How different are the correlates of onset and continuation of civil wars

Bibliographic Data

ID3916525
AuthorsMichael Bleaney (0000-0003-0588-1700, School of Economics, University of Nottingham, [email protected]), Arcangelo Dimico (0000-0003-2601-6847, University of Nottingham)
Year2011
Volume48
Issue2
Pages145-155
Publication date2011-03-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Peace Research (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0022-3433 • E-ISSN: 1460-3578
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/0022343310394697
OpenAlexW1986391617
LanguageEN
Citations received13
References cited23

It is very common to analyse the factors associated with the onset and continuation of civil wars entirely separately, as if there were likely to be no similarity between them. This is an overstatement of the theoretical position, which has established only that they may be different (i.e. less than perfectly correlated). The hypothesis that the explanatory variables are the same is not theoretically excludable and is empirically testable, both for individual variables and for combinations of them. Starting from this approach yields a rather different picture of the factors associated with the continuation of civil wars, because the relatively small sample size means that confidence intervals on individual coefficients are wide in this case. It is shown here that country size, mountainous terrain and (in most datasets) ethnic diversity seem significant for the continuation of civil wars, starting from the null hypothesis that variables affect onset and continuation probabilities identically, rather than entirely independently. One variable that affects onset and continuation significantly differently is anocracy, which we find to matter only for onset. Civil war is more likely if it occurred two years previously, as well as one year previously, which indicates that wars are more likely to restart after only one year of peace, and also more likely to stop in their first year. The combined model strengthens the result that ethnic diversity matters (it is consistently significant across datasets, whereas it is not when onset is analysed separately), although in the UCD/PRIO dataset it is significant only for onset. By contrast, if continuation is analysed independently, virtually nothing is significant except a pre-1991 dummy and a dummy for civil war two years previously

Continuation · Contrast (vision) · Diversity (politics) · Econometrics · Ethnic group · Null hypothesis · Political science · Sample (material) · Sample size determination · Similarity (geometry) · Sociology · Spanish Civil War · Statistics · Variable (mathematics) · Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science · Culture, Economy, and Development Studies · Demography · International Development and Aid · Law · Mathematics · Political Conflict and Governance · Psychology

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