Democratization and Civil War
Draft 6/4/2013 ; This paper examines the impact of civil war on democracy. Drawing from the literature on war and democracy, we investigate the impact of prolonged violence, war termination, rebel victory, and international intervention on democratization. Using an unbalanced panel data set of 96 countries covering a 34-year period, our analysis suggests that civil war lowers democratization in the succeeding period. Our findings suggest that United Nations intervention increases democratization, as do wars ending in stalemates. However, wars ending in rebel victories seem to reduce democracy. These findings appear robust to conditioning, different instrument sets, and the measurement of democracy.