[gov2001-l] Claire And Janet's Abstract

Here is our abstract. Thanks in advance for any comments. Claire and Janet ------------------------------- Why Do Civil Wars Recur? Living Conditions, Attributes of the Prior War, and Autocracies Matter Of civil wars that have ended since 1945, roughly one-third have reignited. Walter (2004) argues that conditions conducive to rebel recruitment - particularly poor living conditions and lack of access to political participation - are the critical precursors to renewed civil war. Using rare-events logit, model specification tests, and a hazard model on a respecified dataset, we demonstrate that Walter's findings are robust with three key exceptions: (1) living conditions matter, but less so than the characteristics of the previous war; (2) the magnitudes of her variables' impact are smaller than she estimated; and (3) when controlling for per capita GDP, civil war recurrence is less likely in autocratic states.