Towards A Democratic Civil Peace? Opportunity,
Grievance, and Civil War 1816-1992 by Håvard Hegre, Tanja Ellingsen, Scott Gates and Nils Petter
Gleditsch. American
Political Science Review (March)
95: 1.
Copyright by the American Political Science
Association
Abstract Coherent democracies
and harshly authoritarian states have few civil wars, and intermediate
regimes are the most conflict-prone. Domestic violence also seems to be
associated with political change, whether toward greater democracy or
greater autocracy. Is the greater violence of intermediate regimes
equivalent to the finding that states in political transition experience
more violence? If both level of democracy and political change are relevant,
to what extent is civil violence related to each factor? Based on an
analysis of the period 1816–1992, we conclude that intermediate regimes
are most prone to civil war, even when they have had time to stabilize from
a regime change. In the long run, since intermediate regimes are less stable
than autocracies, which in turn are less stable than democracies, durable
democracy is the most probable end-point of the process of democratization.
The democratic civil peace is not only more just than the autocratic peace
but also more stable.
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For questions or comments, please contact Havard Hegre (hhegre@worldbank.org).