Contingency, Inherency, and the Onset of Civil War (original) (raw)

The dynamics of civil war duration and outcome

Journal of Peace Research, 2004

high stakes generally make compromise difficult (Licklider, 1995). Given these challenges, what goes into the calculations rebels and governments use when deciding to end or continue a civil war? Recent scholarship has focused intensively on the 'greed vs. creed' question (see Collier & Hoeffler, 1999; Collier & Hoeffler, 2002a; de Soysa, 2002). These studies attempt to explain the outbreak and duration of civil wars based on political, ethnic, and economic grievances, and typically theorize from the perspective of the non-state combatants. In the past few years, attention has turned back to the role of the state in civil wars. One such line of inquiry probes the effect of

Beyond Zeroes and Ones: The Intensity and Dynamics of Civil Conflict

2014

There is tremendous variation in conflict intensity both across and within civil conflict spells. Using an instrumental variables approach and a rich set of dynamic, empirical models, we find that the intensity of conflict is negatively related to per-capita income. Economic conditions also affect conflict dynamics, as higher per-capita income reduces the persistence of past conflict intensity.

Dismantling the Conflict Trap : Essays on Civil War Resolution and Relapse

2012

Countries that have experienced civil war suffer a greater risk for new conflict than countries with no prior history of civil war. This empirical finding has been called a conflict trap where the legacy of previous war -unsolved issues, indecisive outcomes, and destruction -leads to renewed fighting. Yet, countries like Cambodia, El Salvador, Indonesia, and Mozambique have managed to overcome decade-long conflicts without relapse. This dissertation addresses this empirical puzzle by seeking to dismantle the conflict trap and look at microlevel explanations for civil war resolution and relapse. It adds to existing scholarship in three ways: first, by using disaggregated empirics on war termination and how fighting resumes; second, by exploring government agency in conflict processes; and third, by disaggregating rebel organizations. Essay I present original data on the start and end dates and means of termination for all armed conflicts, 1946-2005. Contrary to previous work, this data reveal that wars does not always end through victory or peace agreement, but commonly end under unclear circumstances. Essay II addresses how developments exogenous to the conflict influence governments' decision to engage in a peace process. The results show that after natural disasters when state resources need to be allocated towards disaster relief, governments are more willing to negotiate and conclude ceasefires with insurgents. Essay III focuses on the post-conflict society, and posits that security concerns among former war participants will push them towards remobilizing into rebellion. The findings indicate that if ex-belligerent elite's security is compromised, the parties of the previous war will resume fighting, while insecurity among former rank-and-file leads to the formation of violent splinter rebel groups. Finally, Essay IV seeks to explain why governments sometimes launch offensives on former rebels in post-conflict countries. The results show that internal power struggles provide leaders with incentives to use force against domestic third parties to strengthen their position against intra-government rivals. Taken together, this dissertation demonstrates that there is analytical leverage to be had by disaggregating the processes of violence in civil war and post-conflict societies, as well as the actors involved -both the government and rebel sides.

How much war will we see? Estimating the incidence of civil war in 161 countries (Working paper

2002

authors ’ and do not necessarily represent the World Bank or its Executive Directors. Quantitative studies of civil war have focused either on war initiation (onset) or war termination and have produced important insights into these processes. In this paper, we complement these studies by noting that equally important to finding out how wars start and how they end is to identify how much war we are likely to observe in any given period? To answer this question, we combine recent advances in the theory of civil war initiation and duration and develop the concept of war incidence, which denotes the probability of observing an event of civil war in any given period. We test the theories of war initiation and duration against this new concept using a five-year panel data-set of 161 countries. Our analysis of war incidence corroborates most of the results of earlier studies on war initiation and duration and enriches those results by highlighting the significance of socio-political varia...

An Empirical Analysis of the Association Between Types of Interventions and Civil War Onset

2015

Quantitative studies have focused on economics, social structures, and lack of political freedoms as being elemental factors for civil war onset. However, these studies have neglected the possibility of a civil war being an unintended consequence of international military intervention. I conduct an empirical analysis of the association between military intervention and civil war onset by collecting data for twenty countries within the Middle East/North African regions from 1980 to 2000. Using the International Military Intervention data set, I categorized "international intervention" into nine different types, all of which were regressed with intrastate war data derived from the Correlates of War project. Two logit regression analyses were used to obtain the results, one of which analyzes civil war at time t and the independent variables at t-1. Additionally, marginal effects were computed to reflect accurate estimates. Overall, the data revealed that certain types of interventions are conducive to civil war onset, such as those pursuing terrorists or rebel groups across the border, gaining or retaining territory, and humanitarian interventions. Other types of interventions, such as those for social protection purposes, taking sides in a domestic dispute, and for the purpose of affecting policies of the target country, has a negative association with civil war onset. Two case studies, the 1953 U.S. intervention into Iran and the 1979 Soviet Union intervention into Afghanistan, reflects the observed findings of the two regression models. The occurrences of international military interventions and civil wars have increased iv dramatically since the end of World War II; therefore, it is important to have a better understanding of the association between the two events. To my knowledge, this is the first study that has categorized different types of interventions under which results indicate that the purpose of a military intervention does effect the likelihood of civil war onset. Scholars may develop this study further with the goal of establishing a better understanding of both phenomena so that we can find more efficient ways of preventing them. v ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Foremost, I would like to thank Dr. Mirilovic for his patience and guidance throughout the writing process. His encouragement and kind advice have been most helpful in the organization of this thesis. I would also like to extend my gratitude to Dr. Lanier, who has aided me immensely with the methodology portion of this thesis. Assembling a panel data set is complex; thus, I am most appreciative to Dr. Lanier for assisting me with ideas on how to accomplish this ambitious datacollecting and data analysis project. Finally, I would like to thank Dr. Sadri for being a member on my committee. His expertise on the Middle East / North African regions are most respected and I am grateful that he took the time to sit on my committee. vi

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.

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.

Sustaining the Peace: Determinants of Civil War Recurrence

Int Interact, 2007

Over half of all civil wars that began and ended between 1944 and 1997 were followed by at least one if not more episodes of civil war. We present a model to explain which characteristics of a civil war and the postwar environment make civil war more or less likely to recur. We test this model with data on civil wars that began and ended between 1944 and 1997. Findings suggest that civil wars are less likely to recur following rebel victories and peace agreements supported by peacekeeping forces. Postwar economic development also reduces the probability of civil war recurrence, and the longer the peace can be sustained, the less likely civil war is to recur. These effects hold regardless of whether the previous war was ethnically based or not, and whether it was secessionist or revolutionary.