What Do We Know about Civil War Outcomes?

Abstract

Does political science research have something to add to the counterinsurgency strategy debate? Should the discipline even concern itself with debates over military doctrine and strategy? After conducting a thorough review of the extant empirical literature, we argue that the answer to both of these questions is yes. Evaluating the theoretical and empirical findings of the last two decades, we identify three dimensions of civil wars affecting who prevails: (i) state capacity, (ii) the effects of violence against civilians, and (iii) foreign intervention. Domestic armed conflicts are characterized not only by military struggles, but equally importantly by contests of legitimacy between incumbent and rebel visions for the state. We conclude that the analyses of COIN strategy cannot be divorced from assessments of state capacity and the role of external actors in the conflict. We thus see the academic literature as instrumental in adding to practitioners' perspectives by more clearly identifying what COIN strategies can be applied under state capacity and legitimacy constraints to facilitate peace through both population-centered (legitimacy) and insurgent-centered (battlefield effectiveness) strategies. Our analysis identifies points of consensus, but also highlights the gaps in our knowledge, which need attention from both academe and practitioners.

Strategies and Tactics in Armed Conflict: How Governments and Foreign Interveners Respond to Insurgent Threats

“…However, currently available data cannot provide answers to many of the big questions in this research area. Accordingly, Shelton, Stojek, and Sullivan (2013) conclude that "an insufficient number of studies empirically evaluate the connection between civil war COIN strategy and overall conflict outcomes across the universe of civil war cases" (p. 526).…”

External Threats, Internal Challenges, and State Building in East Asia

“…In East Asia, the Soviet Union, and especially the People's Republic of China (PRC) with Mao's emphasis on "People's War," stimulated much of the communist insurgencies in the region (Han 2019a(Han , 2019b. Thus, for states that faced such communist insurgencies, they not only faced these internal challenges to their rule, but they were also vulnerable to the linkages these internal insurgencies had with the external great powers (Cunningham 2016;Salehyan, Gleditsch, and Cunningham 2011;Schultz 2010;Shelton, Stojek, and Sullivan 2013). Indeed, for many East Asian countries within the capitalist camp during the Cold War, their domestic communist mobilizations were both perceived to be and actually were supported by external communist threats to the country.…”

Win, lose, or draw in the fog of civil war

“…measures of national attributes (usually measured at the start of the war) and characteristics of the war itself (especially its duration and its deadliness, measured after the war has ended; for a review of this literature, see Shelton et al, 2013).…”

“…This choice, iterated throughout the course of the conflict, is based on each party’s subjective estimates of (1) the probability of victory, (2) the payoffs from victory vs defeat, and (3) the accumulated costs of fighting from the beginning of the war through the present until that time in the future when the actor anticipates s/he will be able to achieve victory. Tests based on this logic, however, have employed as predictors of civil war outcomes static measures of national attributes (usually measured at the start of the war) and characteristics of the war itself (especially its duration and its deadliness, measured after the war has ended; for a review of this literature, see Shelton et al, 2013).…”