Central banks and civil war termination

The ability to finance conflict likely affects the odds of sustaining a war and succeeding in it. Recent literature explores rebel group funding, but far less is known about how states finance their own war efforts. This article posits that the design of central banks should affect civil war termination. In particular, it argues that central bank independence affects civil war termination through two channels. First, financial markets consider central bank independence as a good signal in terms of macroeconomic stability and debt repayment. In this way, independent central banks enhance the ability of the government to access credit to finance and end a civil war. Second, central bank independence is associated with lower inflation. Inflation control reduces one source of additional grievances that the civil war may impose on citizens. On a sample of civil wars between 1975 and 2009, central bank independence is associated with a substantial increase in the likelihood of war termination. When the form of termination is disaggregated, (higher) central bank independence is associated with a higher probability of government victory, relative to continued conflict and to other outcomes. Additional tests provide support for the argued mechanisms: during civil wars, countries with more independent central banks access international credit markets in better conditions – i.e. they pay lower interest rates, and receive longer grace and maturity periods on new debt. Furthermore, in countries experiencing civil wars, central bank independence is associated with lower inflation.

Pro-government militias and civil war termination

Why do governments choose to fund pro-government militias (PGMs) if doing so could extend costly civil conflict? While PGMs are active in a majority of civil wars, their impact on conflict termination remains poorly understood. We argue that the choice to fund PGMs is a strategic one for states and part of their efforts to influence wartime dynamics and conflict termination. We hypothesize that PGMs’ impact on conflict termination is conditional on whether they are government funded. Government-funded PGMs help states to ward off costly negotiations and encourage the rebellion's gradual dissolution. Using competing risks analyses on civil wars ending between 1981 and 2007, we find robust evidence that PGM funding affects conflict outcomes.

Armed Group Transition from Rebel to Government

Governments and political parties with an armed history are not unusual, yet how these groups function during and after the transition from conflict has largely been ignored by the existing literature. Many former armed groups have assumed power in a variety of contexts. Whilst this process is often associated with brokered peace agreements that encourage former combatants to transform into political parties, mobilise voters, and ultimately stand for elections, this is not always the case. What is less clearly understood is how war termination by insurgent victory shapes patterns of post-war politics. This rapid literature review collates available evidence of transitions made by armed groups to government. The literature collated presents a mixed picture, with transitions mediated by an array of contextual factors that are location and group specific. Case studies are drawn from a range of contexts where armed groups have assumed some influence over government (these include those via negotiated settlement, victory and in contexts of ongoing protracted conflict). The review provides a series of readings and case studies that are of use in understanding how armed groups may transition in “post-conflict” settings.

Why Rebels Stop Fighting: Organizational Decline and Desertion in Colombia's Insurgency

Desertion, or the unauthorized exit from an armed group, has major implications for counterinsurgency, war termination, and recruitment dynamics. While existing research stresses the importance of individual motivations for desertion, organizational decline, in the form of military and financial adversity, can also condition desertion. Organizational decline undermines a group's instruments to channel individual preferences into collective action. These instruments include selective incentives, ideological appeal, and coercion. When the binding power of these instruments diminishes, individual desires start to dominate behavior, making desertion more likely. The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) insurgency is used to examine this argument with a multimethod approach. First, a quantitative analysis employs unique data on more than 19,000 reported FARC deserters from 2002 to 2017, provided by the Colombian Ministry of Defense. Guarding against threats to causal inference, statistical analysis indicates that organizational decline drives desertion. Second, a qualitative analysis uses a large body of detailed reports on interviews with deserters conducted by Colombian military personnel. The reports demonstrate that organizational decline weakens selective incentives, group ideology, and a credible coercive regime, and fosters desertion through these mechanisms. These findings provide key insights for policymakers, given that desertion can both contribute to ending conflict and accelerate the recruitment of new combatants.