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53 J. Conflict Resol. 3 (2009)

handle is hein.journals/jcfltr53 and id is 1 raw text is: Voum 5 Nmber 1 Februaryj 2009) 3-29 I 2009) Sager Publicatlious Democracy under the Gun 10.1177/002002708326745 Understanding Postconflict h1te a Economic Recovery Thomas Edward Flores Center for Global Affairs New York University, New York Irfan Nooruddin Department of Political Science Ohio State University, Columbus Increasingly, scholars studying civil conflicts believe that the pace of postconflict eco- nomic recovery is crucial to a return to peaceful politics. But why do some countries' economies recover more quickly than others'? The authors argue that the inability of politicians to commit credibly to postconflict peace inhibits investment and, hence, slows recovery. In turn, the ability of political actors to eschew further violence cred- ibly depends on postconflict political institutions. The authors test this framework with duration analysis of an original data set of economic recovery, with two key results. First, they find that postconflict democratization retards recovery. Second, out- right military victory sets the stage for a longer peace than negotiated settlements do. This research deepens the understanding of the bases of economic recovery and con- flict recidivism in postconflict countries and points to future research that can augment this knowledge further still. Keywords: Democracy; Democratization; Civil Conflict; Conflict Recurrence; Recovery S ince World War II, domestic armed conflict has eclipsed interstate conflict as the most deadly form of political violence. By one count, civil conflicts killed nearly 20 million people since 1945 (World Bank 2006). As if this loss of human life were not sufficiently tragic, civil conflict inflicts irreparable harm to the lives of those left behind, partly by impoverishing them. Sadly, civil conflict also inhibits financiers from investing in potentially lucrative and socially beneficial Authors' Note: For comments and suggestions, we thank Todd Allee, Carew Boulding, Janet Box- Steffensmeier, Bill Clark, Michael Cohen, Sarah Croco, David Cunningham, Michael Findley, Susan Hyde, Seonjou Kang, Douglas Lemke, Roy Licklider, Andrew Mack, Porter McConnell, Jordan Miller, Jim Morrow, Patrick Regan, Elizabeth Saunders, Heidi Sherman, Joel Simmons, and Tze Kwang Teo. Scott Gates and Kristian Gleditsch helped us gain access to various data sets at PRIO, and we thank Andrew Mack and Joakim Kreutz for sharing the Conflict Termination data set with us. Quintin Beazer, Michael Cohen, and Scott Powell provided research assistance. Replication materials are available alongside the electronic version of this article at: http://jcr.sagepub.com/. 3

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