Do State Birth Legacies Inform about Subsequent Conflict Resolution?

Ahmad Sabbir

1. Introduction

The way countries are born into the international system; can that influence how they

subsequently behave in the system? Does the character of a country’s birth tell how the

future civil conflicts would be resolved or how long would they last? Is bloody birth an

indicator of better or worse likelihood in resolving conflicts? These questions are interesting

to begin with because some empirical regularity suggests that birth legacies do inform about

conflict behavior at later stages. As for the place in the big picture, it is significant to know

whether the intrinsic peculiarities of the ways nations are born has to offer any generalized

prediction for conflict duration and intensity in general and civil conflict resolution in

particular. This information could potentially better guide policymaking by reducing

information asymmetry in conflict resolution and management process.

However, the existing literature has, inadequately, addressed the issue. The inadequacy is in

two levels. First, the literature only touched on interstate conflicts and almost entirely

eschewed civil conflicts and second, failed to explain why would similar birth story result

into very different conflict resolution trajectories?

For example the literature states that the countries that are born from revolutionary state

formations i.e. a violent conflict for state formation tend to be involved in a significantly

larger number of interstate disputes than states that were born as a result of an
evolutionary process which is non-violent. Also, revolutionary state change has the same

effect of revolutionary state formation (Maoz 1989). Now, it would be interesting to see

whether these characteristics apply to civil conflicts as well.

Nevertheless, a group of cases as eighty years war of Netherland’s independence from Spain,

the Arab-Israel war in which Israel was born in the hitherto Arab lands, the Arab revolt and

split of Saudi Arabia from the Ottoman commonwealth, The 1971 Civil war of Pakistan and

the birth of Bangladesh, Eritrean War of Independence from Ethiopia, a series of wars that

gave birth to today’s Morocco; that were born from bloody (civil) war but was, subsequently,

able to achieve relatively consolidated and stable domestic environment that doesn’t involve

any civil rift.

On the other hand, another ‘relatively peaceful’ group of cases e.g. the Independence of India

and Pakistan which was through a treaty and not a war, Anglo-Afghan treaty that allowed

the independence of Afghanistan, the French mandate that created Syria and Lebanon, the

‘electoral birth’ of Sudan from Anglo-Egyptian government (Turkiyah), Rwandan monarchy

referendum that paved Rwandan nationhood, came with a series of prolonged unmitigated

civil conflict. To name a few: the Kashmir problem, the North Eastern Seven Sisters

Insurgency in India, the secession of Bangladesh through civil war, two Afghan Civil wars

after Soviet withdrawal, the Lebanese civil war, the Sudanese civil war, the Rwandan

massacre.

The big puzzle is, alike the interstate conflicts resolution, does revolutionary war birth

inform about subsequent civil conflict settlement? This paper attempts at resolving this

puzzle. Through duration analysis, this paper shows that certain types of birth countries,
defined as “good birth” countries in the literature, do enjoy longer post civil war peace than

that of “bad birth” countries.

2. Literature Review

2.1 State Building

What is, if any, the role of birth legacy in state building? If a state is build violently does that

inform the way it will behave in future? State building literature has aptly dealt with this

question. Tilly (1985) argued that, historically, competition among “wielders of coercion” for

control over territory and resources led to the characteristic European-style nation state,

comprising of a military, police force, tax bureaucracy, and courts of law. It also helped rulers

use force to neutralize domestic rivals. This meant concentration of coercive power in ruler’s

hand.

He writes: “Each of the major uses of violence produced characteristic forms of organization.

War making yielded armies, navies, and supporting services. State making produced durable

instruments of surveillance and control within the territory. Protection relied on the

organization of war making and state making but added to it an apparatus by which the

protected called forth the protection that was their due, notably through courts and

assemblies. Extraction brought fiscal and accounting structures into being. The organization

and deployment of violence themselves account for much of the characteristic structure of

European states (p.181).”

So, the ability to project violence is essential for the institutional foundation of the state. In

Tilly’s definition, as in other’s, the monopoly over legitimate violence is a measure of

successful state building.

If we go one step back to the micro foundations of violent birth, we will see that ‘dirty works’,

as defined by Moore (1966), to remove the ancien régime such as beheading Charles I, which

brought an end to the second English civil war; worked as a credible threat for the

subsequent kings. The bloody fate of the king and creation of new set of institutions are tied

together, in Moore’s words: “But Charles I's fate was a grisly reminder for the future. No

subsequent English king tried to take royal absolutism seriously again”.

