Democratization and civil war

We examine the impact of civil war on democratization. Using a theoretical bargaining model, we hypothesize that prolonged violence, war termination, the presence of natural resources, and international intervention influence democratization. We test these hypotheses using an unbalanced panel data set of 96 countries covering a 34-year period. We determine that civil war lowers democratization in the succeeding period. This finding appears to be robust to conditioning, different instrument sets, and the measurement of democracy. In addition, we observe evidence that external intervention increases democratization.