Mortality

Data on civil war deaths have improved dramatically since the turn of the century. The most widely used data come from scholars at the Peace Research Institute Oslo (Lacina & Gleditsch, 2005). With its most recent update in 2015, these data show that the incidence of civil conflict has fitfully increased over time. As displayed in Figure 1, there has been a dramatic increase in the number of civil conflicts over the period that the data covers. Scholars have gained significant ground in understanding the deadly consequences of civil war since the release of these data, and three main areas of work have emerged.

Open in new tab

Figure 1. UCDP/PRIO civil conflicts over time.

First, scholars have examined state-level factors that influence deaths. Lacina’s (2006) early article in this vein of work showed that factors commonly associated with conflict onset are not necessarily the same factors that explain battle deaths—neither state strength nor ethnic/religious heterogeneity are significantly associated with severity. Instead, ethnic homogeneity and lack of democracy seem most robustly associated with deaths. Heger and Salehyan (2007) present similar findings in regard to fewer deaths being associated with democracy. They push a step further, however, demonstrating that leaders are less constrained in their ability use force as the size of the ruling coalition decreases. One final state-level effect considers how the economy influences deaths, finding that severity increases during economic downturns (Chaudoin, Peskowitz, & Stanton, 2017).

Second, scholars have dug deeper to better understand civil war deaths by focusing on power dynamics that emerge between combatant groups, largely focusing on the intentional use of violence against civilians. The basic idea is that violence is not simply a byproduct of war but a “strategic choice made by elites” (Heger & Salehyan, 2007, p. 386). Control of territory has emerged as an important focal point. A robust body of work has shown that rebels use violence to secure civilian support (Kalyvas, 1999, 2006; Kalyvas & Kocher, 2007), to obtain information about adversaries, gain recruits, and to secure arms, food, and shelter (Wood, 2010; Wood, Kathman, & Gent, 2012). Likewise, governments attack civilians to “drain the sea” of rebel support (Valentino, Huth, & Balch-Lindsay, 2004). Beyond territory, scholars have studied the balance of capabilities between rebels and government forces to explain killings. Focusing on war consequences for civilians, scholars have shown that weak groups are apt to use harmful strategies like guerrilla warfare and terrorism and only prefer more conventional strategies as they strengthen (Byman, 2008; Butler & Gates, 2009). More specifically, Hultman (2007) shows that attacks on civilians increase after battlefield losses.

Finally, the most recent line of work studying the effect of civil wars on civilian deaths considers the role of international actors. Using the Cold War as a proxy, Lacina (2006) finds that wars become more severe as the availability of foreign assistance to actors increases. Recent work looks more directly at the relationship. Wood and his colleagues (2012), for example, find that civilian victimization increases if the opposing side receives support from an outside actor. However, even a small number of peacekeepers have been found to dramatically reduce the level of civilian killings during conflicts (Hultman, Kathman, & Shannon, 2013).

Physical and Mental Health

Although most studies on the consequences of civil wars for individuals focus on mortality, researchers are increasingly improving our understanding beyond deaths. This multidisciplinary work focuses on both physical and mental trauma due to warfare. These effects are likely to have long-term, sociological impacts on communities that have endured civil war.

Regarding diseases and disabilities, a formative article from Ghobarah, Huth, and Russett (2003) argues that the harmful effect of wars on healthy living conditions combined with lower government expenditures on health during wartime have dire consequences for individuals. Using data compiled by the World Health Organization (WHO), they focus on empirical work on “disability-adjusted life expectancy” (DALE) and “disability-adjusted life-years” (DALYs). In 1999 alone, they revealed that 8.44 million DALYs were lost due directly to warfare. Additionally, they show that another 8.01 million DALYs were lost due to the effect of past wars from 1991 to 1997, demonstrating the long-term consequences of conflicts. Iqbal (2010) moves further by focusing on a myriad of ways that war harms health, presenting robust findings that conflict harms such things as fertility rates, immunization rates, and life expectancy. More fine-grained analyses on individual cases provide additional support. Studies from places like Burundi (Bundervoet et al., 2009), Zimbabwe (Alderman et al., 2006) and Iraq (Guerrero-Serdan, 2009), for example, show that child heights are lower in conflict-ridden countries due to malnourishment.

