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The Equifinality of War Termination

Multiple Paths to Ending War

Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service and Department of Government

John P. Sawyer

Department of Government Georgetown University, Washington, D.C.

The authors’ theory contributes an alternative domestic politics pathway to traditional bargaining models of war termination. In bargaining models, the rational updating process that produces an overlapping bargaining space can develop a significant lag, which extends the war beyond a logical ending point. The authors posit that a change in the domestic governing coalition is often necessary to kick-start this updating process once it has become bogged down through preference, information, and entrapment obstacles. The authors demonstrate that domestic coalition shifts are a critical path to peace, using survival analysis techniques on Bennett and Stam’s (1996) war-level data set of wars (1862-1990) and a new belligerent-level data set of wars (1945-2006). These tests show that because war policies can become institutionalized over time, there is a very strong link between coalition shifts and war termination.

Key Words: war termination • domestic coalitions • coalition shifts • obstacles • hazard analysis • bargaining model

Journal of Conflict Resolution, Vol. 53, No. 5, 651-676 (2009)
DOI: 10.1177/0022002709343194


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