The duration of large-scale violent civil conflict increases substantially if the society is composed of a few large … the initiation of conflict. And neither the duration nor the initiation of conflict is affected by initial inequality or …

The authors combine an empirical model of external intervention with a theoretical model of civil war duration. Their … empirical model of intervention allows them to analyze civil war duration using "expected" rather than "actual" external … intervention as an explanatory variable in the duration model. Unlike previous studies, they find that external intervention is …