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The three papers, which comprise this dissertation, revisit the interconnected issues of civil war, natural resources, and politics. Specifically, the first paper attempts to understand how natural resource abundance causes civil war. To this end, I test the impact of a variety of measures of resource abundance and political variables. I find that when political variables are added to the seminal Collier and Hoeffler civil war model, the impact of natural resource exports disappears, indicating that resource wealth may encourage civil war by undermining government stability.