Politics Tues/Thurs Seminars
Presenter: Stathis Kalyvas (Yale University)
Location: 19 West 4th Street, Room 217
Date & Time: 04/01/2008 ( - )

Abstract:
Extant crossnational research on civil wars has dismissed the effect of the end of the Cold War on the incidence of civil wars.  We revisit this question by disaggregating civil wars into four types based on the warfare that characterizes them: conventional, irregular, symmetric non-conventional, and urban. We find that the end of the Cold War has a substantively important and statistical significant effect on the incidence of civil wars: irregular wars declined significantly, whereas conventional wars and symmetric non-conventional wars experienced a substantial increase.  This effect is regionally specific, suggesting that the end of the Cold War effect was channeled through the joint military capacity of states and potential rebels. Where this joint military capacity favored the technology of irregular war, as in Latin America and Asia, the Cold War was associated with a significant decline in civil wars. Where this relative military capacity did not favor irregular war, as in Eurasia and Africa, the Cold War is associated with a swelling in civil war onsets.  We argue that these contradictory effects help explain why existing research missed the effect of the end of the Cold War and argue in favor of more disaggregated research designs.

 

Guest Speaker Stathis Kalyvas is an Arnold Wolfers Professor of Political Science at Yale University and the Director of the Program on Order, Conflict, and Violence. For more information about Dr. Kalyvas, please visit his professional homepage: http://research.yale.edu/stathis/