Bargaining Theory, Civil War Outcomes, and War Recurrence: Assessing the Results of Empirical Tests of the Theory

Once ended, a significant number of civil wars recur. One influential empirical international relations theory on which scholars have drawn in an effort to provide an explanation for this phenomenon is the bargaining model of war. Devised initially for the study of interstate war, the theory posits that bargaining problems may prevent belligerents from reaching a deal that enables them to avoid a costly war. Bargaining problems also have been identified as contributing to the recurrence of armed intrastate conflict. Working within the framework of bargaining theory, a number of scholars have claimed that the most effective way to inhibit a return to civil war is to end the conflict via military victory as such an outcome is thought to help solve key bargaining problems. However, a growing number of empirical tests cast doubt on this proposition. An analysis of the results of these tests as well as new scholarship on civil war termination highlight some of the limitations inherent in employing a theory devised for the study of interstate war to analyze questions related to civil wars

Place Over Politics: Power, Strategy, Terrain, And Regime Type In Interstate War Outcomes, 1816-2003

While the study of war occurrence is among the primary considerations of the field of international relations, only recently has attention turned towards the study of war outcomes. This attention is best represented by the democratic victory proposition, which suggests that democracies win the majority of their wars by virtue of being democratic. However, elements of this study are currently incipient. In turn, this dissertation generates a novel set of variables to measure the impact of terrain on war outcomes, including measures of spatial extent, topographic heterogeneity, and land cover heterogeneity. These metrics are generated for all 94 interstate wars in the correlates of war population between 1816-2003, as well as disaggregated forms of WWI, WWII, and Vietnam – bringing the total to 105 wars. These data are then used to analyze war outcomes using multinomial logistic regression. The results suggest that, at present, the democratic victory proposition is incomplete. Further research is needed to explore the complex relationship between state capabilities, strategy, regime type, and terrain

Place Over Politics: Power, Strategy, Terrain, And Regime Type In Interstate War Outcomes, 1816-2003

While the study of war occurrence is among the primary considerations of the field of international relations, only recently has attention turned towards the study of war outcomes. This attention is best represented by the democratic victory proposition, which suggests that democracies win the majority of their wars by virtue of being democratic. However, elements of this study are currently incipient. In turn, this dissertation generates a novel set of variables to measure the impact of terrain on war outcomes, including measures of spatial extent, topographic heterogeneity, and land cover heterogeneity. These metrics are generated for all 94 interstate wars in the correlates of war population between 1816-2003, as well as disaggregated forms of WWI, WWII, and Vietnam – bringing the total to 105 wars. These data are then used to analyze war outcomes using multinomial logistic regression. The results suggest that, at present, the democratic victory proposition is incomplete. Further research is needed to explore the complex relationship between state capabilities, strategy, regime type, and terrain

A New Scale to Measure War Attitudes: Construction and Predictors

Attitudes people have toward war in general have been of recent interest due to the war on terrorism and the war in Iraq. The purpose of this research was to develop a scale to measure war attitudes and to investigate factors that may influence these attitudes. In the first study, a scale was developed that measured war attitudes. Three factors emerging from the War Attitude Scale were labeled ethics of war, support for war, and affect about war. Patriotism-nationalism, authoritarianism, social criticism, belief in war outcomes, support of the president, and gender were found to be significant predictors of war attitudes. In the second study, the scale was administered to a community sample. A confirmatory factor analysis was conducted with three similar factors emerging. Additionally, the community sample results allowed further generalization of the findings. Implications for the construction of the War Attitude Scale and its predictors are discussed

