Duration Of Wars Research Articles

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 non-conventional conflict? Put differently, do “technologies of rebellion” impact on a war’s severity, duration, or outcome? We find that irregular conflicts last longer than all other types of conflict, while conventional ones tend to be more severe in terms of battlefield lethality. Irregular conflicts tend to be won by incumbents, while symmetric non-conventional and conventional ones are more likely to end in draws. Substantively, these findings help us make sense of the evolution of civil wars, which are likely to become shorter, more intensely fought, and more challenging for existing governments. Theoretically, our findings support factoring in the technology of rebellion when studying the severity, duration, and outcome of civil wars; they also contribute a better understanding of the historical contribution of irregular war to both state building and social change.

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.

Why Do Soldiers Give Up? A Self-Preservation Theory of Surrender

Surrender, or capitulation to the adversary in combat, can have a significant impact on the duration, intensity, and outcomes of battles and wars. Yet the reasons why soldiers choose to capitulate are not well understood. This article advances a new theory of surrender that argues soldiers are most likely to surrender when they perceive proximate environmental signals leading them to expect humane treatment and a relatively short period of captivity and least likely to give up when those signals lead them to expect abusive treatment and lengthy imprisonment. The model is tested through a detailed examination of surrender rates in World War I and findings indicate that it explains more of the observed variation than do existing theories of capitulation. What little systematic data exists on surrenders during twentieth century interstate wars corroborates these findings. Implications for scholars and policymakers are briefly considered.

Prewar Mobilization and the Termination of Interstate Wars

Recent work on interstate crisis bargaining focuses on the inefficiency of public statements of resolve. This article reevaluates the inefficiency of public threats by examining how public-versus-private crisis mobilization affects the duration and outcome of interstate wars. Private mobilization is a purely material move that only provides capability benefits after war onset, which makes it necessary to examine how private mobilization eventually effects a war-ending bargain instead of how private mobilization makes bargaining failure more likely. The empirical results find that private mobilization only increases the initiator's war outcome in the early months of the war, and has little effect on the outcome in lengthy, protracted wars. Using data on 75 wars from 1823 to 2000, the analysis estimates a competing risks duration model to evaluate the effect of private mobilization on the outcome of interstate wars.

Non-state actors in civil wars: A new dataset

This paper introduces the Non-State Actors in Armed Conflict Dataset (NSA), which contains detailed information on the state–rebel group dyads included in the Uppsala Conflict Data Project Dyadic Dataset. Existing quantitative studies generally focus on characteristics of countries and conflicts to examine the duration, severity, outcome and recurrence of civil wars, in ways that often ignore the actors in civil wars. The NSA data provides additional information on the organizations involved in conflict dynamics. We describe the structure of the NSA data and the variables included, provide descriptive statistics of the indicators, and discuss areas for future research on non-state actors to enhance our understanding of conflict processes.

Private Military Companies, Opportunities, and Termination of Civil Wars in Africa

The article analyzes the impact of private military companies (PMCs) on the duration of civil wars in Africa from 1990 to 2008. We develop an “opportunity structure” theory to argue that while PMCs are profit-oriented entities, the prevalent opportunities in conflicts will determine how they behave in war zones. Empirical findings for civil wars with at least 1,000 battle deaths show that as level of competition among government-hired PMCs increases, they are more likely to deliver optimal services and help bring an end to violence. In the absence of competition, the prevalent structure creates opportunities for PMCs to underperform in order to maximize profits by staying in conflicts longer. The authors also show that swift cessation of hostilities could benefit those profit-seeking PMCs that are compensated with contracts to extract natural resources because resource extraction generates more wealth in peace time. In such cases, the prevalent opportunities in conflict create an incentive for companies to deliver optimal service and terminate hostilities.

