Win, Lose, or Draw: Predicting the Outcome of Civil Wars

Abstract

a government victory, a rebel victory, or a negotiated settlement? To explore this question we present an expected utility model of the choice rebels and governments face between accepting a settlement or continuing to fight. The model implies that a settlement becomes more likely as (1) estimates of the probability of victory decline; (2) costs of conflict increase; (3) estimates of the time required to win increase; or (4) the utility from a settlement increases relative to that of victory.Factors that (1) increase one party's probability of victory; (2) increase its payoffs from victory; (3) reduce the costs of conflict; and/or (4) reduce the time required to achieve victory increase that party's probability of winning and decrease the likelihood of a settlement. We test these propositions with a multinomial choice model that correctly predicts the outcome in 86 percent of the cases. NOTE: An earlier version of this article was presented at the 1996 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association. The authors are indebted to the editors and several anonymous reviewers for the suggestions on how to revise the manuscript. Any remaining errors remain the responsibility of the authors.

Incentives for Talking: Accepting Mediation in International and Civil Wars

“…In other words, the duration of conflict increases the likelihood of negotiated settlement. In the study by Mason, Fett, and Weingarten (Mason et al 1999), it is also reported that there is a curvilinear relationship: the square term of conflict duration is negatively associated with negotiated settlement. This is an indication that mediation is most likely to occur in the easiest conflict situation: those situations where negotiated settlements are also most likely to be reached.…”

When and How the Fighting Stops: Explaining the Duration and Outcome of Civil Wars

“…These expectations have been confirmed empirically (Mason et al, 1999). The rebels' hope is to survive long enough to be able to build a force sufficient to defeat the government or force it to agree to a settlement.…”

“…Previous research has established that conflict duration is positively associated with the probability of the war ending in a negotiated settlement and negatively associated with the probability of both government victory and rebel victory (Mason and Fett, 1996;Mason et al, 1999;Fearon, 2004). The longer a civil war lasts, the more the protagonists are compelled to adjust their estimates of the probability of victory (P v ), the time required to achieve victory (t v ), and the accrued costs of achieving victory .…”

“…The decision calculus by which both actors choose between continuing to fight and stopping is a function of the expected payoffs from victory versus defeat versus a negotiated settlement (Mason and Fett, 1996;Mason et al, 1999). The expected payoffs from continuing to fight are a function of: (1) the actor's subjective estimate of the payoff from victory;…”

“…Mason and Fett (1996) found that the duration of a civil war was the strongest single predictor of whether it would end in a negotiated settlement or a decisive victory for either side: the longer a war lasts, the less likely it is to end in victory for either side. Mason et al (1999) found that rebel victories (the least likely outcome) usually occur in the first few years of the war, and government victories also typically occur within the first five years of the war. After about ten years, decisive victory by either side is rare, and the conflict is likely to settle into what Zartman (1993) has termed a 'mutually hurting stalemate'.…”