Military Integration, Demobilization, and the Recurrence of Civil War

ABSTRACT

Peace agreements often include provisions for the military integration of the conflict parties, involving an increase in government forces, and at the same time requesting demobilization and thus a reduction of military personnel. Depending on the modalities and magnitude both can be strong signals of a commitment to the peace process. However, tensions between these two concepts can also endanger post-conflict stability. The empirical analyses of 77 post-conflict societies show that civil war is more likely to recur if rebel forces are kept separate during the military integration process and if the military plays an important role in post-conflict economies.

KEYWORDS:

• Demobilization
• military integration
• military capabilities
• post-conflict stability
• civil war recurrence

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Nadine Ansorg, Eleanor Gordon, Florian Ranft, Levke Aduda, and two anonymous reviewers for helpful suggestions. The data that support the findings of this study are available at https://ipk.uni-greifswald.de/politikwissenschaft/ib-replikationsdaten/

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Margit Bussmann holds the Chair of International Relations and Regional Studies at the University of Greifswald (Germany) since 2010. She received her Ph.D. at the University of Alabama in 2001 and her Habilitation at the University of Konstanz in 2009. Her research interests include the study of the causes and consequences of international and domestic conflicts as well as conflict dynamics. Her work has been published in International Studies Quarterly, Journal of Conflict Resolution, Journal of Peace Research, and World Development among others. [email protected]

Notes

1. Integration being high on a vertical dimension relates to the question of whether mostly the rank-and-file soldiers are integrated and/or whether higher ranking officers retain a respective position after the war (Krebs and Licklider 2016).

2. Even if trust in the ongoing peace process is high, a high threat (perception) because of potential spoilers that are outside the peace process, or external threats from neighbouring states can be explanations for a lack of demobilization and would be related to an increased risk of peace failure.

3. The analyses include internal armed conflicts and internationalized internal armed conflicts, thus conflicts between a government and an internal opposition group. It does not include interstate armed conflicts that occur between states.

4. The states included in the study are Afghanistan, Algeria, Angola, Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Burkina Faso, Burma, Burundi, Cambodia, Cameroun, Central African Republic, Chad, Colombia, Congo, Croatia, Djibouti, Egypt, El Salvador, Eritrea, Gambia, Georgia, Ghana, Guatemala, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Haiti, India, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Laos, Lebanon, Lesotho, Liberia, Macedonia, Malaysia, Mali, Mexico, Moldova, Morocco, Mozambique, Nepal, Nicaragua, Niger, Nigeria, Pakistan, Panama, Papua New Guinea, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Russia, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Surinam, Tajikistan, Thailand, Togo, Trinidad & Tobago, Tunisia, Turkey, Uganda, United Kingdom, Uzbekistan, Venezuela, Yugoslavia, and Zimbabwe.

5. Multiple failures in a country are possible.

6. The results are essentially the same if both variables are entered separately in the model.

7. See Hultman, Kathman, and Shannon (2013) who find that it is the deployment of military troops that is related to a reduced risk of recurrence but not observer missions.

Additional information

Funding

Research for this paper has been supported by a grant from the German Research Foundation [BU 2289/3-1/2].