Peace and War With Endogenous State Capacity

We explore how peace or war can occur in the presence of commitment problems. These problems can be reduced by institutions of good governance or, alternatively, state capacity which (a) can be considered a collective good and (b) can be improved through investments. We show how the likelihood of a...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inThe Journal of conflict resolution Vol. 55; no. 3; pp. 446 - 468
Main Authors McBride, Michael, Milante, Gary, Skaperdas, Stergios
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Los Angeles, CA SAGE Publications 01.06.2011
SAGE PUBLICATIONS, INC
Subjects
Armed conflict
Capital investments
Civil war
Civil wars
Commitments
Conflict
Conflict resolution
Conflict theory
Governance
Income
Institutions
Investment
Peace
Peace building
Peace treaties
Peacetime
Political change
Public Goods
Return on investment
State capacity
Studies
War
War conflict
World Bank
institutions
civil war
conflict
governance
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Summary:We explore how peace or war can occur in the presence of commitment problems. These problems can be reduced by institutions of good governance or, alternatively, state capacity which (a) can be considered a collective good and (b) can be improved through investments. We show how the likelihood of a peace agreement depends on the level of state capacity and on investments in state capacity made by adversaries. In accordance with existing evidence but contrary to various theories of conflict, we find that income levels unambiguously increase the chance of peace. Among other issues, we discuss the critical role of external actors in encouraging or discouraging commitment and in developing good governance institutions.
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ISSN:0022-0027
1552-8766
DOI:10.1177/0022002711400862