Extant research shows that the presence of natural resources can prolong civil wars. But research also indicates that as rebel groups become stronger, conflicts tend to shorten. These studies suggest an unclear association among the three variables—resources, rebel strength, and conflict duration. If resources increase the fighting ability of rebels, then why do they not shorten conflicts? To understand this relationship, we examine incidents of maritime piracy, which unlike other resources are more clearly exploited by rebel groups rather than states and offer new insight on how this might affect the persistence of civil war. The findings suggest that the use of piracy by weaker rebel groups shortens conflict but prolongs it when exploited by stronger rebel groups. We think our conditional analyses allow us to discern insurgencies driven at least in part by greedy rebels and therefore better illuminate the causal process by which resource wealth prolongs civil war.

中文翻译：

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助长叛乱：海盗行为和内战持续时间

现有研究表明，自然资源的存在可以延长内战。但研究也表明，随着反叛团体变得更强大，冲突往往会缩短。这些研究表明，资源、反叛力量和冲突持续时间这三个变量之间的关联并不明确。如果资源增加了叛军的战斗力，那为什么不缩短冲突呢？为了理解这种关系，我们研究了海盗事件，与其他资源不同，海盗事件更明显地被反叛团体而不是国家利用，并提供了关于这可能如何影响内战持续的新见解。研究结果表明，较弱的反叛组织使用盗版可以缩短冲突，但如果被强大的反叛组织利用，则会延长冲突。