Who Restarts Violent Conflict? Post-Conflict Government Policy and Two Types of Conflict Recurrence

Some internal armed conflicts recur between the same organizations, while, in others, the participating rebel groups vary with each recurrence, (i.e. they are ‘recast’). The two types of conflict recurrence (‘repeated conflicts’ and ‘recast conflicts’) should follow distinct logic because the participating rebel organizations qualitatively differ. I propose and test a game theoretic model explaining the two paths, where the government should contain former and potential rebels at the same time to prevent another war. The key feature I identify as fundamental in post-conflict settings is that former rebels are stronger but susceptible to private rewards while potential ones are weaker but difficult to buy off. Consistent with the model, my empirical analysis shows that the number of rebel factions, conflict stake, and the difference in capability between the former rebels and potential ones have differentiating effects on two distinct types of conflict recurrence.

部分国内武装冲突会在同一反叛组织间反复爆发；而另一些冲突的参与反叛团体则会在每次复发时发生更迭，即此类冲突为重组型冲突（recast conflict）。这两类冲突复发模式——重复型冲突（repeated conflict）与重组型冲突——遵循截然不同的逻辑，原因在于其参与的反叛组织在性质上存在本质差异。本文提出并检验了一个博弈论模型（game theoretic model），用以阐释这两种冲突复发路径：模型指出，政府需同时管控前反叛者与潜在反叛者，以防范新一轮战争爆发。本文识别出冲突后情境下的核心特征：前反叛者实力更强，但易受私人报酬拉拢；而潜在反叛者实力较弱，却难以被收买。与该模型的预测一致，本文的实证分析表明，反叛派系数量、冲突利益规模，以及前反叛者与潜在反叛者间的实力差距，会对两类不同的冲突复发产生差异化影响。