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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
Private Soldiers In Africa: A Look At The Effects Of Private Military Contractors And Mercenaries On The Duration Of Civil Wars In Africa From 1960 To 2003., Seth H. Loven
Department of Political Science: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research
This thesis examines the effect of private soldiers, both Mercenaries and Private Military Contractors (PMC), on the duration of civil wars in Africa from 1960 to 2003. Linear regression is used to determine if private soldiers increase or decrease the duration of civil wars. Ultimately it is found they have little to no statistical impact. This is contrary to the expectations of the theoretical literature on private military contractors, some of which expects private soldiers to profit from war and seek to lengthen duration, and some of which expects the use of additional private soldiers to shorten the duration of …
Pathways To Civil War, Susumu Suzuki
Pathways To Civil War, Susumu Suzuki
Wayne State University Dissertations
This dissertation is about conflict escalation to civil war, and examines why some political confrontations escalate and why principal conflict actors continue fighting rather than reaching a number of political arrangements at various points of the course of conflict. Unlike previous studies, this study treats the progression to civil war as one of complex alternate paths. In so doing, building on the perspective of asymmetric information (i.e. uncertainty) problems as a cause of war, this study claims that involving each conflict actor's cognitive variances about its opponent's willingness to resolve and military strength would bolster either side's costly military mobilization …