Civil War and International War

Abstract

AbstractMoments of succession often turn violent, unleashing civil and/or international wars. Leveraging the natural death of rulers to identify exogenous variation in successions, this chapter finds that civil wars were more likely in the wake of natural deaths than in normal years. It also shows that the risk of such succession wars was lower in states practicing primogeniture than in states practicing elective monarchy or agnatic seniority. International conflict could of course also be provoked, or at least legitimized, by succession crises, as the numerous wars of succession in European history attest to. The authors find that the natural deaths of rulers were associated with an increased risk of being attacked by rivals, possibly taking advantage of weakness in the regime, or using the succession as a pretext for realizing other political aims.