armed forces, however, an explanation for high levels of organization of security forces.

The evidence in Besley and Persson (2009) can be interpreted in a similar light. They demonstrate that higher prices for a country‟s commodity exports increase the risk of conflict only in countries with low scores on the Polity IV index of executive constraints. They take this as support for their argument that rents cause conflict when political checks and balances are absent that would compel governments to share rents with the opposition. The alternative interpretation the emerges from the discussion here is that weak executive constraints are an indication that citizens cannot act collectively to restrain leaders, so that leaders refrain from sharing rents with everyone, and not only the opposition. In such