| ID | 151708 |
| Title Proper | Institutions, information, and commitment |
| Other Title Information | the role of democracy in conflict |
| Language | ENG |
| Author | Mitra, Aniruddha ; Bang, James T |
| Summary / Abstract (Note) | This paper explores the hypothesis that both the preexisting quality of democracy in a polity at the onset of conflict and the quality of democracy expected to emerge in the aftermath influence the likelihood of civil war. An empirical investigation of the hypothesis presents a challenge due to concerns of endogeneity and selection: the post-conflict level of democracy is endogenous to the pre-conflict level. Further, for a given time period, either a number of countries have not experienced civil war; or if they did, did not resolve the conflict. We overcome this selection bias by implementing a three-step extension to the Heckman procedure using an unbalanced cross-country panel of 77 countries over the period 1971–2005. Consistent with our hypothesis, we find that a standard deviation improvement in the existing level of democracy reduces the probability of civil war by approximately 9 percentage points and a corresponding improvement in expected post-conflict democratization increases the probability of conflict by approximately 48 percentage points. |
| `In' analytical Note | Defence and Peace Economics Vol. 28, No.2; Apr 2017: p.165-187 |
| Journal Source | Defence and Peace Economics Vol: 28 No 2 |
| Key Words | Conflict ; Democracy ; Conflict Resolution |