Democracy and civil war: A note on the democratic peace proposition

Democracies may not fight each other, but do they fight themselves? Despite the need to better understand internal wars, empirical investigations of the democratic peace have focused on international war between democracies. We test the effect of regime type on civil wars, a class of events that is widely overlooked in the study of conflict. We find that regime type strongly affects civil war participation.     

Expectations,Rivalries, and Civil War Duration

This paper criticizes the status quo position in African politics on two accounts. First it furthered the consolidation of the state system, and thereby, the failure of integration on the continental level. Second, it resulted in the spread and escalation of ethnic conflicts as a reaction to the suppression of the aspirations for independent expression and equality.

At one level, explaining ethnic conflict requires the reconstruction, in terms of a theory, of the specific context in which it occurs. In this regard, we suggest that ethnic conflicts in Africa are an outgrowth of the consideration that ethnicity constitutes the dominant mode of political practice akin to the state system of dependent, nurture capitalism. Four conditions determine the conflictive potentialities of the ethnic situation: communalization of political practice, catastrophic balance between ethnic groups, economic and political inequalities, and articulation of class conflict and ethnic organization.

Conflict and integration processes are grounded in the dynamics of identity formation. Our hypothesis is that identity formation is contingent on four elements: a) maximum structured relations; b) minimum differentiation; c) maximum ideological interpellation; and d) maximum unity of labor processes. By projecting these conditions on African politics, we advance the thesis that integration in Africa could be worked out as a mode of ethnic conflict resolution and prevention if, in addition to the progressive substantiation of the four elements mentioned above, it takes place on the continental level.     

(En)gendered Security? The Complexities of Women's Inclusion in Peace Processes

As peacebuilding discourses increasingly stress the importance of including women, to what degree have security-related practices taken heed? It has been over 10 years since the United Nations Security Council passed Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace, and Security, yet it remains a “confused and confusing” tool for scholars and practitioners in assessing women's inclusion in peacebuilding. This article adds to our understanding on women and peacebuilding by engaging 1325 as an operationalizable concept and then applying it to peace agreements to understand how women's security is addressed as part of formal peace processes. Given previous difficulties in operationalizing 1325’s mandate, this article engages it as a three-level concept useful for studying the ways in which women are “brought into” security, called (en)gendered security. Using this concept of (en)gendered security, I assess intrastate peace agreements between 1991 and 2010 to elucidate where and how women are included in peace processes. This article illustrates the potential of a systematized and practical approach to security embodied in 1325 and a preliminary discussion of what accounts for better approaches to (en)gendered security during peacebuilding.     

Liberia Incorporated: military contracting,cohesion and inclusion in Charles Taylor’s Liberia

In the existing literature, compensation is often understood to be an inferior source of cohesion in military organisations. Through an investigation of the militias who fought for Charles Taylor’s government of Liberia, this paper makes three claims. Firstly, the organisation of these forces was looser than is often claimed in previous literature, which assumes tight and often coercive military patrimonialism. Consequently, the militias did not enjoy the interpersonal bonds of solidarity that have dominated recent cohesion literature. Secondly, since Taylor chose to suppress attempts to build cohesion around ethnicity, it played a subordinate role in unifying the militias. Thirdly, Taylor instead relied on military contracting and compensation, which allowed for the broad mobilisation of forces. The combination of militias’ hopes of inclusion into the state patrimony and insufficient resources to realise this left the cohesion of the militias fragile. Ultimately, this paper questions both whether Taylor had any choice but to resort to compensation in a context with a weak state and fragmented social organisation, and also whether the strategy is as inefficient as often thought.     

Does political inclusion of rebel parties promote peace after civil conflict?

ABSTRACT

Does the inclusion of rebel parties into the post-conflict political process help contribute to peace after the end of conflict? In this article we examine whether the transformation of rebel groups into political parties actually leads to the development of a durable peace after a civil war. Examining the likelihood of recurrence of civil wars in a country and recurrence of conflict in government–rebel group dyads after a settlement, we find that the inclusion and participation of former rebel parties in national government has an important impact on the likelihood of a durable post-settlement peace. Most importantly, not excluding major rebel parties from access to governing institutions is the most important factor in promoting post-conflict peace.     

The Structure of Negotiation: Lessons from El Salvador for Contemporary Conflict Resolution

During more than a decade of violent conflict (1980–1992) involving the military, rebel forces, and paramilitary "death squads," El Salvador suffered some 75,000 casualties, mostly civilians. After three years of negotiations, the government and the largest rebel group signed a historic comprehensive peace accord that brought an end to the war and instituted wide-reaching political and social reforms. This agreement, and the peace process that produced it, has been widely hailed as a successful example of a negotiated end to civil war. In order to understand the conditions that led to the 1992 Chapultepec Peace Accords ending the war, this article tests ripeness theory in the context of the Salvadoran peace process.
This article affirms the validity of theories of ripeness and the mutually hurting stalemate as structural explanations for the initiation of dialogue and notes the role of "indicators of ripeness" in forcing the parties to recognize a hurting stalemate that may already exist. It also proposes several hypothesized explanations for the effectiveness of the Salvadoran negotiations themselves. These explanations include the presence of strong, empowered policy entrepreneurs on both sides with the political will and capability to make credible commitments; the combination of internal and external pressure for a negotiated solution that raised the cost of defection; and the active involvement, based on consent of both parties, of a neutral, empowered, and credible mediator who provided both technical assistance and vigilance to move the process forward. After analyzing the Salvadoran case through this theoretical lens, the article applies the same concepts to contemporary conflict cases such as Iraq and Colombia, discussing how the lessons learned in El Salvador do and do not provide instructive guidance for managing civil conflicts today.     

