Quantitative studies of civil war have focused on war initiation (onset) or war duration and termination and produced important insights into these processes. An empirical analysis of civil war prevalence is used to show that the prevalence or amount of war observed at any given time is important. Civil war prevalence is defined as the probability of observing either a new war onset or the continuation of an ongoing war or both. Two economic theories of war onset and duration are combined to estimate the prevalence of civil war across more than 150 countries and over 40 years. The analysis is consistent with the findings of earlier studies on war onset and duration. New findings that result from slight improvements in the data and estimation methods show that democracy and ethnic diversity are significant determinants of civil war prevalence.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
Alesina, Alberto , Reza Baquir, and William Easterly. 1999. Public goods and ethnic divisions. World Bank Policy Research working paper no. 2108, Washington, DC.
2.
Alvarez, M. , and Glascow. 2000. Two-stage estimation of non-recursive choice models. Political Analysis8 (December): 147-165.
3.
Amemiya, T.1978. The maximum likelihood and the nonlinear three-stage least squares estimator in the general nonlinear simultaneous equation model. Econometrica45:955-968.
4.
Beck, Nathaniel , and Jonathan Katz. 1995. What to do (and not to do) with time-series cross-section data. American Political Science Review89 (3): 634-647.
5.
Beck, Nathaniel , Jonathan Katz, and Richard Tucker. 1998. Taking time seriously: Time-series-cross-section analysis with a binary dependent variable. American Journal of Political Science42 (2): 1260-1288.
6.
Blomberg, S. Brock and Gregory D. Hess. 2002. The temporal links between conflict and economic activity. Journal of Conflict Resolution46(1): 74-90.
7.
Bollen, K. A. , D. K. Guilkey, and T. A. Mroz. 1995. Binary outcomes and endogenous explanatory variables: Tests and solutions with an application to the demand for contraceptive use in Tunisia. Demography32 (1): 111-131.
8.
Bruk, S. I. , and V. S. Apenchenko, eds. 1964. Atlas Narodov Mira. Moscow: Glavnoe Upravlenie Geodezii I Kartografii Gosudarstvennogo Geologischeskogo komiteta SSSR and Institut etnografii im H. H. Miklukho-Maklaia, Akademia nauk SSSR.
9.
Catania, Joseph A. , Thomas J. Coates, Ron Stall, Heather Turner, John Peterson, Norman Hearst, M. Margaret Dolcini, Estie Hudes, John Gagnon, James Wiley, and Robert Groves. 1992. Prevalence of AIDS-related risk factors and condom use in the United States. Science258 (5085, Nov. 13): 1101-1106.
10.
Collier, Paul , and Anke Hoeffler. 1998. On economic causes of civil war. Oxford Economic Papers50:563-573.
11.
Collier, Paul , and Anke Hoeffler. 2000. Greed and grievance in civil war. World Bank working paper no. 2355, May, Washington, DC.
12.
Collier, Paul , and Anke Hoeffler. 2002. On the incidence of civil war in Africa. Journal of Conflict Resolution46:13-28.
13.
Collier, Paul , Anke Hoeffler, and Mans Soderbom. 2001. On the duration of civil war. Paper presented at the World Bank Conference on Civil War Duration and Post-Conflict Transitions, 18-20May, at the University of California, Irvine.
14.
Doyle, Michael W. , and Nicholas Sambanis. 2000. International peacebuilding: A theoretical and quantitative analysis. American Political Science Review94 (4): 779-802.
15.
Easterly, William , and Ross Levine. 1997. Africa's growth tragedy: Policies and ethnic divisions. Quarterly Journal of Economics, November, 1203-1250.
16.
Efron, B.1979. Bootstrap methods: Another look at the Jackknife. Annals of Statistics7:1-26.
17.
Efron, B.1982. The Jackknife, the Bootstrap, and other resampling plans. Philadelphia: Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics.
18.
Elbadawi, Ibrahim , and Nicholas Sambanis. 2000a. Why are there so many civil wars in Africa? Understanding and preventing violent conflict. Journal of African Economies9 (3): 244-269.
19.
Elbadawi, Ibrahim , and Nicholas Sambanis. 2000b. External intervention and the duration of civil war. World Bank working paper, July, Washington, DC.
20.
Fearon, James . 2001. Why do some civil wars last so much longer than others? Paper presented at the World Bank Conference on Civil War Duration and Post-Conflict Transitions, 18-20May, at the University of California, Irvine.
21.
Fearon, James, and Laitin. 1999. Weak states, rough terrain, and large-scale ethnic violence since 1945. Unpublished manuscript, Stanford University, Stanford, CA.
22.
