IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ucn/wpaper/201815.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

On the decline of war

Author

Listed:
  • Michael Spagat
  • Stijn van Weezel

Abstract

For the past 70 years, there has been a downward trend in the size of wars, but the idea of an enduring ‘long peace’ remains controversial. Some recent contributions suggest that observed war patterns,including the long peace, could have come from a long-standing and unchanging war-generating process, an idea rooted in Lewis F Richardson’s pioneering work on war. Aaron Clauset has tested the hypothesis that the war sizes after the Second World War are generated by the same mechanism that generated war sizes before the Second World War and fails to reject the ‘no-change’ hypothesis. In this paper, we transform the war-size data into units of battle deaths per 100,000 or world population rather than absolute battle deaths – units appropriate for investigating the probability that a random person will die in a war. This change tilts the evidence towards rejecting the no-change hypothesis. We also show that sliding the candidate break point slightly forward in time, to 1950 rather than 1945, leads us further down the path toward formal rejection of the no-change hypothesis. Finally, we expand range of wars to include not just the inter-state wars considered by Clauset (2018) but also intra-state wars. Now we do formally reject the no-change hypothesis. Finally, we show that our results do not depend on the choice between two widely used war datasets.

Suggested Citation

  • Michael Spagat & Stijn van Weezel, 2018. "On the decline of war," Working Papers 201815, School of Economics, University College Dublin.
    • Handle: RePEc:ucn:wpaper:201815
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10197/9483
    File Function: First version, 2018
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Kristian Gleditsch, 2004. "A Revised List of Wars Between and Within Independent States, 1816-2002," International Interactions, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 30(3), pages 231-262, July.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Céline Cunen & Nils Lid Hjort & Håvard Mokleiv Nygård, 2020. "Statistical sightings of better angels: Analysing the distribution of battle-deaths in interstate conflict over time," Journal of Peace Research, Peace Research Institute Oslo, vol. 57(2), pages 221-234, March.
    2. Brennen T. Fagan & Marina I. Knight & Niall J. MacKay & A. Jamie Wood, 2020. "Change point analysis of historical battle deaths," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 183(3), pages 909-933, June.
    3. Carl, Noah, 2019. "Prevention of Armed Conflict in Europe: Comparing the Role of the EU and the US/NATO," SocArXiv ds8px, Center for Open Science.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Agustín Goenaga & Oriol Sabaté & Jan Teorell, 2023. "The state does not live by warfare alone: War and revenue in the long nineteenth century," The Review of International Organizations, Springer, vol. 18(2), pages 393-418, April.
    2. Benjamin F. Jones & Benjamin A. Olken, 2009. "Hit or Miss? The Effect of Assassinations on Institutions and War," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 1(2), pages 55-87, July.
    3. Mark Harrison & Nikolaus Wolf, 2014. "The frequency of wars: reply to Gleditsch and Pickering," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 67(1), pages 231-239, February.
    4. Serhan Cevik & Mohammad Rahmati, 2015. "Breaking the Curse of Sisyphus: An Empirical Analysis of Post-Conflict Economic Transitions," Comparative Economic Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Association for Comparative Economic Studies, vol. 57(4), pages 569-597, December.
    5. David Lektzian & Glen Biglaiser, 2014. "The effect of foreign direct investment on the use and success of US sanctions," Conflict Management and Peace Science, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 31(1), pages 70-93, February.
    6. Rigterink, Anouk S., 2010. "The wrong suspect. An enquiry into the endogeneity of natural resource measures to civil war," MPRA Paper 45263, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    7. Benedikt Goderis & Mila Versteeg, 2012. "Human Rights Violations after 9/11 and the Role of Constitutional Constraints," The Journal of Legal Studies, University of Chicago Press, vol. 41(1), pages 131-164.
    8. Harrison, Mark, 2011. "Capitalism at War," CAGE Online Working Paper Series 60, Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy (CAGE).
    9. Adam S. Chilton & Mila Versteeg, 2015. "The Failure of Constitutional Torture Prohibitions," The Journal of Legal Studies, University of Chicago Press, vol. 44(2), pages 417-452.
    10. repec:spo:wpecon:info:hdl:2441/10149 is not listed on IDEAS
    11. Sajal Lahiri & Valerica Vlad, 2012. "Peace Dividends in a Trade-theoretic Model of Conflict," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 32(1), pages 737-745.
    12. Michael Bleaney & Arcangelo Dimico, 2012. "History and Civil Conflict," Discussion Papers 12/02, University of Nottingham, School of Economics.
    13. Philippe Martin & Thierry Mayer & Mathias Thoenig, 2008. "Civil Wars and International Trade," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 6(2-3), pages 541-550, 04-05.
    14. Michael Bleaney & Arcangelo Dimico, 2009. "Incidence, Onset and Duration of Civil Wars: A Review of the Evidence," Discussion Papers 09/08, University of Nottingham, CREDIT.
    15. Fabrizio Carmignani & Adrian Gauci, 2009. "Does fiscal policy differ between successful and unsuccessful post-conflict transitions? Lessons from African Civil Wars," Discussion Papers Series 402, School of Economics, University of Queensland, Australia.
    16. Mohammad Ajmal Hameed & Mohammad Mafizur Rahman & Rasheda Khanam, 2024. "Asymmetric effects of long-term war on human resource development in Af…ghanistan: evidence from NARDL approach," Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, Springer, vol. 58(5), pages 4807-4832, October.
    17. Kruk, Margaret E. & Freedman, Lynn P. & Anglin, Grace A. & Waldman, Ronald J., 2010. "Rebuilding health systems to improve health and promote statebuilding in post-conflict countries: A theoretical framework and research agenda," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 70(1), pages 89-97, January.
    18. Sørensen, Georg, 2007. "Tensions in liberalism: The troubled path to liberal world order [Spannungen im Liberalismus: Der steinige Weg zu einer liberalen Weltordnung]," Discussion Papers, Research Unit: Global Governance SP IV 2007-308, WZB Berlin Social Science Center.
    19. Zsolt Becsi and Sajal Lahiri, 2007. "Bilateral war in a multilateral world: carrots and sticks for conflict resolution," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 40(4), pages 1168-1187, November.
    20. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/10149 is not listed on IDEAS
    21. Paul Collier & Anke Hoeffler & Anke Hoeffler & Måns Söderbom, 2006. "Post-Conflict Risks," Economics Series Working Papers WPS/2006-12, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    War; Rare events; Binomial probability;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C10 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric and Statistical Methods and Methodology: General - - - General
    • D74 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Conflict; Conflict Resolution; Alliances; Revolutions
    • N40 - Economic History - - Government, War, Law, International Relations, and Regulation - - - General, International, or Comparative

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ucn:wpaper:201815. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Nicolas Clifton (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/educdie.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.