| This dissertation explains why some civil wars are resolved quickly and others are not. I argue that the number of actors involved in a civil war directly affects the ability of all parties to reach a negotiated settlement, and therefore how long the war lasts. This explanation stands in contrast to the existing literature which has traditionally assumed that civil wars are fought between only two actors, the state and one rebel group. The main argument is that conflicts with multiple actors who must approve a settlement (veto players) are longer because there are fewer agreements that are acceptable to all parties, greater information asymmetries make it harder for combatants to determine the extent of concessions they must give up, all actors have incentives to hold out to be the last signer and shifting alliances among parties make the formation of negotiating blocs to overcome these problems difficult.; The dissertation contains two empirical tests of this veto player approach. First, I conduct a quantitative analysis of the effect of number of actors on the duration of all civil wars begun since 1945 using a new dataset containing data on all factions involved in civil war. This analysis reveals a strong correlation between the number of players and civil war duration, and this finding is robust to the inclusion of control variables and to different measurements of the types of players involved in a civil war. Second, I use comparative case studies based on a most similar case design of civil war negotiations in a two actor conflict in Rwanda (1990-1994) and a four actor conflict in Burundi (1993-ongoing) to test whether the correlation found in the quantitative analysis is driven by the specific factors identified in the theory. These case studies show that negotiating peace in Burundi was more difficult due to information asymmetries, incentives to hold out, and shifting alliances. This dissertation demonstrates that the assumption in the existing literature that civil wars are two-party hinders our ability to explain the duration of these conflicts and limits our ability to respond to protracted internal wars. |