Hymn to Freedom: Obama\u27s 150th Proclamation

This post is about the President\u27s proclamation on Tuesday. I was heartily pleased by this action from the White House. It phrasing brings to mind an intellectual fusion not unlike that crafted through Daniel Webster\u27s 1830 pronouncement of, Liberty and Union, Now and Forever, One and Inseparable. Certainly the 19th century conception of Liberty and our modern conception of the term, as adeptly pointed out in the most recent episode of Backstory with the American History Guys, are not the same. Still, Obama\u27s proclamation keenly joins the two Northern war aims and war outcomes at the hip. The meaning of freedom and the very soul of our Nation were contested in the hills of Gettysburg and the roads of Antietam, the fields of Manassas and the woods of the Wilderness, the President reflects, adding that the war\u27s outcome ensure that, We might be tested, but whatever our fate might be, it would be as one Nation. [excerpt

The Dirty War Index: A Public Health and Human Rights Tool for Examining and Monitoring Armed Conflict Outcomes

Madelyn Hsiao-Rei Hicks and Michael Spagat introduce the "Dirty War Index," a public health tool that identifies rates of undesirable or prohibited war outcomes inflicted on populations during armed conflict

Population-centric warfare: How popular support determines civil war outcomes

In recent years, the most technologically advanced militaries in the world have toiled against guerrilla forces. Counterinsurgent doctrine focuses on a government’s lack of popular support to explain this. Academic literature, however, currently treats popular mobilisation as a dependent variable, rather than using it as a framework for understanding the dynamics and outcomes of civil wars. This thesis represents a first step to address this disparity and incorporate popular support into the comparative study of civil war outcomes. I explore what popular support provides conflict actors, what determines population behaviour and how the ability of conflict actors to generate support determines the dynamics and outcome of a conflict. I conclude that popular support, or the battle for ‘hearts and minds’, is crucial to the power of conflict actors, but only when it is understood as a contribution, not shared preferences. Based on this analysis I propose a framework for studying civil conflict that focuses on the regenerative capacity of the two belligerents. The key battleground in any civil war is rebel efforts to degrade the sovereign structures the government uses to generate support from the population. If rebels can achieve this, the government collapses and the rebels can win the war even if they are smaller or fail to score any battlefield successes. I test this model using a quantitative analysis of 65 civil wars and four in-depth cases studies. Overall there is strong empirical support for the model of conflict developed in this thesis, raising a number of theoretical and practical implications. Most importantly, I find that strengthening institutions of governance, be they formal or informal, is the best method for governments to defeat rebel groups, while rebels win by undermining socioeconomic activity

Civil War Termination

Civil wars typically have been terminated by a variety of means, including military victories, negotiated settlements and ceasefires, and “draws.” Three very different historical trends in the means by which civil wars have ended can be identified for the post–World War II period. A number of explanations have been developed to account for those trends, some of which focus on international factors and others on national or actor-level variables. Efforts to explain why civil wars end as they do are considered important because one of the most contested issues among political scientists who study civil wars is how “best” to end a civil war if the goal is to achieve a stable peace. Several factors have contributed to this debate, among them conflicting results produced by various studies on this topic as well as different understandings of the concepts war termination, civil war resolution, peace-building, and stable peace

Proving Grounds of Urbicide: Civil and Urban Perspectives on the Bombing of Capital Cities

In the bombing of urban settlements, the main impacts have been on resident civilians, living space and non-military functions. This is shown in the bombing of London, Berlin and Tokyo in the Second World War, arguably the first and only serious tests of strategic air power and urbicide to determine war outcomes. The history and scope of raiding of these capital cities differed in many ways, but the civilian experience and urban implications were very similar. The bombings attacked the most vulnerable areas, where resident populations found themselves poorly protected at best. The intentions, as well as results, of the raiding are examples of urbicide, planned to kill indiscriminately and destroy all elements of urban existence. Yet, a disarticulation emerges between the political, industrial and war-controlling functions of the capitals, which the bombing was supposed to disable but could not, and the plight of their citizens. The bombing was encouraged as ‘spectacular violence’, even though militarily inconclusive and, in seeking to avoid combat while terrorising non-combatants, it experimented with an approach to armed violence that would prevail after 1945. Despite enormous changes since 1945, the plight of bombed civilians has changed little