ABSTRACT
This chapter takes a broader look at comprehensive partition by comparing different types of ethnosectarian war termination in the second half of the twentieth century to see which one best maintains peace. The majority of the world’s civil wars experience conflict recurrence, with ethnosectarian wars particularly prone to recidivism. Sambanis’s first statistical test of partition’s effectiveness drew upon a data set that included all civil wars between 1945 and 1999, comparing outcomes of war termination and peace building. In the original data set, Sambanis used a broad definition of civil war, which allowed him to draw on a variety of civil war-related databases. Political partitions have traditionally been understood as a “fresh division” and “externally imposed” on a national community’s territory, and partitions are often contrasted with secession.
