Civil War Onset Research Articles

Why Onset Matters: Warfare, Intensity, and Duration in Civil War

Are civil wars shaped by how they start? While existing literature points to the path-dependent nature of conflict, the link between the type of onset and wartime dynamics have been largely overlooked. Building on a recent typology capturing the dynamics of civil war onset (1944–2020), I analyze conflict trajectories, focusing on three macro-level wartime dynamics: warfare, intensity, and duration. This article shows that how large-scale armed conflicts begin (e.g., whether they start as peripheral conflicts or are fought centrally) helps us predict how intensely they will be fought or how long they will last. These findings show that onset matters beyond signaling the start of large-scale conflict and tells us about the dynamics that will likely follow. Altogether, this article establishes a new process-oriented macro-level research program in the field of conflict analysis.

The Influence of “The Little Prince” on Communication Between Asylum-Seeking Children and Their Host Community Peers

Since the onset of the Syrian civil war in 2011, Syrians have sought refuge in various nations, with Türkiye notably emerging as a prevalent destination. Due to Türkiye’s “open door” policy, rougbly 3.5 million Syrians have been conferred temporary protected status, with nearly half being children. Given the recent mass migrations, enduring migration flows, and substantial numbers of asylum-seeking children, fostering respect for diversity among children has become crucial. This research, therefore, was conceptualized to offer solutions within school social work aimed at promoting peace for asylum-seeking children facing segregation/discrimination. The study focuses on transforming the attitudes of host community children toward asylum-seeking children through literary works specifically “The Little Prince.” Utilizing a Parallel Mixed Methods Design, 30 participants were selected via purposive sampling. The study investigated: “How does the implementation of school social work through literary works influence respect for differences, tolerance and love among children?” The findings suggest that integrating school social work practices with artistic mediums, particularly literary works, should be considered for social work interventions targeting children and their social environments within educational programs in Türkiye.

The Impact of Commercial Military Actors on Armed Conflict Termination, 1990–2010

Abstract For several decades, the rate of civil war onset has outpaced the rate of conflict termination leading to a “relentless accumulation of ongoing civil wars” (Brandt). The deployment of commercial military actors (CMAs), i.e., private military and security companies and mercenaries, has been considered by some observers as an opportunity to put a halt to this trend, and end a war by writing a cheque. Others are more skeptical and consider CMAs to rather aggravate crises. The argument put forward in this investigation is that a cheque issued early in the conflict facilitates termination, while a later one does not. In the initial state of the conflict, contestants are unprepared to fight, lack capability, and are vulnerable to defeat. However, due to their own weakness, contestants are frequently unable to exploit the opportunity. A CMA intervention early in the conflict can remedy a client's weakness and enable exploitation of the opponent's weakness, and, in turn, conflict termination becomes more likely. The overall results show that CMA intervention within the first year of the conflict is associated with an increased risk of termination as opposed to later or no intervention. The investigation employs Cox proportional hazard models to test the influence of CMAs on conflict termination, and draws on our newly developed Commercial Military Actor Database, which includes PMSC and mercenary deployments in all civil wars between 1980 and 2016.

Fighting over nation or state: States, communal demography, and the type of ethnic civil war

AbstractWe recognise nationalist and centre‐seeking ethnic civil wars as distinct types of conflict and draw on key ideas from political sociology to make hypotheses about the causes of each. First, we argue that the character of states shapes antistate actors in ways that channel ethnic conflict in different ways, with pluralist states promoting nationalist warfare but integrative states contributing to centre‐seeking civil war. Second, we propose that the relative power of communities affects the type of ethnic civil war, arguing that centre‐seeking civil war is most common in situations of communal multipolarity whereas nationalist civil war is concentrated in regions with asymmetric power relations. And because historical statehood promotes elements of pluralist states and asymmetric communal power relations, we hypothesise that the risk of nationalist civil war is high in places with large and longstanding states. To test these hypotheses, we use ethnic fractionalisation to measure configurations of communal power and the state antiquity index to measure level of historical statehood, create a variable measuring the extent to which colonial states were pluralist, and run panel analyses of the odds of civil war onset. With one possible exception, the findings support our hypotheses.