Moore’s three models of state building can inspire profoundly fascination research on

whether the two types of state building that were longer lasting e.g. Capitalist Democratic

Route (England, French and USA model), and Communist Route (Russian and Chinese

revolutions) than that of their Fascist counterpart (Germany and Japan), along with other

factors, has anything to do with the fact that violent revolutions allowed for better state

capacity.

Likewise, skocpol (1979) sites that in each new revolutionary regimes in France, Russia, and

China, there was much greater popular incorporation into the state affairs of the nation.

Revolutionary state organizations were more centralized and rationalized than those of the

Old Regime. The Revolutions were only totally achieved when new state organizations were

created among the conflicts of the revolutionary situations. So, it is stressed on state building

because of the importance of political consolidation and of state structures in determining

revolutionary outcomes. Therefore, according to Skocpol, they were more effective within

society and more powerful against international competitors.

2.2 Birth Legacies and Conflict

The state making literature talked about how a state is born into the system may inform the

way it behaves in subsequent conflicts. Lemke and Carter (2016) argued that states with

positive birth legacies should be more successful at state-making and achieving more

favorable outcomes at the international level than states without positive birth legacies.

What they mean by positive birth legacies is successful prosecution of a secessionist or

colonial independence war. Their argument is that in these cases, these countries had to

demonstrate considerable political capacity and legitimacy in order to have succeeded at the

first place. These types of good birth legacies are generally helpful for state survival,

consolidation and expansion. Citing a good number of existing literatures, they have also

argued that as fighting and winning wars are a common pathway to political development,

states with positive birth legacies should be more likely to participate in and win interstate

and civil wars.

Their argument is counterintuitive and intriguing. The research has broader implications in

the literature as well. This research, although, doesn’t talk about civil or interstate war

mitigation, management or resolution, however, it has definitely the potent to provoke

similar line of reasoning to lead to a novel research design and interesting findings. It would

be interesting to see that whether the same reasoning applies in case of reducing the

duration of conflict both in case of civil and interstate conflicts.

Maoz (1989) argued that revolutionary state making leads to high level of interstate disputes

compared to evolutionary state making. However, this research only touched on

interstate conflicts and eschewed civil conflicts and second, failed to explain why similar

birth story would result into very different conflict resolution trajectories.

For example, the literature states that the countries that are born from revolutionary state

formations i.e. a violent conflict for state formation tend to be involved in a significantly

larger number of interstate disputes than states that were born as a result of an evolutionary

process which is non-violent. Also, revolutionary state change has the same effect of

revolutionary state formation (Maoz 1989). It would be interesting to see whether these

characteristics apply to civil conflicts as well. A good number of cases that would be analyzed

in this paper that actually shows a reverse regularity.

Lemke and Carter (2016) cites a huge empirical literature that support the claim that war,

and preparation for war, actually makes states (Cohen, Brown and Organski 1981; Kirby and

Ward 1991; Jaggers 1992; Thies 2004, 2005, 2007; Boehmer and Sobek 2005; Lektzian and

Prins 2008; Gibler 2010; Kisangani and Pickering 2014).

Also, O’Kane (1995, 2000) gives a good account of a number of revolutionary civil wars that

directly playing role to state development: France in the 1790s, Russia in the 1910s -20s,

China in the 1940s, and Iran and Nicaragua in the 1970s, Argentina in the early 1800s

(Lemke 2008), the US in the 1860s (Bensel 1990), Japan in the 1860s and 70s (Pyle 2006),

and Cuba in the late 1950s (Wickham-Crowley 1987). The relevant question for this paper

is, whether these cases inform anything about conflict resolution by the same virtue of “state

development”.

However, Theis (2005) argued that these models of state building are too narrowly

specified to be of much use in Latin America or elsewhere in the developing world.

Replacing the focus on interstate war with the more general phenomenon of interstate

rivalry, Theis argued that alongside the consideration of intrastate rivals, allows us to

account for the impact of both external and internal forces on the development of the state.

In summary, although a good engaging scholarship has investigated the relationship of

state formation or birth legacies and few factors like, probability of war initiation and

winning, centralization etc, but, does the way countries come into the system inform us

about the way they resolve the subsequent conflicts is still a novel question.

3. Theory

The theoretical underpinning of this research is instigated by an empirical regularity or more

precisely the lack thereof. Existing literature has, inadequately, addressed the issue of

whether and how a country’s birth informs subsequent conflict resolution. The inadequacy

is in two levels. First, the literature only touched on interstate conflicts and eschewed civil

conflict durations and second, failed to explain why would similar birth story result into very

different conflict resolution trajectories?

