Civil wars, party politics and the consolidation of regimes in twentieth century Europe

Bill Kissane*, Nick Sitter

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract (may include machine translation)

The present article explores how winners' and losers' strategies for competition influence the possibility of democratization after civil war. Civil wars have been pivotal events in many states, but there has been little analysis of how they affect democratization. Since most have been won by the political right in twentieth century Europe one expects a correlation between civil war and the imposition of authoritarian solution to political conflicts. However, an analysis of five civil wars shows a wide variety in the patterns of political dominance achieved by the winners, ranging from total clampdown in Spain to the winners relinquishing power, as in Ireland. In between, Finland, Greece and Hungary combined various degrees of open competition with restrictions on the losers. In effect democratization can be as likely an outcome of civil war as regression to authoritarianism. Explaining the variation in outcomes of the five cases is the objective of this article.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)183-201
Number of pages19
JournalDemocratization
Volume12
Issue number2
DOIs
StatePublished - Apr 2005
Externally publishedYes

Keywords

  • Civil wars
  • Democratic consolidation
  • Finland
  • Greece
  • Hungary
  • Ireland
  • Spain

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