Group Grievances, Opportunity, and the Onset of Civil War: Some Theory and Tests of Competing Mechanisms, 1990–2017

Abstract Recent scholarship claims that group grievances due to political exclusion and discrimination drive civil wars. The grievance perspective suggests that socio-psychological factors allow groups to overcome collective action problems. We argue that the grievance perspective (over)focuses on the ends and not means, which are critical to explain how groups survive state sanction, allowing contention to escalate to civil war. We suggest that inclusive economic governance reduces investment in state-evading infrastructures for quotidian economic reasons, leading to the buildup of rebellion-specific capital. Physical and human infrastructures of state evasion form the logistical bases for survival against state sanction. Our analyses show that group-grievance-generating political factors are poorer predictors of civil war compared with economic freedoms measured as free-market friendly policies and the private ownership of economies, which should reduce economic rents accruing to state-evading shadow markets. Our results are robust to several alternative models, data, and estimating method. Theory that ignores the means explain the main causes of costly violence only partially, or mistake symptom for cause. Freedom and inclusiveness, which should reduce grievances, are intrinsically valuable, but they are hard to obtain when violence is waged successfully for more narrower ends.

Domestic Diversionary War and Conflict Endurance in Weak States: The Houthi Conflict in Yemen (2004 – 2010)

ABSTRACT There is a vibrant literature on civil war onset and endurance. Previous research has demonstrated that weak states are unlikely to use diversionary measures given the greater likelihood of their defeat. I offer a theoretical contribution to the literature by disentangling why this is particularly the case. Using insights from the Houthi conflict in Yemen between 2004 and 2010, the article shows how the conflict, first initiated as a diversionary operation, increased the Houthi movement’s grievances and galvanised an intra-regime power struggle leading to conflict endurance. The article, thus, offers one of the few exploratory applications of the domestic diversionary war theory in weak states.

The Anglophone Crisis and Low Voter Turnout in Anglophone Cameroon in the 2018 Presidential Elections

The international political system has radically changed in the last three decade. During this era the global political system has witnessed the enfranchisement of more voters across geographical, racial and socio-economic boundaries than ever before. With the growing trend of democracy, voter turnouts keep fluctuating. Since the return of multiparty elections in 1990, Cameroon has been experiencing a downward trend in voter turnout. With voter apathy being on the rise in Cameroon, the 2018 Presidential elections were no different nationally, but it was more glaring in the Anglophone regions with extremely low turnout. The presidential elections coincided with the onset of the Cameroonian civil war in Anglophone Cameroon, with separatist fighters and the Cameroon government forces fighting over the self-determination and political future of Anglophone Cameroon. This study sought to ascertain the link between the Anglophone crisis and the low voter turnout in the Anglophone regions. The study relied on both primary and secondary data sources. Primary data sources will mainly be gotten through telephone interviews and personal observations. Secondary data from books, journal article, newspapers, reports and possible interviews on election issues in Cameroon. Findings show that the Anglophone crisis and separatist threats played a role in low voter turnout, alongside voting age and voter disillusionment. The low voter turnout in the Anglophone regions creates a question of legitimacy of those elections and it is recommended that a resolution of the conflict would help improve the situation of voter apathy in Anglophone Cameroon ahead of the upcoming 2025 Presidential and 2026 Municipal and parliamentary Elections.

What They Are Fighting For – Introducing the UCDP Conflict Issues Dataset

Although conflict issues – the stated goals of actors engaged in conflict – hold a privileged position in many theoretical explanations of the occurrence, dynamics, and resolution of civil war, global issue data are scarce beyond datasets that focus on specific thematic areas. This article aims to bring issues into the forefront of civil war scholarship by presenting the UCDP Conflict Issues Dataset (CID). This global yearly dataset contains 14,832 conflict issues – divided, at the most disaggregated level, into 120 sub-categories – raised by armed non-state groups involved in intrastate armed conflict in 1989-2017. By bringing issues back in, the UCDP CID provides opportunities to reevaluate several central questions about the onset, duration, intensity, and resolution of civil war.

The Urban Origins of Rebellion

The emphasis in recent decades on weak state capacity as an explanation of civil war detracts from an important fact: some of the deadliest and most protracted rebellions since WWII arose not where the state was weak, but rather in areas of significant state power. This study challenges the predominance-of-peripheral-conflict paradigm by disentangling rebel formation from civil war onset and emphasizing the urban origins of numerous rebel groups. Quantitative analyses show that three group types—military-, social interest-, and political party-based groups—are far more likely to form in large cities, especially the capital, and far less likely to form in the rural countryside. Case studies then illustrate the constraints and opportunities nascent rebel groups of each type face. This study advances the field’s understanding of a surprisingly large number of violent rebellions that current mainstream approaches and the emphasis on weak states and conflict opportunities cannot effectively explain.