Sexually based crimes have also been shown to be leading consequences of civil war for individuals. Rape is a common weapon of warfare. DelaCruz’s (2007) study of Rwanda demonstrates HIV prevalence rates from 3% to 11% due to the widespread use of this tactic. This burgeoning area of research has greatly benefited from the introduction of systematic data on rape during civil war over the last three decades. Cohen (2013) presents new time series and cross-sectional data to unearth relationships between the type of conflict and the likelihood of rape, finding that forced recruitment of combatants is associated with high levels of rape. Sexual exploitation in other forms, including exchanging sex for security (commonly referred to as “survival sex”) and forced marriages, produce similar deleterious effects, especially for girls and women in war-torn states (Schoepf, 2002; Zack-Williams, 1999).

While the physical consequences of civil wars are sometimes due to deliberate actions, as with killing and rape, some of the most dire consequences are byproducts of the conflict itself. Guha-Sapir et al.(2005) aligns with many other scholars in claiming that hunger and disease often kill more than munitions during civil conflicts. Case evidence from the Democratic Republic of Congo (Coghlan et al., 2009) and Darfur (Depoortere et al., 2004) support this viewpoint, showing that hunger and disease killed more than actual fighting in these civil wars.

The negative consequences of civil conflict go far beyond mortality and physical harm, and scholars from a variety of fields—mostly commonly psychology and sociology—have gained ground in understanding how war influences mental health. Early studies showed that mental trauma, particularly for children, is a common consequence of war and that exposure to caring adults can go a long way in helping children cope with warfare (Freud & Burlingham, 1943; Henshaw & Howarth, 1941). More recent work aligns well with this literature, showing that exposure to war produces health distress in the short-term and longer-term psychopathology in children and adolescents (Barenbaum et al., 2004; Betancourt & Williams, 2008; Lustig et al., 2004; Sany, 2010). Further studies examine how to mitigate the impact of mental health disorders caused by conflict. For example, studies have shown that connectedness to social groups is essential for overcoming the often debilitating trauma of civil war. Such work has been carried out in places like Chechnya (Betancourt, 2005), Colombia (Kliewer et al., 2001), Kuwait (Llabre & Hadi, 1997), and Palestine (Barber, 2001).

One interesting and recent aberration from this line of work focuses on the influence of war on individual-level cooperation. A meta-analysis from Bauer et al. (2016) examines 16 observational studies over the last decade, rejecting the idea that exposure to conflict is destructive to social capital, collective action, and trust. Instead, most studies found conflict to produce prosocial behaviors. This work is aligned with studies that examine how other forms of survival threats, including natural disasters, enhance local cooperation (Caló-Blanco et al., 2015; Cassar, Healy, & Von Kessler, 2011; Rao et al., 2011). This line of study provides one of the few potentially positive side effects of civil conflicts for individuals.

Education

Education is critical for individuals for a number of reasons. Not only does education yield higher individual-level incomes (Psacharopoulos & Patrinos, 2004) and state-level growth (Sianesi & Van Reenen, 2003), it also provides a way for individuals to recover from the physical and mental trauma (Elbedour et al., 1993; Aguilar & Retamal, 1998). Thus, scholars have given a great deal of attention to how civil conflicts influence education.

Evidence from both cross-national studies and individual cases reveals that civil conflicts are devastating for an individual’s ability to gain education. Two mechanisms help explain why. First, schools are often deliberately targeted by government or rebel forces to either gain recruits or undermine the opponent’s support base. Second, similar to other sectors like health, education systems often suffer as the government devotes increasingly larger parts of the budgetary pie to the war-fighting effort. Empirical work on the consequences of civil conflict on education provides robust support for these contentions. In the largest cross-national study of this topic, Lai and Thyne (2007) show that enrollment declined between 1.6% and 3.2% in countries experiencing civil wars. Studies from both the policy world and academia often focus on individual cases, and yield similar (though often more dire) conclusions. The civil war in Sudan from 1983 to 2005 was particularly devastating for enrollment, producing class sizes that averaged almost 100 students per teacher and a dearth of necessary materials (Brander, 1996; CIA, 2005; Shalita, 1994). State-level findings from a variety of sources have yielded similar conclusions, including studies from Rwanda (Akresh & de Walque, 2008), Cambodia (De Walque, 2004), Tajikistan (Shemyakina, 2011), Guatemala (Chamarbagwala & Morán, 2011), Turkey (Kibris, 2015), and Cote d’Ivoire (Dabalen & Paul, 2012).

