Wartime legislative political inclusivity and the likelihood of negotiated ends to civil wars

Abstract

ABSTRACT Many scholars have argued that political inclusivity helps pre-empt civil war incidence and helps build peace and democracy after a civil war ends. However very little work has been done on assessing the effects of the inclusivity of war time legislatures on how civil wars end. This paper addresses this lacuna using the ‘diversity in leadership’ approach to explain the likelihood of negotiations initiated to end civil wars. This approach holds that the inclusion of different political viewpoints leads to innovative solutions to intractable political challenges (such as efforts to end civil wars). Using data from the Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP) and the Database on Political Institutions (DPI) from 1975–2020, I find that relatively more political fractionalised war time legislatures are significantly more likely to lead to attempts at negotiated ends to conflicts, when compared to less fractionalised legislatures. However, the size of the opposition in the wartime legislature, and the presence of legalised political wings of rebel groups, are unrelated to whether a negotiated settlement occurs (a finding that questions the idea that representation of anti-government views help bring about efforts at peace).