In It to Win It: Civil War Victory and the Duration of Authoritarian Regimes (original) (raw)
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Who Wins, Who Loses, Who Negotiates Peace in Civil Wars: Does Regime Type Matter?
Journal of Global Security Studies, 2019
Previous research has shown that the outcome of a civil war is related to conflict duration: military victory by either the government or the rebels occurs early if it occurs at all, and the longer a civil war lasts, the more likely it is to end in a negotiated settlement. The models of civil war duration and outcome that have produced these findings are built on characteristics of the civil war and less on attributes of the state itself, other than where the state lies on the Polity autocracy-democracy scale. We propose that the risk of government victory versus negotiated settlement varies not only between democracies versus authoritarian regimes but across the different authoritarian regime types as identified by Geddes, Wright, and Franz. The distinguishing attributes of these regime typesdemocracy, one-party, personalist, military, monarchicalresult in variation across regime types in their ability to defeat a rebel movement, their vulnerability to being defeated by such a movement, and their willingness and ability to negotiate a peace agreement with rebel movements. Results from a series of competing risk models using the Uppsala-PRIO Armed Conflict Dataset demonstrate that how civil wars end is partly a function of the characteristics of the regime. Who Wins, Who Loses, Who Negotiates Peace in Civil Wars: Does Regime Type Matter? Research on how civil wars end has identified a number of characteristics of the civil war nation and of the conflict itself that affect whether the conflict will end in government victory, rebel victory, or a negotiated peace agreement (Mason and Fett 1996; Mason, Weingarten and Fett 1999; DeRouen and Sobek 2004; Brandt et al. 2008). Within this body of research, studies have identified discrete attributes of the regime itself that affect the duration and outcome of civil wars. Among these attributes are the quality of state institutionsi.e., whether it is a democracy,
Arguably, the most puzzling question pertaining to recent analyses of the democratic transition is: Why has there been a tendency for democratizing states to stall or retreat along the path to full democracy? We approach this question by assuming that authoritarianism is a form of low-intensity civil conflict perpetuated by states on non-state actors and state-faction rivals, and that full democracy is civil peace (a cessation of violence, coercion and intimidation). This assumption allows for adapting the "youth bulge model of the risk of civil conflict" to investigate the democratic transition. To assess our "successive transitions model" of progress to full democracy, we use polity scores from the Polity IV Dataset (Center for International Development and Conflict Management, University of Maryland, 2005) and population age distribution data (UN Population Division, 2005). We hypothesize that partial democracies (polity scores from 1 to 7) and limited autocra...
2015
Abstract. Arguably, the most puzzling question pertaining to recent analyses of the democratic transition is: Why has there been a tendency for democratizing states to stall or retreat along the path to full democracy? We approach this question by assuming that authoritarianism is a form of low-intensity civil conflict perpetuated by states on non-state actors and state-faction rivals, and that full democracy is civil peace (a cessation of violence, coercion and intimidation). This assumption allows for adapting the “youth bulge model of the risk of civil conflict ” to investigate the democratic transition. To assess our “successive transitions model ” of progress to full democracy, we use polity scores from the Polity IV Dataset (Center for International Development and
Suicide by Competition? Authoritarian Institutional Adaptation and Regime Fragility
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2016
While it is clear that contemporary authoritarian incumbents use democratic emulation as a strategy in the hopes of stabilizing and extending their tenure in power, this does not mean it is always effective. Indeed, an extant literature presents strong evidence that the opening of the pursuit of power to electoral competition can make authoritarianism vulnerable. Unless it is mediated by other factors, democratic emulation by authoritarian incumbents cannot simultaneously both stabilize their rule and make it more vulnerable to democratic transitions. These two literatures leave us with a set of contradictory generalizations. Some scholars argue that reiterated multiparty competitive elections present a gradual path from authoritarianism to democracy. Can they at the same time be a source of authoritarian stability? In this paper we seek to resolve this paradox by employing a unique combination of event history modeling to assess how experiences with multiparty elections influence patterns of authoritarian survival and transition in 108 countries from 1946-2010. Our results suggest that while authoritarian regimes face increasing odds of failure during the first three iterated multiparty and competitive election cycles, subsequent iterated cycles are far less dangerous to their survival. Given that few authoritarian regimes survive past three elections, these findings should be seen as more supportive of the democratization by elections thesis than democratic emulation as a way to enhance authoritarian survival.
Foreign-Imposed Regime Change, State Power and Civil War Onset, 1920–2004
British Journal of Political Science, 2010
This article proposes that foreign-imposed regime changes (FIRCs) make civil war onset more likely when they damage state infrastructural power, as in the context of interstate war, and when they change the target’s political institutions as well as leadership. Using rare events logit to analyse civil war onset from 1920 to 2004, it is found that interstate war and institutional change are virtually necessary (though not sufficient) conditions for an FIRC to cause a civil war. Many control variables are included. The results are robust to different research design specifications; nevertheless, they cannot confirm that occupation troops make an FIRC more likely to spark civil war.