The devastating effects of civil conflicts on individual-level education extend well beyond enrollment. A variety of studies have demonstrated that wartime experience impairs learning and produces poor achievement by students. For example, Elbert et al. (2009) conducted a study of children’s mental health in Sri Lanka. They found that 92% of children they surveyed had witnessed “severely traumatizing events such as combat, bombing, shelling, or the death of a loved one” (p. 238). As such, many of these children met the formal diagnosis for PTSD. The children most affected by PTSD suffered in academic performance measures, namely memory recall. Findings of other studies from places like Afghanistan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Gaza, and Sierra Leone agreed with this work (Betancourt et al., 2008; Elbert et al., 2009; Tamashiro, 2010).

Political Outcomes

Civil wars shake the institutional foundation of a country. While consociational democracies are the least likely to experience civil wars in the first place (Reynal-Querol, 2002), uncertainty remains regarding the long-term political effects of conflict (Blattman & Miguel, 2010). However, some strong empirical findings do shed light on the effect that civil wars have on the political system of a country. Two main areas of research have emerged from this work. The first focuses on political (in)stability and war recurrence, while the second focuses on elections and democratization.

Beginning with war recurrence, strong empirical evidence indicates that one of the best predictors for civil war is a state having experienced a civil war in its recent past (Collier & Sambanis, 2002; Collier et al., 2003). Approximately one-third of all countries that experience a civil war will experience an additional civil war (Walter, 2004). As Collier and colleagues (2003) argue, civil war incentivizes political leaders to invest in strategies, resources, weapons, and rhetoric that are most useful in the context of war. As such, they have a strong incentive to see that war continues or returns.

Three main bodies of work have emerged to explain the recurrence of war. The first focuses on the outcomes of the war. Although military victories are also associated with repression and genocide, they are also the most stable ways that civil wars come to a decisive end (Licklider, 1995; Toft, 2010). Second, scholars have examined how institutions influence war recurrence. Findings in this vein of literature show that war-ending agreements are most stable when they include power sharing across a range of dimensions, including political, territorial, military and economic spheres (Hartzell & Hoddie, 2015; Hoddie & Hartzell, 2003; Roeder & Rothchild, 2005). Likewise, scholars have shown that institutions like proportional representation and those that provide avenues for nonviolent political participation help prevent war recurrence (Cammett & Malesky, 2012; Walter 2004). Third, third parties play an integral role in preventing war recurrence. Walter’s (1997) seminal study suggests that this because third parties can help provide security guarantees, reducing the fear that one side will backtrack on agreements and restart the conflict. Subsequent studies have supported this idea, showing that third parties, particularly UN peacekeeping missions, reduce violence and prevent war recurrence (Collier, Hoeffler, & Soderbom, 2008; Doyle & Sambanis, 2006).

Beyond war recurrence, scholars have focused on how civil wars influence democratization. The basic idea behind this work is that grievances are integral to the initial decision to challenge the government, so political changes should follow the conflict. Two main bodies of work have emerged from this line of work. First, there is strong consensus that elections can be dangerous, especially when held too early. Instead of producing democracy, quick postwar elections more likely lead to war recurrence (Brancati & Snyder, 2013; Flores & Nooruddin, 2012). Second, scholars have examined how wars influence postwar political party formation, largely focusing on rebels turned parties. Noting that rebels created postwar parties in more than half of all civil wars from 1990 to 2009, for example, Manning and Smith (2016) explain that a rebel’s prewar political experience and the characteristics of the war are leading explanations for party formation, trumping other commonly cited factors such as the state’s political history and economic traits.

One final area of work on the influence of civil war on politics focuses on gender equality. In postconflict environments in sub-Saharan Africa, institutions respond in a unique and promising way. Hughes and Tripp (2015) report that the number of female policymakers tripled in two decades. While traditional arguments may suggest that this increase in female representation is a result of gender quotas or the use of a proportional representation, Hughes and Tripp demonstrate that this increase is largely a result of a country concluding a civil war. They argue that civil war shakes up traditional gender roles because women find themselves in new situations in which they must take on roles of increasing leadership and power in their homes and communities more broadly. Additionally, women are generally removed from the onset of conflict. As such, they are not penalized by electors for participation in conflict in the same way that their male counterparts may be, thus leading to increased electoral success.

Economic Outcomes

The importance of work exploring how civil conflicts influence state economies cannot be over-stated. An economy devastated by civil war leaves a desperate population, and the likelihood of civil war recurrence skyrockets without economic growth (Collier et al., 2008; Davis & Mills, 2015; Miguel et al., 2004). Leading scholars in this line of work, including Paul Collier and his colleagues, label civil war “development in reverse” (2003). Most civil war literature has examined the negative economic outcomes associated with conflict. However, not all scholars agree, and several have presented interesting empirical findings that civil war can perhaps improve a struggling economy. Next, the debate and the evidence are presented for both sides.