Combatant Fragmentation and the Dynamics of Civil Wars

Civil war dynamics and outcomes are shaped by processes of change largely unaccounted for in current studies. This examination explores how the fragmentation of combatants, especially the weaker actors, affects the duration and outcomes of civil wars. Some results of a computational modelling analysis are consistent with the article's expectations, several of them are counterintuitive. They show that when combatants fragment, the duration of war does not always increase and such wars often end in negotiated agreements, contrasting with the expectations of literatures on spoilers, moderates and extremists. Empirical cases, such as Iraq, Congo, Chechnya and the Sudan, illustrate the importance of fragmentation. This study demonstrates the value of accounting for diverse changes in actors and circumstances when studying the dynamics of war.

Knowing Your Enemy: Information and Commitment Problems in Civil Wars

When do civil wars last especially long? Commitment problems can stymie conflict resolution but they are not homogeneous across all civil wars. Indeed, combatants’ perceptions of their adversaries significantly affect the severity of commitment problems. Intergroup interactions provide combatants with one crucial type of information about their adversaries and about the risks associated with signing a peace settlement, shaping strategic decisions. The argument is tested against a new data set of all ethnic civil wars between 1945 and 2004. The results demonstrate that intergroup interactions prolong wars when they indicate that a peace deal will be especially fragile or that the costs of it breaking down will be especially high. This is true, regardless of the combatants’ goals or their capabilities. In sum, information shapes perceptions and the severity of commitment problems, in turn affecting the duration of civil wars.

Ethnic polarization and the duration of civil wars

In this paper we analyze the relationship between ethnic polarization and the duration of civil wars. Several recent papers have argued that the uncertainty about the relative power of the contenders in a war will tend to increase its duration. In these models, uncertainty is directly related to the relative size of the contenders. We argue that the duration of civil wars increases the more polarized a society is. Uncertainty is not necessarily linked to the structure of the population but it could be traced back to the measurement of the size of the different groups in the society. Given a specific level of measurement error or uncertainty, more polarization implies lengthier wars. Our empirical results show that ethnically polarized countries have to endure longer civil wars than ethnically less polarized societies.

War in the Third World: Does Interference Affect the Duration of Third World Civil Wars?

War in the Third World: Does Interference Affect the Duration of Third World Civil Wars?

Does Attrition Behavior Help Explain the Duration of Interstate Wars? A Game Theoretic and Empirical Analysis

Does attrition behavior, defined as waiting for the other side to give in despite the costs of delay, help explain the duration of interstate wars? To answer this question we develop a war and bargaining model that integrates a dynamic progression of the war and allows the rivals to make offers at any time of their choosing while they fight. The model predicts that, in equilibrium, states choose to fight without making significant offers in the hope that the other side will give in to outstanding demands. The model also predicts that each side’s flow cost of war increases with the probability that the other side gives in to its demands. This is the testable consequence of attrition behavior. Our statistical analysis suggests that both challenger and defender include attrition behavior in their conduct of warfare, and that this behavioral element significantly affects the duration of interstate wars.

Duration of Peace and Recurring Civil Wars in Southeast Asia and the Pacific

Civil wars in Southeast Asia and the Pacific are perhaps the most intractable in the world and thus merit special attention. We adopt a regional approach for our analysis of the duration of peace after civil war terminations. Our contribution is three-fold: First, we capture all dyads (rebel versus government) rather than lumping multiple dyads into one war. This is appropriate in a region where there are multiple conflicts in a country at any one time. Second, we test a new conflict termination dataset developed at Uppsala University. These data allow us to offer a fine-grained analysis not normally found in the civil war literature. Third, we employ a method specifically suited to recurring data in a duration setting. The results generally support our hypotheses that wars in the region are intractable in the face of negotiated settlements and longer wars increase the duration of the subsequent peace. Also, there is a tendency for the peace to become longer with each recurrence. The impact of longer wars is obscured unless repeated events are carefully treated as non-independent events.

