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Persistence of Civil Wars

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  • Daron Acemoglu
  • Davide Ticchi
  • Andrea Vindigni

Abstract

A notable feature of post-World War II civil wars is their very long average duration. We provide a theory of the persistence of civil wars. The civilian government can successfully defeat rebellious factions only by creating a relatively strong army. In weakly-institutionalized polities this opens the way for excessive influence or coups by the military. Civilian governments whose rents are largely unaffected by civil wars then choose small and weak armies that are incapable of ending insurrections. Our framework also shows that when civilian governments need to take more decisive action against rebels, they may be forced to build over-sized armies, beyond the size necessary for fighting the insurrection, as a commitment to not reforming the military in the future.

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Bibliographic Info

Paper provided by National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc in its series NBER Working Papers with number 15378.

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Date of creation: Sep 2009
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Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:15378

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  1. Daron Acemoglu & Davide Ticchi & Andrea Vindigni, 2010. "A Theory of Military Dictatorships," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 2(1), pages 1-42, January.
  2. Acemoglu, D. & Ticchi, D. & Vindigni, A., 2006. "Emergence and Persistence of Inefficient States," Papers 12-02-2006, Princeton University, Research Program in Political Economy.
  3. Blattman, Christopher & Miguel, Edward, 2009. "Civil War," Center for International and Development Economics Research, Working Paper Series qt90n356hs, Center for International and Development Economics Research, Institute for Business and Economic Research, UC Berkeley.
  4. Collier, Paul & Hoeffler, Anke & Soderbom, Mans, 2001. "On the duration of civil war," Policy Research Working Paper Series 2681, The World Bank.
  5. Daron Acemoglu, 2005. "Politics and Economics in Weak and Strong States," NBER Working Papers 11275, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  6. Daron Acemoglu & Georgy Egorov & Konstantin Sonin, 2012. "Dynamics and Stability of Constitutions, Coalitions, and Clubs," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 102(4), pages 1446-76, June.
  7. Acemoglu,Daron & Robinson,James A., 2006. "Economic Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521855266.
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Cited by:
  1. Orso, Cristina Elisa, 2009. "Formal and informal sectors: Interactions between moneylenders and traditional banks in the rural Indian credit market," POLIS Working Papers 135, Institute of Public Policy and Public Choice - POLIS.
  2. Saint-Paul, Gilles & Ticchi, Davide & Vindigni, Andrea, 2012. "A Theory of Political Entrenchment," CEPR Discussion Papers 8960, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
  3. Rohner, D. & Thoenig, M. & Zilibotti, F., 2011. "War Signals: A Theory of Trade, Trust and Conflict," Cambridge Working Papers in Economics 1136, Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge.
  4. Daron Acemoglu & James A. Robinson & Rafael Santos, 2009. "The Monopoly of Violence: Evidence from Colombia," NBER Working Papers 15578, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  5. Caleb Stroup & Benjamin Zissimos, 2011. "Pampered Bureaucracy, Political Stability, and Trade Integration," Vanderbilt University Department of Economics Working Papers 1105, Vanderbilt University Department of Economics.
  6. Giuranno, Michele, 2009. "The logic of party coalitions with political activism and public financing," POLIS Working Papers 134, Institute of Public Policy and Public Choice - POLIS.
  7. Baddeley, M., 2011. "Civil War and Human Development: Impacts of Finance and Financial Infrastructure," Cambridge Working Papers in Economics 1127, Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge.
  8. Bodea, Cristina, 2012. "Natural resources, weak states and civil war : can rents stabilize coup prone regimes ?," Policy Research Working Paper Series 6071, The World Bank.

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