Replication Data for: One Dyadic Peace Leads to Another? Conflict Systems, Terminations, and Net Reduction in Fighting Groups

Governments often fight multiple civil conflicts simultaneously and each conflict can have multiple groups. Prior research on civil war termination and recurrence has been conducted at either the conflict level, once all the groups have been terminated, or the dyadic level, which examines group terminations in a conflict separately as more or less independent processes. Hence, conflict-level studies mostly tell us how to preserve peace once a civil war has already ended, while dyadic studies mostly tell us about the durability of specific group-level terminations within the larger process that led to that ending. As a result, our understanding of how ongoing civil wars are brought to a close is limited, particularly, with respect to multiparty conflicts. In this study, we put forth a systems approach that treats dyadic terminations as connected processes where group terminations influence the future behavior of other groups, incentivizing the system toward greater aggregate peace or conflict. Analyzing 264 dyadic terminations, the findings suggest that the most effective strategy for governments to reduce systemic conflict is to demonstrate to other groups that they have the political will and capacity to implement security, political, and social reforms as part of a larger reform-oriented peace process. Viable implementation can be followed by the concomitant use of military victories against remaining groups with great success. However, military victories achieved in isolation, that is, outside of a reform-process, do not reduce future levels of conflict even if they themselves are durable.各国政府往往同时应对多场国内冲突，而每一场冲突中又可能存在多个对立群体。此前针对内战终结与复发的研究，要么以冲突整体为分析单元（此时所有对立群体均已被消灭或解决），要么以二元（dyadic）层面为分析框架——后者将一场冲突内的群体终结进程视为相对独立的个体过程分别加以考察。因此，冲突层面的研究大多仅能阐释内战结束后的和平维持路径，而二元层面的研究则更多聚焦于促成整体终结的宏大进程中，特定群体终结方案的可持续性。由此，学界对于如何终结仍在进行中的内战的认知存在明显局限，在多方参与的冲突场景中这一问题尤为突出。本研究提出一种系统论研究路径：将二元层面的群体终结进程视为相互关联的整体过程——群体的终结行为会影响其他对立群体的后续动向，进而驱使整个冲突系统朝着整体和平程度提升或是冲突烈度升级的方向发展。通过对264起二元群体终结事件的分析，本研究结果表明：政府若要降低系统性冲突风险，最有效的策略是向其他对立群体展现自身推行安全、政治与社会改革的政治意愿与实际能力，并将此类改革纳入以改革为导向的整体和平进程之中。在落实上述改革举措后，配合针对残余对立群体的军事打击行动，往往能取得极佳成效。但若是脱离改革进程单独开展军事打击，即便此类军事行动本身能达成持久战果，也无法降低未来的冲突烈度。