Two different positions regarding the impact the fate of factions has on the duration of the peace appear in theories of civil war termination. One holds that the peace will be long-lived when the organizational structures of all but one of the factions that compete in a war are destroyed or dismantled at the conflict’s end.The other position maintains that the peace can best be preserved when rival groups agree to share state power at the war’s end. I examine the evidence for these competing arguments, drawing on a new dataset on the fate of factions that participated in civil wars between 1945 and 1999.The results of this analysis indicate that although destroying opposing groups’ organizations has little effect on the duration of the peace, an agreement among rivals to share power can help to prolong the peace.
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