Program > Papers by author > Campos Nauro

Bringing Peace from Above? State Capacity, Civil War De-Escalation and The Composition of the Stock of Military Equipment
Tobias Korn  1@  , Martin Gassebner  1@  , Nauro Campos  2@  
1 : Leibniz University Hannover
2 : Brunel University London

State capacity crucially affects the outset, duration and level of violence in civil wars. The literature uses indirect measures (such as GDP or the capacity to tax) to proxy for a state's ability to fight or prevent civil conflict. In this paper, we employ a new measure of state capacity and test its effect on the (de)escalation of civil violence. We assemble unique data for more than 120 countries, yearly 1989-2010, to estimate the effect of the composition of the military capital stock (e.g. number of attack helicopters vis-à-vis tanks) on the onset, escalation and dynamics of civil conflict. Our main finding is that countries whose militaries favor attack helicopters over ground-based weapons are associated with shorter civil wars and prolonged peace. Yet, this way of promoting the de-escalation of civil conflict comes at a price. Taking the spatial distribution of conflict events into account, we find that rebels shift fighting towards urban areas after they competed with an army that favors a strong air force. Consequently, the country experiences a higher level of indiscriminate violence against civilians since rebels become harder to target in populated areas. Hence, governments face a trade-off between faster de-escalation and maintaining a low amount of civilian casualties.


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