Breaking the Cycle of 'Civil' Violence: the Role of Political Institutions

Abstract

Societies coming out of civil wars find themselves in a "conflict trap" as they are left with a striking legacy of instability and violence. Out of the 144 civil wars that have ended since 1945, 77 had relapsed by the end of 2004. Even when civil wars end, human casualties, destruction of lives and infrastructures, and huge economic costs combine to produce crippling and destabilizing effects that transcend state boundaries and the span of any particular war. War-time memories turn into social capital that is used and abused to mobilize support for extremist and conflictual policies. Nevertheless, peace after civil wars does happen and why it takes hold in some societies but not in others is an important and intriguing question--one that has motivated this study. Looking at all post-civil war cases since 1945, I analyze the effects of political power sharing institutions, particularly those associated with consociationalism, on the stability of peace. I find that commonly prescribed consociational models of government conflate two different political institutions, territorial decentralization and veto rights, which provide rivals with conflicting incentives, producing opposite effects on the consolidation of post-civil war peace. From various duration models decentralization emerges as the only political institution included in the study that reduces the hazard rate of post-civil war cases. I also compare results from the dataset I compiled with those using two alternative datasets. The comparison illustrates the implications of employing different rules for case selection and dependent variable operationalization. I argue that the dataset I introduce in this study overcomes selection biases that have been commonly committed in the field.