The Duration and Termination of Civil War
| Author | Håvard Hegre |
| Published date | 01 May 2004 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0022343304043768 |
| Date | 01 May 2004 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
243
Why Study the Duration of Civil
War?
Figure 1 shows how the global incidence of
civil war has changed over the last half-
century.1The incidence is the share of the
world’s countries where at least one war is
active during a year. In the absence of good
measures of the number of people killed in
war every year and the amount of physical
destruction, the incidence is the best measure
to gauge the scope of civil war as a global
problem. The figure shows that the incidence
was increasing dramatically up to 1990. At
the peak in 1990, the incidence was almost
four times higher than in the 1950s. Since
then, the incidence declined and then stabil-
ized around 12% from 1995.
The proportion of countries that started a
new war (or took part in one that re-erupted
after at least a year’s peace) is represented
with a dark shade in Figure 1. What is
striking about the figure is that the change in
incidence is not due to any change over time
in the frequency of war onsets. The fraction
of the world’s countries that experienced new
conflicts has been stable at between 1% and
2% during the entire period. The increase up
to 1990 was not caused by an explosion in
the number of new conflicts, nor was the
subsequent decline due to a dearth of new
conflicts. This confirms Fearon & Laitin’s
(2003: 78) observation that the increase
must be due to a steady accumulation of con-
flicts that start at a higher rate than they end
© 2004 Journal of Peace Research,
vol. 41, no. 3, 2004, pp. 243–252
Sage Publications (London, Thousand Oaks, CA
and New Delhi) www.sagepublications.com
DOI 10.1177/0022343304043768 ISSN 0022-3433
The Duration and Termination of Civil War*
HÅVARD HEGRE
Department of Political Science, University of Oslo & Centre for the Study of
Civil War, PRIO
An important key to reducing the suffering due to civil war is to shorten conflicts. The marked decrease
in the incidence of conflicts in the 1990s was mostly due to a high number of conflict terminations,
not to a decrease in the number of new wars. The articles in this special issue treat theoretically and
empirically the determinants of civil war onset, duration, and termination, with particular emphasis on
duration and termination. This introduction gives an overview of the articles in the special issue and
discusses a few central topics covered by the different contributions: rebel group motivations, the
importance of financing, military factors, misperception, and commitment problems. Finally, the article
sums up some policy recommendations that may be derived from the articles in the issue.
*This introductory essay and several of the articles
included in the special issue are outputs from the ‘Econ-
omics of Civil War, Crime, and Violence’ project in the
World Bank Development Research Group. The project
was initiated and directed by Paul Collier, and received
funding from the Norwegian, Swiss, and Greek govern-
ments, the World Bank Post-Conflict Fund, and the World
Bank Research Committee. I am grateful for comments on
the introduction by Jim Fearon, Heather Congdon Fors,
Nils Petter Gleditsch, Anke Hoeffler, and Michael Ross.
1The figure is based on the armed conflict data in Gled-
itsch et al. (2002) and Eriksson, Wallensteen & Sollenberg
(2003). The figure includes all conflicts that have led to at
least 1,000 deaths over the course of the conflict. The
graphs were smoothed with a five-year moving average. See
Collier et al. (2003) for regional breakdowns of the inci-
dence of civil war.
01 hegre (ds) 15/4/04 4:08 pm Page 243
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