Contingency, Inherency, and the Onset of Civil War

Existing literature stresses that civil wars are contingent on unusual or irregular external circumstances that produce major ruptures from conventional politics. We argue that civil wars are inherent to the process of contentious politics, always one potential outcome of the power struggle between regimes and oppositions. This paper makes the case for inherency in four ways. First, we present a case study of the Nicaraguan civil war. Second, we criticize Fearon and Laitin (2003) and show how theories and empirical analyses of civil war onset must take account of prior internal wars. Third, we question the appropriateness of Fearon and Laitin’s conflict proxy variables by offering a different operationalization based on actual conflict events. Finally, we demonstrate that the prior level of internal conflict is a significant predictor of civil war onset, and in some contexts, vastly more important than any of structural variables highlighted by Fearon and Laitin. 3