What conditions determine whether a civil war ends in a negotiated settlement or a military victory? The authors address this question by developing an expected utility model of the choice between seeking an immediate settlement or continuing to fight in anticipation of eventual victory. The...

Previous research has shown that the duration of a civil war is in part a function of how it ends: in government victory, rebel victory, or negotiated settlement. We present a model of how protagonists in a civil war choose to stop fighting. Hypotheses derived from this theory relate the...

Though European colonialism had a profound and lasting impact on the development of contemporary Africa, there are few studies that assess these effects empirically. This study explores one facet of the colonial legacy: ethnic conflict. Despite the pervasiveness of ethnic strife across the...

The Maoist insurgency in Nepal presents an anomaly for students of civil war and democratic transitions. How was the Maoist wing of the Nepal Communist Party able to mobilize peasants to support their insurgency when they could not mobilize enough peasants to vote for them in elections? The...