Does Warfare Matter? Severity, Duration, and Outcomes of Civil Wars

Balcells, Laia; Kalyvas, Stathis N.

doi:10.2139/ssrn.2206324

Cited by 56 publications

(114 citation statements)

References 26 publications

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“…Substantively, the majority of variables contained in our final model support a recent finding by Balcells and Kalyvas (2012b) that "technologies of rebellion," i.e. variables describing relative capabilities of combatants and their type of interaction, are central to understanding insurgencies and civil wars.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 75%

Predicting the duration of the Syrian insurgency

Pilster

Böhmelt

2014

Research & Politics

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While there were several relatively short uprisings in Northern Africa and the Middle East during the Arab Spring, the dispute between the rebels and government forces in Syria has evolved into a full-scale civil war. We try to predict the length of the Syrian insurgency with a three-stage technique. Using out-of-sample techniques, we first assess the predictive capacity of 69 explanatory variables for insurgency duration. After determining the model with the highest predictive power, we categorize Syria according to the variables in this final model. Based on in-sample approaches, we then predict the duration of the Syrian uprising for three different scenarios. The most realistic point prediction is 5.12 years from the insurgency's start, which suggests an end date between the end of 2016 and early 2017.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 75%

Predicting the duration of the Syrian insurgency

Pilster

Böhmelt

2014

Research & Politics

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“…Whereas these arguments of conflict duration are closely connected to theories of onset, Balcells and Kalyvas (2014) claim that the duration and outcome of civil wars are endogenous to warfare itself. Drawing on the micro-level literature, they argue that "technologies of rebellion" are the decisive variable.…”

Section: Civil War Terminationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Dynamics and Logics of Civil War

Cederman

Vogt

2017

Journal of Conflict Resolution

124

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This article reviews the literature on civil war. We focus on the most recent period of scholarly activity, beginning in the early 2000s when the publication of prominent quantitative studies triggered a surge in the empirical research of civil war as a well-defined conceptual category. We identify three explanatory logics that have dominated much of this literature and that view civil wars as a consequence of greed, grievances, and opportunities, respectively. We evaluate the arguments and findings of these theoretical approaches with respect to each of the main phases of war: outbreak, wartime dynamics, conflict termination, and postwar recovery. The article concludes by identifying key challenges confronting future civil war research. In particular, we emphasize the continuing need to advance theories that bridge the main explanatory logics as well as the different phases of conflict. Researchers should also pay more attention to defining the appropriate spatiotemporal scope of their studies.

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“…It can be expected that the more control the principals have over their agents, the greater the likelihood that a breakdown of interelite relations will cause a recurrence of hostilities. In contrast, new fighting involving a new rebel organization should be more likely in situations in which former leaders have lost control over the behavior of their former agents (Weinstein 2006;Staniland 2014;Balcells and Kalyvas 2014). …”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

New Rebels in Postconflict Settings: The Principal–Agent Dilemma of Peacebuilding

Kreutz¹

2018

Peace & Change

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This article explores the processes that lead to different types of civil war outbreak in postconflict societies, combining quantitative analysis with case studies of Myanmar and Sierra Leone to disaggregate situations in which former rebels resume fighting from those when new rebels emerge in the postconflict environment. The analysis, based in principal-agent theory, illuminates how relations between the government and exrebel elites, group cohesion among rebels, and the relationship between the government and the excombatants all can lead to resumed civil war. Its findings suggest that victories and settled conflicts are the most important outcome for preventing conflict recurrence by former rebels, but do not prevent the rise of new insurgencies. Moreover, the absence of government repression emerges as the factor most likely to reduce the risk of new rebellion. * I acknowledge the support from the Swedish Research Council grant 2016-05734, and for the fieldwork in Myanmar Riksbankens Jubileumsfond grant M10:0100:1.

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Does Warfare Matter? Severity, Duration, and Outcomes of Civil Wars

Cited by 56 publications

References 26 publications

Predicting the duration of the Syrian insurgency

Predicting the duration of the Syrian insurgency

Dynamics and Logics of Civil War

New Rebels in Postconflict Settings: The Principal–Agent Dilemma of Peacebuilding

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