Journal Article - Quarterly Journal: International Security

What’s in a Line? Is Partition a Solution to Civil War?

    Author:
  • Nicholas Sambanis
| Fall 2009

Does territorial partition of countries in civil wars help to end these wars, reducing the risk of recurrence? Researchers have proposed territorial partition with or without formal recognition of sovereignty as a solution to civil wars and a way to create self-enforcing peace. Quantitative studies of the effect of partition on the risk of renewed civil war, however, suffer several main shortcomings, including conflicting results in the extant literature that result mainly from data coding differences, selective use of case histories, and methodological problems. A new data set and a benchmark empirical analysis find that, on average, partition is unlikely to reduce the risk of a return to civil war and, in some cases, may increase that risk.

 

Downloads

For more information on this publication: Please contact International Security
For Academic Citation: Nicholas Sambanis and Jonah Schulhofer-Wohl. “What’s in a Line? Is Partition a Solution to Civil War?.” Quarterly Journal: International Security, vol. 34. no. 2. (Fall 2009):
82-118
.

The Author

Nicholas Sambanis

Recommended
In the Spotlight
RSS
Lawrence Summers and Robert Zoellick argue that Ukraine’s allies should use the $300 billion in Russian central bank assets frozen by Western governments to show Putin he cannot outlast Ukraine and the West economically.
Global attention to the problem of sexual violence in conflict is important, writes Dara Kay Cohen, but accountability alone has serious limitations as a tool for deterrence of conflict-related sexual violence and may do little to address the root cause.
Guido Torres assesses impacts of the war in Ukraine on Latin America’s economic and political situation and recommends steps the U.S. can take to reduce the negative impacts and protect Latin American sovereignty.
Most Viewed

Tags