The importance of political institutions for preventing conflict recurrence

Fiedler, Charlotte
External Publications (2018)

published on World Bank Blog "Pathways for Peace" 04.04.2018

Do political institutions matter when explaining why some post-conflict countries fall back into conflict? On the one hand, many believe inclusive political institutions to be key for conflict prevention. On the other hand, the academic literature so far, mostly focusing on the effect of regime type more generally, fails to find consistent effects – more democratic states do not clearly experience less conflict recurrence. This blog post summarizes a paper, which argues that rather than democracy more generally, very specific political institutions can very well have an influence on whether conflict recurs or not. And indeed, the results show that strong legislatures and high courts as well as local elections and civil society participation are significantly and robustly associated with less conflict recurrence.

About the author

Fiedler, Charlotte

Political Scientist