Introduction to the special issue “From bullets to ballots: the transformation of rebel groups into political parties”

ABSTRACT

In this special issue of Democratization, seven articles are presented that address the question of the transformation of armed rebel groups into political parties and what implications this transformation has on the development of post-conflict peace and democratization. The articles cover a wide variety of geographic cases, and use both quantitative and qualitative methods of inquiry.     

Regime Age and Terrorism: Are New Democracies Prone to Terrorism?

One of the earlier empirical studies of the relationship between regime type and terrorism published in International Interactions determined that while established democracies were significantly less likely to experience terrorist attacks than were nondemocratic countries, newly established democracies were highly vulnerable to terrorism. Subsequent empirical studies have routinely controlled for both regime type and age, but scholarly understanding of the effect of regime longevity on terrorism remains underdeveloped. This study revisits the relationship between terrorism and regime type and regime age using updated data, analytical techniques, and time-series and finds that while young democracies experience more terrorism than older democracies, dictatorships of any age experience less terrorism than any other type of regime.     

The development of an inter‐nation tensiometer

The military expenditure (M.E.) of a nation depends partly on its wealth as measured by its Gross National Product (GNP), partly on geography, and partly on its presence in an alliance. The authors describe a method for calculating the M.E. value if it depended solely on the GNP; the value of the M.E. so obtained is termed the theoretical M.E. (M.E._Th.). Dividing the actual M.E. by the M.E._Th. (and multiplying by 100) yields a pure number, the tension ratio (T.R.). We regard tension as a function of geography (thus having a hostile neighbor increases tension and having a friendly neighbor decreases tension) and of membership in an alliance (which should cause a relaxation of tension). Tension ratios were calculated for 63 countries. Of the 13 nations engaged in a war, 76.9 percent had T.R. values greater than 155. Of the 43 nations not engaged in a war, only 26 percent had T.R. values greater than 155. Application of the chi square tests and the Kolmogorov‐Smimov test showed the association of high T.R.s concurrent with wars and antecedent to wars to be significant at the 95 percent probability level. Threshold T.R. values can pinpoint critical, potentially violent situations. Membership in an alliance does not seem as important as the effect of geography (the geographic factor includes the perception of hostility or friendliness in a neighboring country).     

Bushwhacking the Democratic Peace

The invasion of Iraq has been justified, ex post , as for the purpose of promoting the democratic peace. It does not, however, appear to have been a principal goal ex ante . Most democratic peace theorists, moreover, do not endorse democratic regime change by great-power external military intervention. Success is difficult to achieve (usually at high cost), and the conditions in Iraq were not promising even had the occupation been carried out more competently. Greater success in democratization has been achieved by UN peacekeeping operations, and by various regional international organizations using a variety of peaceful measures to ensure free elections, constrain authoritarian leaders, and empower democratic forces. International organizations, notably those whose membership is largely composed of democracies, are especially likely to succeed in promoting democracy.     

A Quality of Government Peace? Explaining the Onset of Militarized Interstate Disputes, 1985–2001

That democracies do not wage wars against each other is one of the most widely accepted claims within the study of international relations, although challenged lately by the capitalist peace argument. In addition to confirming both the democratic and capitalist peace effects, this article finds that the impact of quality of government—that is, having an impartial, nonpoliticized, and noncorrupt bureaucracy—on the risk of interstate conflict is at least on par with the influence of democracy. This result draws on dyadic Militarized Interstate Disputes (MIDs) data in 1985–2001 and holds even under control for incomplete democratization and economic development, as well as for fatal MIDs, the Cold War era, and within politically relevant dyads. I argue that the causal mechanism underlying this finding is that quality of government reduces information uncertainty among potentially warring parties and improves their ability to credibly commit to keeping their promises. Both democratic and capitalist peace theory needs to be complemented by theories “bringing the state back in” to the study of interstate armed conflict.     

实质和平的条件比较:当代东亚与战后西欧

在关于国家间战争(或非战争)原因的一般研究中,有两项最重要的论断,即领土争端的重要性以及政权类型的重要意义。前者在文章中的术语表述为\"领土和平\"假设;后者在一般文献中经常归纳为\"民主和平\"论题。作者致力于探讨的主要问题是:彼此有过战争历史的国家之间建立\"实质和平\",是否以上述两项议题的解决为前提条件。相关结论将用于分析第二次世界大战之后的西欧经验,其后将联系当今东亚形势展开分析。同样,文章还指出其中存在的、具有关键意义的不同之处。其中,东亚区域在向更持久的积极状态迈进时,必须考虑领土主权议题具有的特殊含义,后者构成\"实质和平\"的关键要素。此时,对于\"现实政治\"的关注也将加入相关国家的考量与平衡过程之中。