Does Warfare Matter? Severity, Duration, and Outcomes of Civil Wars
Does it matter whether a civil war is fought as a conventional, irregular, or symmetric nonconventional conflict? Put differently, do ''technologies of rebellion'' impact a war's severity, duration, or outcome? Our answer is positive. We find that irregular conflicts last significantly longer than all other types of conflict, while conventional ones tend to be more severe in terms of battlefield lethality. Irregular conflicts generate greater civilian victimization and tend to be won by incumbents, while conventional ones are more likely to end in rebel victories. Substantively, these findings help us make sense of how civil wars are changing: they are becoming shorter, deadlier on the battlefield, and more challenging for existing governments-but also more likely to end with some kind of settlement between governments and armed opposition. Theoretically, our findings support the idea of taking into account technologies of rebellion (capturing characteristics of conflicts that tend to be visible mostly at the micro level) when studying macro-level patterns of conflicts such as the severity, duration, and outcomes of civil wars; they also point to the specific contribution of irregular war to both state building and social change.
Institutionalising electoral uncertainty and authoritarian regime survival
European Journal of Political Research
Authoritarian incumbents routinely use democratic emulation as a strategy to extend their tenure in power. Yet, there is also evidence that multiparty competition makes electoral authoritarianism more vulnerable to failure. Proceeding from the assumption that the outcomes of authoritarian electoral openings are inherently uncertain, it is argued in this article that the institutionalisation of elections determines whether electoral authoritarianism promotes stability or vulnerability. By 'institutionalisation', it is meant the ability of authoritarian regimes to reduce uncertainty over outcomes as they regularly hold multiparty elections. Using discrete-time event-history models for competing risks, the effects of sequences of multiparty elections on patterns of regime survival and failure in 262 authoritarian regimes from 1946 to 2010 are assessed, conditioned on their degree of competitiveness. The findings suggest that the institutionalisation of electoral uncertainty enhances authoritarian regime survival. However, for competitive electoral authoritarian regimes this entails substantial risk. The first three elections substantially increase the probability of democratisation, with the danger subsequently diminishing. This suggests that convoking multiparty competition is a risky game with potentially high rewards for autocrats who manage to institutionalise elections. Yet, only a small number of authoritarian regimes survive as competitive beyond the first few elections, suggesting that truly competitive authoritarianism is hard to institutionalise. The study thus finds that the question of whether elections are dangerous or stabilising for authoritarianism is dependent on differences between the ability of competitive and hegemonic forms of electoral authoritarianism to reduce electoral uncertainty.
A Duration Analysis of Democratic Transitions and Authoritarian Backslides
Comparative Political Studies, 2011
Recent theories of political development have emphasized redistributive demands as the main drivers of democratic transitions and consolidation. The authors employ Cox duration models to evaluate a number of economic, institutionalist, and sociological theories of regime transition, using global data from 1970 to 1999. This study suggests that demands for redistribution are insufficient explanators of political transitions. The authors find that transitions to democracy depend primarily on a high level of oppositionist social mobilization and, secondarily, favorable patterns of economic distribution. On the other hand, a high level of socioeconomic development is by far the best guarantor of democratic resiliency, whereas mass political conflict endangers consolidation once democracy has been introduced. The study also reveals that institutionalist factors are less influential than socioeconomic characteristics in explaining regime transitions. This study highlights the contribution of social movement theory to the study of regime transitions.
Leader Survival Strategies and the Onset of Civil Conflict: The Paradox of Coup-Proofing
It is paradoxical that authoritarian leaders often hold power for long periods of time, despite their states being chronically plagued with rebellion. This tendency has been explained in party by studies that have argued the practice of coup-proofing both increases the mobilizational capacity of dissidents and reduces the military effectiveness of the state (Roessler 2011; Powell 2014b). However, these arguments are lacking on one major respect: though regular armed forces are often allowed to whither when coup-proofing, the state could possess substantial military capabilities in the form of a well-armed and well-trained coup-proofing apparatus. I theorize that a missing part of the coup-proofing and rebellion story is the willingness of autocrats to deploy their paramilitaries. In short, I argue that coup-proofing is more likely to contribute to rebellion when leaders are most hesitant to deploy the units associated with the practice: when coup risk is high. The theory is empirically tested using a global sample for the years 1971-2011. Results indicate that heavily coup-proofed authoritarian regimes do in fact see a considerable increase in civil war likelihood when the risk of a coup is high. In contrast to prior studies, the results also suggests that a stronger coup-proofing apparatus is not associated with rebellion when coup risk is low.
Do autocrats who pursue partial liberalization of their regimes grossly miscalculate and put their political survival at risk? This could be the case according to plausible interpretations of statistical studies on regime type and regime stability. These studies indicate that ``mixed'', ``incoherent'' or ``semi-democratic'' regimes are less durable than pure forms of both democratic and dictatorial regimes. However, the short duration of regimes coded as semi-democratic might be due to other factors, such as these regimes relatively often being multi-party autocracies and military regimes rather than more durable monarchies or one-party regimes, or that semi-democracy is endogenous to latent factors that reduce regime-survival prospects in general. In this paper, we identify four such potential ``methodological'' explanations to why semi-democracies are relatively short-lived. We investigate the relevance of these explanations empirically by replicating and then expanding the analysis in \citet{Gates:2006AJPS}. Although the relative instability of semi-democracies may have been exaggerated in previous studies, we do find that semi-democracies are inherently less durable. However, when only considering regime changes towards more democracy, there is no difference between autocracies and semi-democracies. Furthermore, we find only weak evidence of differences in the duration of different authoritarian regime types, such as military and single-party regimes, once accounting for differences in degree of democracy. However, there is some evidence that monarchies are relatively durable. Furthermore, in contrast to being a semi-democracy, being a competitive authoritarian regime does not reduce survival prospects.