What takes a country from civil war to peace?

[SpicyMcVoodoo]

What does it take for a country to go from warring factions to unified nation state? We like to think of ourselves in the West as more evolved, that we're so civilized we've given up the notion of fighting, and instead have federalist system where the factions vie for power via our representative democracy. We like to think we're beyond picking up guns and fighting our differences out. Kerry's followers will not go to war with Bush's.

But are we really more civilized than other places? The only reason America is a unified nation state is because the people who wanted it that way were physically stronger. If the South had won the civil war, would we have ever voluntarily agreed to merge? