Democracy under the Gun: Understanding Post-Conflict Economic Recovery

Why do some countries' economies recover from civil conflicts more quickly than others? We contend that the key to economic recovery is a credible commitment to the peace. In turn, the ability of political actors to eschew further violence credibly depends on the nature of the political institutional transition a country must make. We test these arguments with duration analysis of an original dataset of economic recovery from civil conflict. Among key results, we find that post-conflict democratization retards recovery, reinforcing a growing pessimism among political scientists regarding the challenges new democracies face after civil conflicts.