Persistence of civil wars
Name
Acemoglu-2010-PERSISTENCE OF CIVIL WARS.pdf
Size
169.9 KB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
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Author(s)
Acemoglu, Daron
Ticchi, Davide
Vindigni, Andrea
Date Issued
April 2010
Journal
Journal of the European Economic Association
Publisher
MIT Press
Citation
Acemoglu, Daron, Davide Ticchi and Andrea Vindigni. "Persistence of civil wars." Journal of the European Economic Association 2010 8:2-3, 664-676. © 2010 by the European Economic Association
Version
Final published version
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 in?uence or coups by the military. Civilian governments whose rents are largely una¤ected 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 ?ghting the insurrection, as a commitment to not reforming the military in the future.
Subjects
civil wars
commitment
coups
military
political transitions
political economy
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Economics
Terms of Use
Article is made available in accordance with the publisher's policy and may be subject to US copyright law. Please refer to the publisher's site for terms of use.
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1162/jeea.2010.8.2-3.664