The Rush to Personalize: Power Concentration after Failed Coups in Dictatorships

AbstractHow do failed coups influence power personalization in dictatorships? While scholars have studied the mechanisms of personalism in dictatorships in detail, little attention has been paid to the timing and determinants of surges in personalism levels. In this article, we propose that personalism can evolve non-linearly, and show that large, quite rapid increases in personalization by dictators occur after a failed coup attempt. The logic is that failed coups are information-revealing events that provide the dictator with strong motives and ample opportunities to accumulate power. The leader uses this window of opportunity to rapidly consolidate his power at the expense of the ruling coalition. We test the theory using time-series, cross-sectional data on dictatorships in 114 countries in the period between 1946 and 2010. Two placebo tests indicate that disruptive events by regime outsiders – failed assassination attempts and civil war onsets – do not promote the rush to personalize.

Proto-Insurgency, Repression-Driven Contagion, and Civil War Onset

ABSTRACT The escalation of militarized interstate disputes (MIDs) into interstate wars has been studied extensively with opportunity and willingness frameworks. In this article, we conceptualize and operationalize proto-insurgencies as a civil war equivalent to MIDs. Just as most MIDs do not escalate into interstate war, most proto-insurgencies never make the key tactical transitions needed to produce the onset of civil war. We separately examine proto-insurgency formation and proto-insurgency escalation to onset. We find that proto-insurgency formation is associated with political persecution, such as denial of access to justice, regime corruption, and mid-range levels of repression. Our theoretical focus is on how state repressive violence creates diffusion effects that push proto-insurgencies toward the tactical transitions that enable the escalation to civil war. Proto-insurgency escalation to civil war onset is driven by high levels of state repressive violence directed against proto-insurgency and its area of origin. This leads to the dispersal of proto-insurgents and the displacement of surrounding populations, inducing the spread of state repression to a larger number of administrative units. This creates the foundation for guerrilla warfare and establishes the conditions for rebels to offer sanctuary to displaced persons in return for active support, marking the onset of civil war.

Intervention, war expansion, and the international sources of civil war

Why do some civil wars turn into interstate wars? I analyze an asymmetric information model of civil war onset, rebel-sided intervention, and interstate retaliation with endogenous stakes. Interstate war occurs when rebels believe that the threat of intervention will compel the government to acquiesce, the third party believes that the government will tolerate an intervention, but they both underestimate the government's resolve. The model also has implications for civil wars. Retaliation can deter intervention and rebellion, but intervention can compel the government to give up power, so predicting civil war requires accounting for this triadic interaction.

Not Too Distant: Grievance, Opportunity, and the Onset of Civil War

ABSTRACT Grievance and opportunity theories dominate research on the causes of civil war. However, theoretical and empirical problems limit their ability to explain variation in conflict onset. We argue that these problems partly stem from treating them as largely independent explanations. We integrate grievance and opportunity into a unified theory and argue that they are complements that jointly predict conflict. We apply insights from the interstate war literature to develop and test a theory of conflict onset that argues that the probability of civil war increases as the disparity between relative power and the status quo distribution of benefits increases.

How does civil war begin? The role of escalatory processes

Correlational and bargaining failure approaches to the eruption of civil war have neglected the role of escalatory processes, whose analysis has to date been largely limited to sociology. Escalating violence involves mechanisms that are self-reinforcing and have a propensity to transform the political landscape by reshaping group boundaries and political identities, and prompting the formation of new actors. This article shows that such mechanisms should be considered as analytically distinct from structural causes and bargaining failures. Escalatory processes—that is, the combinations of these mechanisms—are often crucial to the eruption of full-scale civil war. But their causal significance in civil war onset varies with regard to two criteria: the speed of violent escalation and the extent to which it transforms the actor landscape. These two criteria form the basis for a typology of escalations into civil war that distinguishes civil wars erupting in revolutionary situations from deliberate escalation by organized belligerents and from gradual escalation through rebel group formation and counterinsurgency. I illustrate each ideal type with a case study that serves as a plausibility probe. Accounting for escalatory processes allows to distinguish between contrasting roads to civil war, each of which privileges its own explanatory variables.

