War and Democratic Backsliding

We provide the first global, long-run evidence on how war reshapes democratic institutions. Using data on all conflicts since 1948, we show that the onset of conflict causes a large and persistent decline in democracy: institutions weaken immediately, continue to erode for nearly a decade, and do not recover. Yet this deterioration is highly selective. It appears only in first-time conflicts, intrastate wars, highly fractionalized societies, and conflicts that governments win. The decline operates through political channels – media censorship, judicial purges, curtailed civil liberties, irregular leadership turnover, and constitutional suspensions - rather than through any functional requirement of war-making. Autocratization does not increase the probability of victory, and institutional instability reduces it. Taken together, the findings show that war does not require autocracy; it enables executives to expand their authority and implement institutional changes that would be difficult to enact in peacetime.