Between ballots and bullets: Executive competitiveness and civil war incidence, 1976-2000

Although recent research has yielded some determining elements to civil war, the influence of political factors on internal conflicts remains disputed. This article presents a critical review of the most widely used indices of democracy in civil war studies, and suggests that the competitiveness of the executive power can be a useful measure for quantitative conflict research. The paper also analyses, by means of statistical regression, the relationship between the competitiveness in the executive recruitment and civil war incidence from 1976 to 2000. The findings indicate that both single-candidate and multi-party elections reduce the incidence of civil war. Furthermore, the results lend support to the hypotheses put forward by recent literature that ethnic fractionalisation, mountainous terrain, large population and centralised political systems significantly heighten the risk of incidence of civil war, while high GDP per capita and economic growth decrease the likelihood of internal conflicts.