Identifying Patterns in the Structural Drivers of Intrastate Conflict

AbstractQuantitative methods have been used to: (1) better predict civil conflict onset; and (2) understand causal mechanisms to inform policy intervention and theory. However, an exploration of individual conflict onset cases illustrates great variation in the characteristics describing the outbreak of civil war, suggesting that there is not one single set of factors that lead to intrastate war. In this article, we use descriptive statistics to explore persistent clusters in the drivers of civil war onset, finding evidence that some arrangements of structural drivers cluster robustly across multiple model specifications (such as young, poorly developed states with anocratic regimes). Additionally, we find that approximately one-fifth of onset cases cannot be neatly clustered across models, suggesting that these cases are difficult to predict and multiple methods for understanding civil conflict onset (and state failure more generally) may be necessary.

Ambivalent (In)Securities: Comparing Urban Refugee Women’s Experiences of Informal and Formal Security Provision

Abstract Using feminist theories of geolegality, geopolitics, and intersectionality, this article presents Syrian refugee women’s experiences and perceptions of both formal and informal security providers in Amman and Beirut in 2016–2017. Based on qualitative data from refugee women based in these cities since the onset of the Syrian civil war, this article argues three related points regarding urban refugee women and their experiences with security providers. First, that although not gendered at the State level, refugee law is applied in gendered ways in the everyday by State and non-State security providers and that this has direct outcomes as to how refugee women perceive and access security services in their host cities. Secondly, that whilst women perceive both formal and informal security providers in ambivalent terms, they are deeply appreciative of State security presence in urban areas which seem vulnerable to tension and conflict. Lastly, in order to understand ambivalent experiences of (in)security of (in)formal security providers, we need closer examinations of the ways in which identity interacts with structures of policy, law and culture, using feminist theories of intersectionality and geolegality.

Do Major-Power Interventions Encourage the Onset of Civil Conflict? A Structural Analysis

What is the impact of major-power intervention on civil-war onset? A considerable hurdle to answering this question is gauging expectations about future intervention on the eve of conflict. We tackle this challenge by developing a unified theoretical and empirical model of civil-war onset and subsequent intervention. Our model allows for strategic interdependence among interveners, and our empirical strategy enables estimation of intervention expectations from equilibrium behavior. We fit the model to civil war and intervention data from the second half of the twentieth century and find that major-power intervention is primarily characterized by strategic complementarities—for example, cost sharing among allies or competition for control among rivals—rather than free-riding incentives. Through counterfactual experiments, we show that commitments to decreased intervention would raise the risk of civil war worldwide, whereas increased intervention would have little effect. Our results suggest that coordination among major powers is maximally deterring civil conflict.

Reassessing the Role of Theory and Machine Learning in Forecasting Civil Conflict

We examine the research protocols in Blair and Sambanis’ recent article on forecasting civil wars, where they argue that their theory-based model can predict civil war onsets better than several atheoretical alternatives or a model with country-structural factors. We find that there are several important mistakes and that their key finding is entirely conditional on the use of parametrically smoothed ROC curves when calculating accuracy, rather than the standard empirical ROC curves that dominate the literature. Fixing these mistakes results in a reversal of their claim that theory-based models of escalation are better at predicting onsets of civil war than other kinds of models. Their model is outperformed by several of the ad hoc, putatively non-theoretical models they devise and examine. More importantly, we argue that rather than trying to contrast the roles of theory and “atheoretical” machine learning in predictive modeling, it would be more productive to focus on ways in which predictive modeling and machine learning could be used to strengthen extant predictive work. Instead, we argue that predictive modeling and machine learning are effective tools for theory testing.

A Signal of Aid: Adverse Effects on the Onset of Civil War

A Signal of Aid: Adverse Effects on the Onset of Civil War

Economic development, population and civil war: a Bayesian changepoint model

PurposeThis study proposes a Bayesian approach to analyze structural breaks and examines whether structural changes have occurred, at the onset of civil war, with respect to economic development and population during the period from 1945 to 1999.Design/methodology/approachIn the Bayesian logit regression changepoint model, parameters of covariates are allowed to shift individually, regime transitions can move back and forth, and the model is applicable to cross-sectional, time-series data.FindingsContrary to popular belief that the causal process of civil war changed with the end of the Cold War, the empirical analysis shows that the regression relationships between civil war and economic development, as well as between civil war and population, remain quite stable during the study period.Originality/valueThis is the first to develop a Bayesian logit regression changepoint model and to apply it to studies of economic development and civil war.