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Civil war is the predominant form of armed conflictin the world today, and the risk that a civil war will recur ismuch greater than of a new conflict beginning in a society thathas not experienced one. This paper explores the importanceof respect for human rights in post-conflict countries as a fac-tor that reduces this risk of recurrence. When governments donot respect the citizens' right to life, liberty, and security, asdeclared in Article 3 of the Universal Declaration of HumanRights (UDHR), then a country will not be able to re-establishthe necessary trust in politics and between former enemiesto consolidate a stable peace. An analysis of all civil wars be-tween 1946 and 2013 shows that the risk that peace fails issubstantively greater when human rights are violated, and thisis consistent across a large range of post-conflict scenarios.The implication of these findings is that the protection of hu-man rights is not only a positive end in itself, but also a meansto prevent large-scale violence.

Does restructuring security forces reduce the risk of civil war recurrence? Prior research has examined effects of military integration in alleviating commitment problems, but the evidence has been inconclusive. Other aspects of civil–military relations have received less attention. This article examines the effects of civil–military relations in the context of postwar struggles to consolidate authority. It outlines three pathways through which security forces contribute to renewed civil war: by excluding rival factions and facilitating insurgent mobilization, by exploiting control over resources to challenge the regime, or by escalating incipient insurgency through repression. Analysis of original, cross-national data on postwar civil–military relations shows that reducing the potential for exclusion and exploitation through diverse officer appointments and robust civilian oversight lowers the risk of civil war. These findings emphasize the distributive effects of restructuring security forces and highlight the value of examining political contests around state institutions to understand why civil wars restart.

This article studies how when post-conflict justice works alongside a peacekeeping operation following a civil conflict, a two-pronged pacifying effect is activated. While justice mechanisms deal with the factors underlying the conflict, peacekeepers increase the costs for the potential spoilers of the peace while also supporting the justice processes. The findings in this study have important implications for conflict-ridden states attempting to escape the 'conflict trap'.

Does restructuring security forces reduce the risk of civil war recurrence? Prior research has examined effects of military integration in alleviating commitment problems, but the evidence has been inconclusive. Other aspects of civil–military relations have received less attention. This article examines the effects of civil–military relations in the context of postwar struggles to consolidate authority. It outlines three pathways through which security forces contribute to renewed civil war: by excluding rival factions and facilitating insurgent mobilization, by exploiting control over resources to challenge the regime, or by escalating incipient insurgency through repression. Analysis of original, cross-national data on postwar civil–military relations shows that reducing the potential for exclusion and exploitation through diverse officer appointments and robust civilian oversight lowers the risk of civil war. These findings emphasize the distributive effects of restructuring security forces and highlight the value of examining political contests around state institutions to understand why civil wars restart.

Violence after civil war is a challenge to sustainable peace. Many armed conflicts today are recurrences of previous wars and much of the literature on violence after war explains why armed groups return to the battlefield. But even if peace prevails, many other types of violence take place in postwar environments. This postwar violence is likewise subject to a growing multidisciplinary literature. Using citation network analysis, we show that research on war recurrence and postwar violence has developed in relative isolation from each other?although these phenomena are interrelated. This compartmentalization leads us to overlook important similarities and differences in the drivers of different forms of violence after war. We demonstrate this by reviewing the literature in both of these closely related fields. While war recurrence and postwar violence share a set of common risk factors, some factors can have opposite effects on the two outcomes. Because these insights only emerge when systematically comparing the two strands of literature, we propose a novel framework for the study of violence after wars that aims at overcoming the compartmentalization of research within these two fields. The framework serves both as a conceptual lens and an analytical tool to categorize and compare different forms of violence after war. We then outline how the framework aids scholars in pursuing an integrated research agenda, with concrete suggestions for research questions that should be studied to expand our understanding of violence after wars.

This dissertation explores the factors associated with and the mechanisms that produce civil war recurrence. I argue that the variation in the government's use of violence after the war as a means of counterinsurgency explains the likelihood of the recurrence of a given civil war. More particularly, I argue that indiscriminate violence by the incumbent regime increases the incentive amongst civilians, who formally participated and/or supported the rebellion in the original war, to return to actively supporting the rebels once again, thus, increasing the likelihood of war recurrence. This is due to the fact that when ordinary individuals believe that their choice to remain neutral or being pro-government threatens their personal security, they may decide to reenlist in the rebel movement, thus increasing the likelihood of a renewed war. By employing both quantitative and qualitative methods, I show the presence of postwar violence by government, especially the indiscriminate variety, is associated by increased likelihood of civil war recurrence.

We consider whether the fragmentation of combatants during civil war has downstream effects on the durability of peace following civil wars. We contend that the splintering of combatant groups, a primary manifestation of rebel group fragmentation, produces potential spoiler groups that are neither incidental nor unimportant in the process of civil war resolution. Making connections to the spoiling and credible commitment literatures, we hypothesize that rebel splintering hastens the recurrence of civil wars. Using event history modeling and propensity score matching to analyze two different civil war datasets, we examine whether the occurrence of fragmentation during a civil war influences the length of peace after the civil war. The empirical analysis of fragmentation events during civil wars since World War II offers support for the hypothesis that splintering decreases the duration of post-civil war peace. The results suggest the need to pay closer attention to the dynamics of fragmentation, and particularly how these dynamics lead to future consequences – even when those consequences take place after the war has concluded. For example, governments that attempt to splinter groups or to use existing fragmentations within rebel groups to end a civil war may encourage the unintended consequence of shorter peace duration.

Violence after civil war is a challenge to sustainable peace. Many armed conflicts today are recurrences of previous wars and much of the literature on violence after war explains why armed groups return to the battlefield. But even if peace prevails, many other types of violence take place in postwar environments. This postwar violence is likewise subject to a growing multidisciplinary literature. Using citation network analysis, we show that research on war recurrence and postwar violence has developed in relative isolation from each other—although these phenomena are interrelated. This compartmentalization leads us to overlook important similarities and differences in the drivers of different forms of violence after war. We demonstrate this by reviewing the literature in both of these closely related fields. While war recurrence and postwar violence share a set of common risk factors, some factors can have opposite effects on the two outcomes. Because these insights only emerge when systematically comparing the two strands of literature, we propose a novel framework for the study of violence after wars that aims at overcoming the compartmentalization of research within these two fields. The framework serves both as a conceptual lens and an analytical tool to categorize and compare different forms of violence after war. We then outline how the framework aids scholars in pursuing an integrated research agenda, with concrete suggestions for research questions that should be studied to expand our understanding of violence after wars.

Why does peace fail? More precisely, why do some countries that show every sign of having successfully emerged from civil war fall once again into armed conflict? What explains why peace "sticks" after some wars but not others?. In this illuminating study, Charles T. Call examines the factors behind fifteen cases of civil war recurrence in Africa, Asia, the Caucasus, and Latin America. He argues that widely touted explanations of civil war -- such as poverty, conflict over natural resources, and weak states -- are far less important than political exclusion. Call's study shows that i