Making Up Is Hard To Do

The issue of rapprochement between former adversaries has received scant scholarly attention and there is little understanding of why some foes reconcile quickly while others remain hostile for decades. This study advances research on enduring rivalries while proposing a novel theory of reconciliation involving shared democracy and economic incentives. Specifically, the paper proposes that more democratic and trade dependent dyads with larger markets are more likely to reconcile quickly after a conflict. This theory is tested on a new dataset that includes all potential cases of reconciliation after warfare since World War II. The data includes all countries involved in interstate conflict between 1945 and 2010. It is coded dyad-year, with 60 dyads and 1,342 observations. The data was analyzed using a hazard models. Survival analysis shows that shared democracy, trade dependence, and market size are significantly related to faster reconciliation.