When a country receives or earns its independence, the people who take over power are in

one way or other related to the ancien régime. In most cases they have limited choices on

what types of institutions will be established after post independence period. For example a

revolutionary birth makes it inevitable to establish a system at least apparently different

from the previous one. This is necessary for claim self sustaining legitimacy of the
revolutionary birth. So, the players from the birth era and their incentive structures are

directly reflected in the institutions after birth, with few exceptions.

The literature states that the countries that are born from revolutionary state formations i.e.

a violent conflict for state formation tend to be involved in a significantly larger number of

interstate disputes than states that were born as a result of an evolutionary process which is

non-violent. However, there are a host of cases where countries were born from bloody

(civil) war but was, subsequently, able to achieve relatively consolidated and stable domestic

environment that doesn’t involve any civil rift.

This paper argues that the logic of state formation is also applicable in civil conflict resolution

for some solid causal reasons. Meaning that, the countries that had a good birth i.e. a

revolutionary or secessionist war birth had a de facto state capacity and legitimacy that

paved the way for subsequent efficiency in mitigating civil conflict. If these states didn’t have

the capacities and resolve, they could not have fought and won the war of independence. So

their taking part and winning in the revolutionary wars give a costly signal about their

mobilization and management capabilities as well.

The mitigation or resolution might be easier for good birth countries primarily because of

three reasons. First, the good birth states might be more able to violently crush the opposing

factions and ‘resolve’ the conflict. Definitely, the capabilities and military might garnered

during the independence war comes into play the instrumental role here. Second, the

resolution of internal conflict might be easier because of the better negotiation skills

achieved from the good birth experience as well. Third, the monopoly of legitimate means of

violence that Marx Weber calls the “essence of modern state” gives a sense of nationhood
and belonging to the nations which went through national revolution or war of

independence. This sense of belonging gives legitimacy to the government at the center and

might play a very instrumental role in diluting grudges and grievances at the periphery.

Raising and sustaining the flag of secessionist war is not easy due to that shared national

memory in these cases. All these factors can actually ensure less dissent and longer

peacetime.

So, resolving conflicts might be easier for good birth countries compared to bad birth

countries that were born from agreements, derelict decolonization or indigenous birth. As

opposed to good birth, these set of countries give a signal about their weak capabilities. Also,

their legitimacy in general is achieved through a less costly process which means their appeal

was less engaging to the mass. In many cases people at the grassroots might not have actually

noticed what is going on at their ‘national sphere’ as opposed to good birth countries where

people were actually marshaled in or voluntarily fought war to get that independence. So, in

bad birth countries, state legitimacy is weak to begin with and which can easily play in favor

of frequent initiation of civil war.

From the above mentioned theoretical framework I hypothesize that:

H1: Post Civil war peacetime is longer in good birth countries than that of bad birth

countries

H2: Civil war duration in good birth countries is shorter than that of bad birth

countries
These two hypotheses try to capture the lingering effect, if any, of birth legacies on both the

conservation of peace and longevity of war.

4. Research Design and Data

4.1 Dependent Variable

This paper is theoretically interested and restricted to investigating the impact of birth

legacies on civil conflict duration and peacetime. For two hypotheses we have two different

dependent variables. For first hypothesis the DV is post civil war peacetime which measures

the stability or sustainability of peace after a civil war. So it is the peace duration or absence

of recurrent conflict, measured in years, following the culmination of a civil conflict.

Beginning of peace is defined as once all civil wars in a state have ended and persists until

the onset of a new civil war1 . And for the second hypothesis the DV is Civil War duration i.e.

the time span in which the war continued.

To identify the start and end dates of peace spans this paper uses Demeritt, Nichols, and

Kelly (2014) dataset which is originally taken from Sambanis (2004)2 . Here civil war is

defined as an organized armed conflict taking place within the territory of a recognized state

with a population of at least 500,000, involving the government and at least one dissident

movement with political and military organization. 3 Using this data is categorically useful

here, because they categorically give criteria to determine beginning

1 Demeritt, Jacqueline H.r., Angela D. Nichols, and Eliza G. Kelly. "Female Participation and Civil War Relapse."
Civil Wars 16, no. 3 (2014): 346-68. doi:10.1080/13698249.2014.966427.
2 Sambanis, N. "What Is Civil War?: Conceptual and Empirical Complexities of an Operational
Definition." Journal of Conflict Resolution 48, no. 6 (2004): 814-58. doi:10.1177/0022002704269355.
3 Sambanis (2004) pp. 829-31
and ending dates of civil war. This is defined as “war begins” in the first year that the conflict

causes at least 500-1000 battle deaths, and organized armed violence is sustained

throughout the duration of the conflict. Civil “war ends” if a three year interval produces

fewer than 500 battle-deaths, a signed peace treaty produces at least six months of peace or

the war ends through the creation of a sovereign new state. The temporal domain is 1980-

2003.

