Ethnic Polarization and the Duration of Civil Wars

Montalvo, Jose G. ; Reynal-Querol, Marta

World Bank, Washington, DC

关键词: ARMED CONFLICT;    ARMED CONFLICTS;    ARMY;    CIVIL WAR;    CIVIL WARS;   

DOI  :  10.1596/1813-9450-4192
RP-ID  :  WPS4192

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: World Bank Open Knowledge Repository

【 摘 要 】

The authors analyze the relationshipbetween ethnic polarization and the duration of civil wars.Several recent papers have argued that the uncertainty aboutthe relative power of the contenders in a war will tend toincrease its duration. In these models, uncertainty isdirectly related to the relative size of the contenders. Theauthors argue that the duration of civil wars increases themore polarized a society is. Uncertainty is not necessarilylinked to the structure of the population but it could betraced back to the measurement of the size of the differentgroups in the society. Given a specific level of measurementerror or uncertainty, more polarization implies lengthierwars. The empirical results show that ethnically polarizedcountries have to endure longer civil wars than ethnicallyless polarized societies.