The first line of work in this area, sometimes referred to as the “war renewal” school, claims that war can produce beneficial economic effects by improving efficiency, human capital, innovation, and by reducing the power of special interests (Benoit, 1973, 1978; Chan, 1987; Diehl & Goertz, 1985; Olson, 1982; Organski & Kugler, 1980; Russett, 1970). Cross-national empirical analyses have shown support for this viewpoint (Stewart, 1991; Yildirim, Sezgin, & Ocal, 2005). However, this viewpoint has support with regard to some wars, such as the 1979 to 1992 conflict in El Salvador (Stanley, 1996), the bulk of this work focuses on interstate wars. More conventional thinking points to a decidedly negative effect of civil war on the economy, and the most robust empirical analyses support this viewpoint for both short- and long-term economic growth (Chen, Loayza, & Reynal-Querol, 2008; Collier, 1999; Flores & Nooruddin, 2012; Garriga & Phillips, 2014; Gyimah-Brempong & Corley, 2005; Kang & Meernik, 2005; Murdoch & Sandler, 2002).

Two primary mechanisms ground the traditional school of thought that civil war is bad for a state’s economy. The first focuses on destruction of physical capital, which includes such things as machinery, buildings, and roads. Rather than being byproducts of conflict, early research on civil war onset argued that destruction of physical capital is intentional and commonplace. As Collier and Hoeffler (1999) argue, to be successful at looting is an objective independent of how successful the rebel group is at the war effort. In other words, the rebels could have little chance of victory, but if they are good at securing resources, they may have an interest in continued fighting. Because lesser developed countries often rely on natural-resource exports, looting has a large negative effect on the economy by limiting tax revenues (Collier & Hoeffler, 1999). Physical capital is also damaged intentionally to undermine the opponent’s resource base and to coerce support from the population. The end result is that fighting and looting damage productive assets like land and livestock (Brück, 2001; Bundervoet & Verwimp, 2005; Shemyakina, 2011) and devastate both individual- and state-level incomes (Justino & Verwimp, 2006; Verpoorten, 2009).

A more recent line of work recognizes that recovering from the destruction of human capital, while not easy, can happen fairly swiftly by importing destroyed items or with infrastructure investments (Cerra & Saxena, 2008; Collier & Duponchel, 2013; Miguel & Roland, 2005). Therefore, these scholars instead focus on human capital, which includes knowledge, skills, and health (inter alia). This focus provides a tight link to our earlier discussion of the consequences of civil wars on health and education. Three main areas related to human capital come to the forefront. First, scholars have shown that physical and mental disabilities due to warfare decrease one’s ability to contribute to household income (Beegle, 2005; Brück & Schindler, 2007) and that sometimes children are substituted for adults to compensate for this loss (Dasgupta, 1993; Duryea, Lam, & Levinson, 2007). While necessary for household survival, the net result of such activity is to limit the state’s stock of future human capital (Akresh & de Walque, 2008; Case & Paxson, 2006; Maccini & Young, 2009; Merrouche, 2006; Psacharopoulos & Patrinos, 2004; Rodriguez & Sánchez, 2009; Swee, 2009). Second, conflict can harm social capital, including trust and cooperation (Fukuyama, 2001; Putnam, 1993), which impairs cooperation necessary for the functioning of a modern economy (Algan & Cahuc, 2010; Knack & Keefer, 1997). Finally, civil conflict often forces governments to move money from social programs that produce economic growth, such as schooling, to the military (Apostolakis, 1992; Collier et al., 2003; Dixon & Moon, 1986; Galvin, 2003; Huang & Mintz, 1990; Looney, 1990; Russett, 1969). Likewise, governments commonly divert labor from productive sectors to focus on the war-fighting effort (Deger, 1985). While perhaps necessary to face threats from rebels, these decisions have both short- and long-term devastating outcomes for a state’s economy.

Proximate States

Beyond the state of war, the most dire consequences of conflict are felt by neighboring states. The key conduit for these consequences explored so far are refugee flows, though negative effects also occur, such as decreases in investor confidence in states near a war-torn country. This section reviews the literature, primarily focuses on refugees, and highlights both negative and positive effects.

