Hurting Stalemate or Spiral of Escalation: Competitive Coadaptation as an Explanation for War Continuation.

Abstract Existing studies of civil wars concentrate on either the prospects for termination or the effect of foreign intervention. These studies, however, do not provide an account of how civil wars develop out of political protest. This paper focuses on the dynamic interaction of the two actors--challenger and regime--in a civil war. Competitive coadaptation, or the notion of each actor adapting to the war at the same rate, is suggested as an explanation for civil war origin. In order to provide a more comprehensive account of civil war termination, a model of civil war origin is developed based on this premise. The model is tested against interval level data from four conflicts: Colombia, El Salvador, Peru, and United States. These results suggest that coadaptation is present in the Colombian, Salvadoran, and American conflicts. The presence of coadaptation indicates that each side is able to escalate its activity levels from one time period to the next and thus there is an increasing incentive for continuing the war. Until this spiral of escalation is broken either through a change in the political will of the participants or the access to resources a hurting stalemate will not develop and the war will continue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]