Why Do Some Civil Wars Last So Much Longer than Others?

TLDR

Civil wars that arise from coups, revolutions, or in Eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union, and anti‑colonial contexts tend to be brief, whereas ‘sons of the soil’ wars and conflicts financed by contraband typically last much longer. The article seeks to explain these regularities by developing a game‑theoretic model that investigates why negotiated settlements fail in long‑running, destructive civil wars where military expectations are implausible. The model shows that regional autonomy deals become unattainable when state‑strength fluctuations undermine the government’s commitment, especially when the center has a vested interest in expanding into the periphery and when either side can profit from contraband during the conflict. The analysis identifies five factors that are strongly related to civil‑war duration.

Abstract

Five factors are shown to be strongly related to civil war duration. Civil wars emerging from coups or revolutions tend to be short. Civil wars in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union have also tended to be relatively brief, as have anti-colonial wars. By contrast, ‘sons of the soil’ wars that typically involve land conflict between a peripheral ethnic minority and state-supported migrants of a dominant ethnic group are on average quite long-lived. So are conflicts in which a rebel group derives major funding from contraband such as opium, diamonds, or coca. The article seeks to explain these regularities, developing a game model focused on the puzzle of what prevents negotiated settlements to long-running, destructive civil wars for which conflicting military expectations are an implausible explanation. In the model, regional autonomy deals may be unreachable when fluctuations in state strength undermine the government’s ability to commit. The commitment problem binds harder when the center has an enduring political or economic interest in expansion into the periphery, as in ‘sons of the soil’ wars, and when either government or rebels are able to earn some income during a conflict despite the costs of fighting, as in the case of contraband funding.