The first way that refugees harm proximate, host-country states involves health (Gleditsch, 2007; Siverson & Starr, 1991). As groups flee from war, they often bring diseases to new areas. The global HIV epidemic has been traced to the 1979 Ugandan civil war, for example (Smallman-Raynor & Cliff, 1991), though these effects extend other well-known diseases. In a broad sample of states, Montevalo and Reynal-Querol (2007) showed an increase in malaria rates for host countries. A recent study in Tanzania showed broader effect, finding that refugees from the Rwandan conflict increased child mortality, reduced adult height, and increased the spread of infectious diseases (Baez, 2011).

Beyond health, studies have shown that living near a civil war state heightens the proximate state’s likelihood of civil war onset. Known as a the “contagion effect” of civil conflict, early work by Salehyan and Gleditsch (2006) presents evidence that refugee flows are important mechanisms that may allow conflict to spread to host states. While refugees themselves rarely engage in conflict in their new location, they may facilitate the spread of ideologies and arms that are critical for conflict. This is particularly true if similar conditions and ethnic groups span borders because rebels can provide an emulation effect among neighboring citizens (Halperin, 1998; Kuran, 1998; Lake & Rothchild, 1998).

Refugee flows can also cause severe harm to a neighboring state’s economy. These consequences are not universal, however. State-level studies from places like Tanzania (Alix-Garcia, 2007; Whitaker, 2002) and Kenya (Nordic Agency for Development and Ecology, 2010) combine with broader cross-national studies (Crisp et al., 2009; Horst & Van Hear, 2002; Jacobsen, 2002) to illustrate some benefits of refugees. Such benefits include increased demand for agricultural goods, increased trading opportunities, growth spurred by remittances, and the import of well-educated and skilled workers to staff universities and hospitals.

In spite of these silver linings, however, the bulk of the empirical research presents a dark picture for neighboring state economies. Studies have shown that refugees harm host state economies by straining public funds to care for the refugee populations (World Bank, 2011). Host states often also divert funds to military expenditures as pressure mounts to get involved in neighboring conflicts (Salehyan, 2009; Salehyan & Gleditsch, 2006), and refugees often challenge host-state workers for jobs (Lischer, 2003). The net effect on neighboring economies, as demonstrated by wide-ranging, cross-sectional studies, therefore, leans toward a decidedly negative effect on economic growth for states that neighbor a state at war (Murdoch & Sandler, 2002, 2004).

Broader International Community

The final consequences of civil conflicts involve the broader international community. Although the path between civil wars in places like Syria and the effects on states like Canada are rarely direct, scholars have shown clear evidence that civil wars have negative consequences for the entire globe. The related literature falls into two main areas: terrorism and international conflict.

Scholars have given great attention to the link between civil wars and international terrorism. In an early study in this vein, Piazza (2008) used a broad, cross-national study to show that state failure, including ethnic and revolutionary wars, increases the likelihood that a state would be victimized and produce terrorism. For example, Coggins (2015) notes that civil wars in places like Bosnia, Sudan, and Somalia produced terror attacks in Croatia, Chad, and Ethiopia, respectively. This has led both scholars (Patrick, 2011) and policymakers (White House, 2006) to view civil conflicts and other forms of state fragility as key concepts in the battle against terrorism. Further empirical work supports the link between civil war and terrorism. Although she finds that lower levels of state failure do not produce terrorism, for example, Coggins (2015) concurs with Piazza’s earlier work in finding that states at war are more likely to experience and produce terror. The jury is still out on this issue, however, as a recent study from George (2017) casts doubt on the link between state failure and terrorism.

A second way in which civil conflicts influence the broader international community involves the linkage between revolutions and interstate conflict. Although revolution in this context is often conceptualized more broadly, including such things as coups and assassinations, civil conflict is a key area of concern. The empirical literature on this subject is vast and strongly points to the conclusion that revolutions increase the likelihood that the state engages in interstate conflict (Enterline, 1998; Gurr, 1988; Maoz, 1996; Walt, 1996). The primary debate is theoretical (Colgan & Weeks, 2015). Scholars like Walt (1996) focus on systemic factors like the offense-defense balance, Davies (2002) considers diversionary incentives, while scholars like Skocpol (1988) argue that successful revolutionary leaders use skills they learned from the revolution, including their ability to mobilize and organize the population, to behave aggressively toward other states. Others, including Colgan and Lucas (2017), seem to align most closely with the domestic-level explanation, arguing that revolutions tend to “select for” risk-tolerant leaders who are apt to upset the international status quo. Despite theoretical differences, the empirical link between civil wars and an increase in interstate conflict sees little debate.