Class Year
2020
Document Type
Student Research Paper
Date of Creation
Fall 2019
Department 1
Political Science
Abstract
I argue that a strong civil society suggests the existence of institutions that provide alternate mechanisms to reduce grievance as well as opportunities for public problem solving, which, in turn, should result in a decreased probability of civil war onset as well as decreased civil war incidence (a proxy for civil war duration). Controlling for per capita GDP, ethnic fractionalization, regime type, and population -- the measures that tend to have the strongest association with civil war onset and incidence -- I find that the presence of strong civil society does, indeed, have a negative and statistically significant association with probability of civil war incidence, though not (at the 95% confidence level) with civil war onset. Nevertheless, insofar as civil society can emerge absent broader societal changes such as the expansion of economic opportunity, this research has broad policy implications for governments and international organizations seeking to alleviate the tolls of war.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
Recommended Citation
Pontz, Benjamin R., "When We’re Connected to a Community, We’re Less Likely to Be at War with It: The Effect of Strong Civil Society on Civil War Onset and Incidence" (2019). Student Publications. 752.
https://cupola.gettysburg.edu/student_scholarship/752
Comments
Written for POL 303: Civil Wars & Political Violence.