Emerging Consensus: Results from the Second Wave of Statistical Studies on Civil War Termination

This study searches for consensus findings in the burgeoning statistical literature on civil war termination. Several trends are identified: the final outcomes of civil wars are largely dependent on the military situation; the duration of civil wars, by contrast, depends to a great degree on contextual factors such as inter-ethnic relations, the fragmentation of violence, and economic incentives; while compromise settlements reduce the risk of post-war massacres, they take longer to achieve than military victories and are more likely to collapse into renewed warfare. These results also suggest an intervener's dilemma: while external military intervention can lead to compromise and prevent genocide, it also prolongs the killing and may increase the risk of war recurrence. Interveners appear to have more success after wars than during them. Several other puzzles emerge from the statistical results, which call for theoretical development and further qualitative and quantitative analysis.

The Environmental Footprint of War

Abstract Warfare and the physical environment have always shared a close and interconnected relationship. Until recently, historical writings have mainly focused on the environmental factors influencing the outcome of battle and not the effects of war on the environment. While a growing body of literature has begun to address the effects of war on the environment, many aspects of the direct effects of battle on the environment still require attention. Warfare, a powerful agent of landscape change, is a unique form of landscape disturbance in that it is often larger in magnitude and size than other forms of anthropogenic disturbance, such as mining or logging. War is also unique as an anthropogenic agent of change because of its capability to render such widespread destruction over large areas in such short periods of time. Despite the magnitude of landscape disturbance associated with modern warfare, however, it is seldom recognised as a significant form of anthropogenic disturbance. The destruction associated with modern warfare is particularly catastrophic due to the extent, magnitude and duration of contemporary wars. These large magnitude disturbances radically alter the shape of the landscape, limiting the ability of the landscape to revert back to its original state. This article addresses the direct impacts of war on the physical landscape and why the magnitude of disturbance has increased significantly over the past century.

The Trade-Offs of Fighting and Investing: A Model of the Evolution of War and Peace1

International competition occurs in many different forms. Just as a state would be in danger if it allowed its opponent to gain a military advantage, one that falls behind a rival in an economic contest similarly faces risks. States must weigh the trade-offs between economic and military growth, as well as deciding on the best strategy to follow should war erupt. We use a formal, dynamic model to explicitly capture the trade-offs that states face in their search for security and dominance. The deductions from the model demonstrate that by considering the long-run results of a peacetime rivalry, weaker states might conclude that their only hope of winning or surviving a rivalry lies in fighting a counterforce war, explain why and how stalemates evolve during counterforce wars, and indicate that targeting industrial objectives shortens the duration of wars.

Diplomacy and Other Forms of Intervention in Civil Wars

Much of the empirical literature suggests that outside interventions tend to lengthen the expected duration of civil wars; conversely, the policy community often acts as if it holds the opposite expectation for the outcome of intervention. The authors argue that the divergence can be found in how models of intervention are specified in the literature. They propose a model with two novel contributions. First, they incorporate mediations as the key to resolving the strategic problems that the civil war parties face. Second, they account for the decaying effect of interventions over time. Their results suggest that diplomacy is critical for understanding the duration of civil conflicts. They find that mediation has a dramatic effect on the expected duration of a civil war and that when controlling for diplomatic efforts, economic interventions can also reduce the expected duration.

Time Present and Time Past: Rivalry and the Duration of Interstate Wars, 1846-1985

This article sits at the intersection of the rivalry, war duration, and bargaining literatures, suggesting that histories of armed conflict between states increase war duration through their effects on the selectorate and the wartime bargaining process. I argue that the historical relationship between two states plays an integral role in the duration of future conflict. Specifically, historical conflict between states intensifies the preference of national selectorates for military victory and narrows the range of negotiated settlements that leaders might pursue while still maintaining domestic political support. I employ Bennett and Stam's (1996) ex ante data set and Crescenzi and Enterline's (2001) International Interaction Score to provide an empirical test of the ability to generalize appropriately coded historical interaction to the topic of war duration. Contradicting earlier studies, the results of this analysis show that a properly operationalized measure of rivalry has significant and positive effects on war duration.

