Political Science Commons^™

When We’Re Connected To A Community, We’Re Less Likely To Be At War With It: The Effect Of Strong Civil Society On Civil War Onset And Incidence, Benjamin R. Pontz

Student Publications

I argue that a strong civil society suggests the existence of institutions that provide alternate mechanisms to reduce grievance as well as opportunities for public problem solving, which, in turn, should result in a decreased probability of civil war onset as well as decreased civil war incidence (a proxy for civil war duration). Controlling for per capita GDP, ethnic fractionalization, regime type, and population -- the measures that tend to have the strongest association with civil war onset and incidence -- I find that the presence of strong civil society does, indeed, have a negative and statistically significant association with …