4.2 Independent and Control Variables

For birth legacy we used Lemke and Carter (2016) “Birth Legacy”, which is coded as 1 if the

country had good birth and 0 otherwise. There could be two possible critiques of using this

variable which could potentially bias the results. The first one is that European countries,

under this coding scheme are good birth and also historically they enjoyed relative stability

compared to many parts of the world e.g. Africa. Second potential critique addressed here is

older countries are more likely to be stable than that of newly born countries due to

institutional set up.

To control for this potential biasness, region specific dummy variables e.g. Europe, Asia,

Africa, Middle East and country’s age since birth are used. However, using the country

dummies for War Duration estimation model gives flat region output and thus omitted. Other

natural control variable like GDP per capita, military expenditure, polity score is used4. Polity

score is controlling the democratic peace theory argument that democracies are less likely

to fight. War duration and peacetimes are also used as controls for vice versa

4 Data for these variables are taken from Lemke and Carter (2016) replication data
models to see how being in war affects peacetime and how peacetime, anachronistically

although, explains war duration.

4.3 The Model

For this section, the measurement question could be that whether, ceteris paribus, a good

birth state fights and wins more wars during its existence than does a state without a good

birth legacy. This approach measures how successful the country is at state-making since it

joined the interstate system. The alternative question could be is whether a good birth state

is more likely to participate in and win a war in any given year than a state without a good

birth legacy? This approach identifies whether a country was successful at developing

politically through war during a particular year (Lemke and Carter, 2016). The first approach

needs a cross-sectional, state-level design, while the latter requires a time-series cross-

sectional, state-year design.

In this paper I used the second approach to allow for measuring the duration. The unit of

analysis is country year. Two datasets –the Lemke & Carter (2016) and the Demeritt, Nichols,

and Kelly (2014) were merged across the common country year. This allows us for testing

directly the impact of good birth on civil war duration and post civil war peacetime.

Cox Proportional Hazard model was used in both of the duration models. In duration models

the outcome of interest is time to an event or time to the failure of a current state. The

functional model is

S(t) = e −H(t)
Where, S(t) = Probability of survival to t and H(t) = Probability of the event

5. Results

5.1 Post Civil War Peacetime

For the first hypothesis, hazard ratio of independent variables for post war peace duration

was estimated:
 Base Model Model 1 Model 2
Hazard Ratio Hazard Ratio Hazard Ratio
Ln(GDPpc) 0.357 0.317 0.285
(0.082)** (0.123)** (0.116)**

polity squared 1.011 0.992 1.017

(0.028) (0.027) (0.037)

years since birth 0.990 0.989 0.993

(0.005) (0.007) (0.008)

military expenidture 1.000 1.000 1.000

(0.000) (0.000)** (0.000)**

Good birth 2.720 2.337

(1.379)* (1.708)

War Duration 1.035 1.052

(0.033) (0.062)

Asia Region Dummy 0.855

(1.131)

Europe Region dummy 1.001 0.460 0.628

(1.117) (0.783) (1.463)

Middle East Region Dummy 3.492

(3.331)

Africa Region Dummy 2.307

(2.402)

N= 780
* p<0.05; ** p<0.01

The only significant result for the key independent variable “good birth” is found in

Model 1. In this model the only country dummy used is for Europe. When other country
dummies are used no significant result for good birth is found. Controlling for Europe

theoretically makes sense because European countries, almost all, are born from

revolutionary or good birth. Many of them are born at the end of thirty years of war and

through the Westphalia charter. After that they enjoyed relatively peaceful situation.

Now the good birth hazard ratio in model 1 implies that, for good birth countries the

hazard is increasing for post civil war peacetime. Which implies that good birth countries

are more likely to enjoy longer peacetime after civil war, compared to bad birth countries.

