relation: http://eprints.imtlucca.it/769/
title: Persistence of civil wars
creator: Acemoglu, Daron
creator: Vindigni, Andrea
creator: Ticchi, Davide
subject: HB Economic Theory
subject: HN Social history and conditions. Social problems. Social reform
subject: JF Political institutions (General)
description: 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.
publisher: MIT Press
date: 2010-05
type: Article
type: PeerReviewed
format: application/pdf
language: en
identifier: http://eprints.imtlucca.it/769/1/Ticchi_2010a.pdf
identifier:   Acemoglu, Daron and Vindigni, Andrea and Ticchi, Davide  Persistence of civil wars.  Journal of the European Economic Association, 8 (2-3).  pp. 664-676.  ISSN 1542-4766      (2010)  
relation: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1542-4774.2010.tb00536.x
relation: 10.1111/j.1542-4774.2010.tb00536.x