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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Paper provided by National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc in its series NBER Working Papers with number
15378.
Length: Date of creation: Sep 2009 Date of revision: Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:15378
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Acemoglu, Daron & Ticchi, Davide & Vindigni, Andrea, 2009.
"Persistence of Civil Wars,"
Papers
09-06-2009, Princeton University, Research Program in Political Economy.
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Find related papers by JEL classification: H2 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue N10 - Economic History - - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics; Growth and Fluctuations - - - General, International, or Comparative N40 - Economic History - - Government, War, Law, and Regulation - - - General, International, or Comparative P16 - Economic Systems - - Capitalist Systems - - - Political Economy of Capitalism
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