When the Killing Continues : A quantitative study on the effects of wartime levels of violence on post-conflict one-sided violence 

Scholars have in the recent decades actively been searching for answers for why actors of war sometimes choose - and other times choose not - to direct violence against civilians. However, their focus has been largely on one-sided violence during wartime, and much less on post-conflict occurrences. This study aims to fill this research gap by examine in what way wartime livels of casualties affect post-conflict levels of one-sided violence. A total of 164 conflict episodes and their post-conflict periods between 1989 and 2016 show that there is a significant positive correlation between wartime one-sided violence intensity and post-conflict one-sided violence intensity. A similar correlation is not found between battle-related deaths and post-conflict one-sided violence, although the result shows that rebel groups are more prone to direct violence against civilians after high levels of wartime battle-related deaths than after low levels