This Article Full Text (PDF) Data Set All Versions of this Article: 0022002707313305v1 52/4/479    most recent References Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Citation Map Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Similar articles in Web of Science Alert me to new issues of the journal Add to Saved Citations Download to citation manager Request Permissions Request Reprints Add to My Marked Citations Citing Articles Citing Articles via Google Scholar Citing Articles via Scopus Google Scholar Articles by Gleditsch, K. S. Articles by Schultz, K. Search for Related Content Social Bookmarking                         What's this?

Fighting at Home, Fighting Abroad

How Civil Wars Lead to International Disputes

Department of Government, University of Essex, Colchester, United Kingdom, and the Centre for the Study of Civil War, Oslo, Norway

Idean Salehyan

Department of Political Science, University of North Texas, Denton

Kenneth Schultz

Department of Political Science, Stanford University, California

Although research on conflict has tended to separately study interstate conflict and civil war, states experiencing civil wars are substantially more likely to become involved in militarized disputes with other states. Scholars have typically focused on opportunistic attacks or diversionary wars to explain this domestic–international conflict nexus. The authors argue that international disputes that coincide with civil wars are more often directly tied to the issues surrounding the civil war and emphasize intervention, externalization, and unintended spillover effects from internal conflict as important sources of international friction. They empirically demonstrate that civil wars substantially increase the probability of disputes between states. An analysis of conflict narratives shows that the increased risk of interstate conflict associated with civil wars is primarily driven by states' efforts to affect the outcome of the civil war through strategies of intervention and externalization and not by an increase in conflicts over unrelated issues.

Key Words: civil war • interstate disputes • externalization • spillover effects • diversion

This version was published on August 1, 2008

Journal of Conflict Resolution, Vol. 52, No. 4, 479-506 (2008)
DOI: 10.1177/0022002707313305


CiteULike    Complore    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter    What's this?