Also military expenditure is positively related to the hazard of peacetime which implies

more military expenditure ensured longer peacetime. GDP per capita is significant in three

of the models and significant. The direction says that the more the per capita GDP will be

the shorter will be the post civil war peace time. Now this could be theoretically interesting

from escalation and military capacity point of view since GDP is related with military

capacity.
 Nelson-Aalen cumulative hazard estimate
0.10
0.08
0.06
0.04
0.02
0.00

0 10 20 30 40 50
analysis time
5
4
3
2

0 1 2 3 4
ln(analysis time)

good = 0 good = 1
This is the survival probability of peacetime for model 1. The non-monotonic curve

implies that no definitive results may be conclusively drawn from the graph.

5.2 War Duration

For war duration estimation the same set of independent and control variables are used

for Cox Proportional Hazard model

 Base Model 1 Model 2
Model
Hazard Hazard Hazard
Ratio Ratio Ratio
Ln(GDPpc) 1.032 1.013 0.870
(0.056) (0.044) (0.053)*

polity squared 0.973 0.972 0.980

(0.007)** (0.007)** (0.007)**

years since birth 0.993 0.994 0.986

(0.001)** (0.001)** (0.001)**

military expenditure 1.000 1.000 1.000

(0.000)* (0.000)** (0.000)

Good birth 1.272 1.035

(0.108)** (0.096)

War Duration
Asia Country Dummy 0.278 0.141
(0.038)** (0.025)**

European country dummy 0.675 1.248 0.565

(0.106)* (0.189) (0.071)**

Middle East Country Dummy 0.353 0.345

(0.053)** (0.061)**

Africa Country Dummy 0.299 0.237

(0.039)** (0.045)**

Peacetime 1.064 1.074

(0.004)** (0.004)**

N= 780
 * p<0.05; ** p<0.01

Here the hazard ration of good birth is significant in the second model and the direction is

the opposite of the theoretical expectation. The results imply that good birth countries

encounter longer civil war duration than that of bad birth countries.
1 2
1
0
-
2
-

0 1 2 3 4
ln(analysis time)

good = 0 good = 1

Just like the previous one, survival probability for war duration graph can’t imply any

conclusive results because of intersecting lines.

Now one of the possible explanation could be that good birth countries, if through the

regime consolidation period, had crush the oppositions and had obliterated checks and
balances. This means there would be less domestic constraints to war. Less constraints

may prolong the civil war once it breaks out. But, one thing could be definitively concluded

and that is there must be a confounding variable which is not allowing to capture the

causality here.

Polity is found to be significant across all models and the direction implies that as

democracy level increases war duration decreases. Which should be pretty consistent

with a plethora of democratic peace theory literature.

Country dummies are significant in model 2 however not significant for model 1 where

the only dummy used is for Europe. This dummy is used for theoretical importance.

Peacetime is increasing in hazard for war duration. From here it cannot be definitively said

what exactly causes this but, it might be the case that the civil wars that are longer lasting

ensures longer peacetimes afterwards as well. In that case there is definitely an issue of

endogeneity present here.

Country age or year since birth is also has a decreasing in hazard effect for war duration

which is consistent with our a priori expectation that as countries become older they are

more likely to be stable. Military expenditure is also increasing in hazard for war duration

which is not very astounding.

6. Conclusion
It is safe to conclude from the empirical analysis presented above that violent birth or ‘good

birth’ legacies increase the likelihood of post civil conflict peace. As these war born countries

have already encountered and survived war to begin with, they have a natural advantage to

get over war again than the countries whose first war encounter is this civil war. They are

witnessing the current episodes under the consideration of this paper as war of any sort for

the first time. Good birth countries have already proved their capacity and legitimacy

through the independence war which helps for establishing order sustainability of peace

after another civil war. The revolutionary experience and institutions can help resolving the

conflict and re-establishing mitigating post war state (re) building institutions.

6. 1 Future Research

Another interesting theoretical dimension will be to examine how colonial legacies i.e.

extractive or inclusive political and economic institutions play role in the formation of the

determinants of civil conflict imitation and resolution. The ubiquitously cited research of

Acemoglu, Johnson and Robinson (2001) informs us about how different colonial experience

informs us about the subsequent economic development. These institutions might have

lingering effects in shaping the distribution of inequality and disparity within a country

which might have implications for the nature and extent of civil conflicts as well. For

example, the countries that are born from extractive colonial experience might have an

unequal distribution hardwired into them. This ‘design problem’ can influence the resolve of

the rebels and their appeal to the mass. This may result into a prolonged civil conflict. So,
there might be a path dependency between the birth from extractive colonial set up and

prolonged civil conflict.

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