Nonproportional Hazards and Event History Analysis in International Relations

Event history models have become a dominant method of analysis in the study of international relations. Conventional event history models, however, retain the assumption that the effects of the covariates remain proportional to each other throughout the duration of the subject's phase. Nonproportional hazard (NPH) models are used, which allow for the effects of covariates to vary over time. These models are then applied to three previously established data sets on the duration of postwar peace, civil wars, and alliances. Results show that NPH analysis is a useful method for testing new hypotheses, as well as removing possible sources of bias from existing analyses.

Time Present and Time Past: Rivalry and the Duration of Interstate Wars, 1846-1985

Time Present and Time Past: Rivalry and the Duration of Interstate Wars, 1846-1985

Is all the News Bad News for Peace?

ACADEMIC AND POLICY CIRCLES have recently devoted much attention to agendas in civil wars. Their findings: the economic functions of violence contribute significantly to the duration of civil wars; they also pose serious obstacles to conflict resolution. This article takes another look at the impact of economic agendas on the attitudes of belligerents to conflict resolution. I argue that the economic activities of insurgents can become a source of political and military vulnerability and thus contribute to decisions to negotiate a peace settlement.After a brief methodological note on research into economic agendas in civil wars and a review of the main findings of the literature on the subject, I challenge the prevailing understanding of the impact of economic agendas on the course of civil wars and use the example of the Lebanese Forces, the main Christian militia in the Lebanese civil war (1975-90), to illustrate the connection between economic agendas, strength, and vulnerability.(f.1)DEFINITIONS AND METHODOLOGICAL ISSUESThe term 'economic agendas' refers to the belligerents' involvement in black-market activities, ranging from transactions carried out 'off the books,' which are not different in substance from regular economic transactions, to criminal endeavours, which, by their very nature, contravene the law. Underground economic activities differ from conventional economic transactions in three respects:(f.2) - Unregulated: Since they are kept secret from governments, they fall outside the purview of a multitude of laws regulating exchanges of commodities and labour. - Untaxed: They do not generate tax revenues for the state or contribute to social security programmes. - Unmeasured: They are reflected in no official statistics on the economy.The nature of the activities raises special methodological problems that account, in part, for the relative dearth of empirical studies. Connections to the criminal 'underworld' shroud war economies in a secrecy that hinders efforts to obtain tangible evidence of theoretical claims. The context of civil wars, with the attending disruption of normal life, makes data collection arduous and research in the field hazardous.Within these limitations, it is, nonetheless, possible to sketch the role of the black market in the decision-making of the Lebanese Forces.(f.3) Indeed, this is a particularly instructive case. When the structures of the state collapse, as they did in Lebanon during the civil war, belligerents are often able to secure control over territorial enclaves wrested away from the state. The underground economy becomes the main economic activity within these enclaves. This may not necessarily increase the transparency of specific transactions; it does, however, provide a better sense of the scope and nature of the belligerents' economic undertakings.ECONOMIC AGENDAS IN CIVIL WARSAlthough relatively new to academic analysis, the study of economic agendas in civil wars has already generated a significant body of literature, which can usefully be divided into two main streams. One emphasizes greed as a primary motivation of violence; the other situates the economic agendas of combatants within the framework of efforts to address grievances.(f.4)When the motive is greed, violence is aimed at circumventing the law. Its immediate functions are local rather than national in scope. When a state collapses, military capabilities give warlords the means to extract economic resources for private profit.(f.5) Violence becomes a continuation of economics by other means.(f.6) Therefore, there is more to war than winning; for bandits or warlords it is logical to perpetuate conflict as a means of pursing economic interests. The policy implications are stark. There can be little prospect for conflict resolution as long as economic benefits flow to combatants. Sanctions, such as economic embargoes, may be the only available means to force combatants to the negotiating table. …