Resumen de Wartime legislative political inclusivity and the likelihood of negotiated ends to civil wars

John Ishiyama

• Many scholars have argued that political inclusivity helps pre-empt civil warincidence and helps build peace and democracy after a civil war ends.However very little work has been done on assessing the effects of theinclusivity of war time legislatures on how civil wars end. This paperaddresses this lacuna using the ‘diversity in leadership’ approach to explainthe likelihood of negotiations initiated to end civil wars. This approach holdsthat the inclusion of different political viewpoints leads to innovativesolutions to intractable political challenges (such as efforts to end civil wars).Using data from the Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP) and the Databaseon Political Institutions (DPI) from 1975–2020, I find that relatively morepolitical fractionalised war time legislatures are significantly more likely tolead to attempts at negotiated ends to conflicts, when compared to lessfractionalised legislatures. However, the size of the opposition in the wartimelegislature, and the presence of legalised political wings of rebel groups, areunrelated to whether a negotiated settlement occurs (a finding thatquestions the idea that representation of anti-government views help bringabout efforts at peace).