Gleditsch, Nils Petter, Håvard Strand, Mikael Eriksson, Margareta Sollenberg, and Peter Wallensteen. 2001. Armed conflict 1945-99: A new dataset. Unpublished paper, Peace Research Institute, Oslo (PRIO), Norway.
23.
Greene, William . 1997. Econometric analysis. 3d ed.New York: Prentice Hall.
24.
Hegre, Håvard , Tanja Ellingsen, Scott Gates, and Nils Petter Gleditsch. 2001. Toward a democratic civil peace? Democracy, political change, and civil war, 1816-1992. American Political Science Review95 (1): 33-48.
25.
Humphreys, Macartan . 2001. To bargain or to brawl? Political decision-making in institutionally weak environments. Paper presented at the World Bank Conference on Civil War Duration and Post-Conflict Transitions, 18 May, at the University of California, Irvine.
26.
Jaggers, Keith, and Ted R. Gurr. 1998. Polity98. Available from ftp://isere.colorado.edu/pub/datasets/polity98
27.
Licklider, Roy . 1995. The consequences of negotiated settlements in civil wars, 1945-1993. American Political Science Review89 (3): 681-690.
28.
Maddala, G. S.1983. Limited dependent and qualitative variables in econometrics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
29.
Marshall, Monty, and Keith Jaggers. 2000. Polity IV project (code book and data files). Available from www.bsos.umd.edu/cidcm/inscr/polity
30.
Mauro, Paolo . 1995. Corruption and growth. Quarterly Journal of EconomicsCX (3): 681-711.
31.
Muller, Christoph . 1999. The relative prevalence of diseases in a population of ill persons: Evidence from Benin. CREDIT research paper no. 99/13, November, Centre for Research in Economic Development and International Trade, Nottingham, UK.
32.
Murdoch, James C. and Todd Sandler. 2002. Economic growth, civil wars, and spatial spillovers. Journal of Conflict Resolution46 (1): 91-110.
33.
Posner, Dan . 2000. Ethnic fractionalization in Africa: How should it be measured? What does it explain about economic growth? Paper presented to the World Bank Development Research Group Seminar, 29 March, Washington, DC.
34.
Pzeworski, Adam , Michael E. Alvarez, Jose Antonio Cheibub, and Fernando Limongi. 2000. Democracy and development: Political institutions and well-being in the world, 1950-1990. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
35.
Przeworski, Adam and James R. Vreeland. 2000. The effect of IMF programs on economic growth. Journal of Development Economics62:385-421.
36.
Przeworski, Adam and James R. Vreeland. 2002. A statistical model of bilateral cooperation. Political Analysis10 (2): 101-112.
37.
Reynal-Querol, Marta . 2002. Ethnicity, political systems and civil wars. Journal of Conflict Resolution46:29-54.
38.
Rivers, D. , and Q. Vuong. 1988. Limited information estimators and exogeneity tests for simultaneous probit models. Journal of Econometrics39:347-366.
39.
Rodrik, Dani . 1998. Where did all the growth go? External shocks, social conflict, and growth collapses. NBER working paper no. 6350, National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge, MA.
40.
Ross, Michael . 2001. Does oil hinder democracy?World Politics53 (3): 325-361.
41.
Sambanis, Nicholas . 2001a. Do ethnic and non-ethnic civil wars have the same causes? A theoretical and empirical inquiry (part 1). Journal of Conflict Resolution45:259-282.
42.
Sambanis, Nicholas . 2001b. A note on the death threshold in coding civil war events. Conflict Processes Newsletter, June.
43.
Sambanis, Nicholas. 2002. Conceptual and empirical complexities of identifying civil wars. Unpublished manuscript, Yale University, New Haven, CT.
44.
Singer, J. D. , and M. Small. 1994. Correlates of War Project: International and civil war data, 1816-1992. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research.
45.
Stockholm International Peace Research Institute . (various years). SIPRI yearbook. Available from http://editors.sipri.se/pubs/yearb.html
46.
Taylor, Charles L. , and Michael C. Hudson. 1972. World handbook of political and social indicators. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.
47.
Vanhanen, Tatu . 1999. Domestic ethnic conflict and ethnic nepotism: A comparative analysis. Journal of Peace Research36 (1): 55-73.
48.
Wallensteen, Peter , and Margareta Sollenberg. 1997. Armed conflicts, conflict termination, and peace agreements, 1989-1996. Journal of Peace Research34 (3): 339-358.
49.
Walter, Barbara F.1997. The critical barrier to civil war settlement. International Organization51 (3): 335-365.
50.
Wawro, Gregory . 2001. A panel probit analysis of campaign contributions and roll-call votes. American Journal of Political Science45 (3): 563-579.
51.
Weiner, Myron . 1996. Bad neighbors, bad neighborhoods. International Security21 (1): 5-42.
Supplementary Material
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
