How Civil Wars End Lise Morjé Howard and the International System, Norms, and the Alexandra Stark Role of External Actors
How Civil Wars End How Civil Wars End Lise Morjé Howard and The International System, Norms, and the Alexandra Stark Role of External Actors Historically, civil wars were fought to the ªnish, with the complete military defeat of the losing side.1 But in the 1990s, as this article demonstrates, civil wars were more likely to end in negotiated settlements rather than victory by one side. Why? We argue that civil wars began to end in this historically distinct manner because of a fundamental change in the international norms of conºict resolution—namely, the rise of a norm of negotiated settlement. This norm arose in the context of a new international political environment dominated by U.S. unipolarity and liberal democracy; the ideas and principles of the liberal order undermined the acceptability of military victory. In the post–September 11 environment characterized by the war on terror- ism, however, the norm of negotiated settlement has been challenged by countervailing notions of appropriateness—namely, stabilization over democ- ratization and non-negotiation with terrorist groups. As a result, civil wars are ending less frequently, and less often in negotiation. The dominant inter- national political environment shapes norms of conºict resolution, which, in turn, inºuence how civil wars end. Lise Morjé Howard is Associate Professor and Alexandra Stark is a Ph.D. candidate, both in the Depart- ment of Government at Georgetown University. For helpful comments and suggestions, the authors thank Michael Barnett, Chester Crocker, Kathleen Gallagher Cunningham, Christian Davenport, Anjali Kaushlesh Dayal, Tanisha Fazal, V. Page Fortna, Desha Girod, Caroline Hartzell, Ron Hassner, Stathis Kalyvas, Luke Keele, Joachim Kreutz, Kathleen McNamara, Stephen Moncrief, Daniel Nexon, Ragnhild Nordås, Patrick Regan, Thomas Risse, Elizabeth Saunders, Megan Stewart, James Vreeland, Elizabeth Wood, and the anonymous reviewers.
[Show full text]