Civil wars involve different numbers of combatant parties. Some have only two. Others, such as the current conflicts in Iraq and Darfur, have a large number of insurgent groups battling against the state. When conflicts have more actors with the ability to prolong conflict, they last longer. These wars drag on because groups make conscious decisions to prolong them in order to get a better deal. Long wars, then, are the result of specific strategies used by the multiple different groups present in civil war.

Not all participants in conflict have the capacity to pursue these strategies and consciously extend wars. Rather, all civil wars contain a set of actors that have the ability to block any end to war until they are satisfied. We can think of these actors as “veto players,” in that they have the ability to “veto” any settlement that does not give them what they want. In the traditional conception of civil war, there are two of these actors – a state and a rebel group. In the last chapter, however, we saw that conflicts differ greatly in the number of combatant parties, and this difference has a profound impact on how long the conflicts last.

In this chapter, I develop a veto player theory of civil war duration. I discuss the bargaining environment in civil war and argue that a veto player framework is a useful way to think about conflict bargaining.