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ABSTRACT
Under what conditions are rebel groups successfully incorporated into democratic politics when civil war ends? Using an original cross-national, longitudinal dataset, we examine political party formation by armed opposition groups over a 20-year period, from 1990 to 2009. We find that former armed opposition groups form parties in more than half of our observations. A rebel group’s pre-war political experience, characteristics of the war and how it ended outweigh factors such as the country’s political and economic traits and history. We advance a theoretical framework based on rebel leaders’ expectations of success in post-war politics, and we argue that high rates of party formation by former armed opposition groups are likely a reflection of democratic weakness rather than democratic robustness in countries emerging from conflict.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes on contributors
Carrie Manning is Professor and Chair, Department of Political Science, Georgia State University.
Ian Smith is a recent doctoral graduate of Georgia State University.
Notes
1 Flores and Nooruddin, “The Effects of Elections”; Kreutz, How and When Armed Conflicts End.
2 Dudouet et al., From Combatants to Peacebuilders; Paris, At War’s End; United States Institute of Peace, Guiding Principles; Zuercher et al., Costly Democracy.
3 The dataset also contains information on party performance and persistence. We find that the majority of AOGs form parties and compete in elections over an extended period of time. This is particularly interesting given the considerable diversity of the AOGs, conflicts, and countries included in the dataset. However, we leave analysis of performance and persistence to a future project.
4 Sartori, Parties and Party Systems, 56.
5 Allison, “The Legacy of Violence”; Allison, “The Transition from Armed Opposition”; Altier et al., “Violence, Elections, and Party Politics”; Curtis, “Transitional Governance”; Curtis and de Zeeuw, “Rebel Movements” ”; De Zeeuw, Soldiers into Politicians; De Zeeuw, Political Party Development; Deonandan et al., Revolutionary Movements to Political Parties; Garibay, “De La Lutte Armee”; Ishiyama and Batta, “Swords into Plowshares”; Manning, Making of Democrats; Ogura, “Seeking State Power”; Porto et al., From Soldiers to Citizens; Soderberg Kovacs, “When Rebels Change.”
6 See Bratton and van de Walle, Democratic Experiments in Africa; Fortna and Huang, “Democratization after Civil War”; ; Ishiyama “Civil Wars and Party Systems”; Ishiyama, “The Sickle or the Rose”; Kitschelt et al., Post-Communist Party Systems; Manning, Making of Democrats; Manning, “Party-Building on Heels of War”; Panebianco, Political Parties; Reilly and Nordlund, Political Parties; Smith, “Former Sole Legal Party Performance”; Zuercher et al., Costly Democracy.
7 Panebianco, Political Parties; Sartori, Parties and Party Systerms .
8 Panebianco, Political Parties.
9 Ishiyama, “Communist Parties”; Ishiyama, “The Sickle or the Rose”; Ishiyama and Batta, “Swords into Plowshares.”
10 Ishiyama, “Sickle or Rose”; Ishiyama, “Communist Parties”; Ishiyama, “Party Organization”; Manning, “Party-Building on Heels of War”; Smith, “Former Sole Legal Party Performance.”
11 Ishiyama, “Communist Parties”; Ishiyama, “Sickle or Rose?”; Smith, “Former Sole Legal Parties.”
12 Bratton and van de Walle, Democratic Experiments in Africa; Ishiyama, “Sickle or Rose?”; Kitschelt et al., Post-Communist Party Systems; Manning, Making of Democrats.
13 Ishiyama, “Communist Parties”; Ishiyama, “Sickle or Rose?”; Ishiyama and Batta, “Swords into Plowshares”; Panebianco, Political Parties; Reilly and Nordlund, Political Parties.
14 De Zeeuw, Soldiers into Politicians, 232.
15 Carbone, “Ten Years of Multiparty Politics”; De Zeeuw, Political Party Development; Manning, “Constructing Opposition”; Manning, Making of Democrats; Soderberg Kovacs, “When Rebels Change”; Manning, Politics of Peace .
16 Fortna and Huang, “Democratization after Civil War”; Zuercher et al., Costly Democracy.
17 Fortna and Huang, “Democratization after Civil War,” 806.
18 Ishiyama, “Civil Wars and Party Systems.”
19 We utilized the high estimates for battle deaths provided as they were more closely correlated with the best estimates provided (when available) than either the low estimate or an average between high and low estimates.
20 Lacina and Gleditsch, “Monitoring Trends in Global Combat.”
21 Allison, “The Legacy of Violence”; Bueno de Mesquita, “Rebel Tactics”; Christia, Alliance Formation in Civil Wars; Fjelde and Nilsson, “Rebels Against Rebels”; Ishiyama and Batta, “Swords into Plowshares”; Mampilly, Rebel Rulers; Staniland, Networks of Rebellion; Weinstein, Inside Rebellion.
22 Doyle and Sambanis, Making War and Building Peace; Fortna, “Does Peacekeeping Keep Peace?”; Hartzell et al., “Stabilizing the Peace.”
23 Altier et al., “Violence, Elections and Party Politics”; Brathwaite, “The Electoral Terrorist.”
24 Ishiyama, “Civil Wars and Party Systems,” 443.
25 The relationship between conflict intensity, measured here in terms of battle deaths, and the intensity of political cleavages could run in either direction. If deep cleavages predate conflict, it is unlikely to produce an effect different from what we’d see if conflict produced the cleavages. Either way, cleavages intensify.
26 Collier et al., “On the Duration of Civil War”; Hartzell et al., “Stabilizing the Peace”; Mason and Fett, “How Civil Wars End”; Regan, “Third-Party Interventions.”
27 De Zeeuw, Soldiers into Politicians, 233.
28 Doyle and Sambanis, Making War and Building Peace.
29 Fortna and Huang, “Democratization after Civil War.”
30 A conflict episode is a continuous period of active conflict years, with active conflict defined per UCDP-PRIO Armed Conflict dataset criteria. See Gleditsch et al., “Armed Conflict.” An episode ends when it is followed by a year in which there are fewer than 25 battle-related deaths.
31 Note that there are multiple conflict episodes in most countries, multiple AOGs for some conflict episodes, and a number of armed groups that participate in more than one conflict episode. See Appendix 1 for a list of countries, conflict episodes, AOGs and parties.
32 Altier et al., “Violence, Elections and Political Parties”; Brathwaite, “The Electoral Terrorist”; Ishiyama and Batta, “Swords into Ploughshares.”
33 We also later focus on the substantive impacts of each variable in our estimate. The estimates remain unchanged whether cluster robust standard errors are used or not, as clustering only alters the standard error and p-value used for measuring confidence. As we are interested in a more exploratory analysis in a relatively small dataset, we are less concerned about setting arbitrary thresholds of statistical significance.
34 This was done utilizing a stepwise algorithm to remove variables with a high variance inflation factor.
35 Fisher, Statistical Methods; Gelman and Stern, “The Difference between ‘Significant’ and ‘Not Significant’”; Gill, “The Insignificance of Null Hypothesis.”
36 Interpretation is based on the results from our second model.
37 Ishiyama, “Civil Wars and Party Systems,” 445.
38 Ishiyama and Batta, “Swords into Plowshares”; Manning, Making of Democrats.
39 Kalyvas, Logic of Violence; Weinstein, Inside Rebellion.
40 Manning and Berg, “Bilateral vs. Multilateral Peacebuilding.”