How to keep out of the conflict trap: An analysis of the predictors of recurring civil war
Summary
Repeated civil war is the primary type of armed conflict today and mires the most chronically underdeveloped countries of the world. Hence, it is not the onset of new civil war but its recurrence that especially deserves explanation. What characteristics distinguish states in which conflicts recur from those where they do not, and what is it about conflicts themselves that explains their recurrence? Thus far, there has been little effort in the quantitative development and conflict literature to address this question. This study aims to contribute to filling that gap. The Conflict Termination Dataset of the Uppsala Conflict Data Program/Peace Research Institute Oslo (UCDP/PRIO) was used to create a data frame that includes all intra-state conflict episodes between 1946 and 2009 (n = 367), in addition to panel data from a variety of sources. With this dataset and the statistical method of logistic regression, fourteen hypotheses based on the theory of civil war and its recurrence were explored. It was found that the probability of recurrent conflict is strongly reduced by military victories (p = .000, OR = .151, 95% CI = .055-.377) and the presence of UN peacekeepers (p = .015, OR = .285, 95% CI = .084-.884). Two robustness tests corroborated these findings. It is recommended that academics be more transparent about how they code their data and become more homogenous in their research designs. To policy-makers, it is advised that they do not base their actions on findings from single quantitative studies on civil war. Having said that, the results of this study indicate that persistent and well-timed policies targeted at peacemaking and peacekeeping may more effectively reduce the probability of recurring civil war than policies targeted at economic development, democratisation or expanding security sectors.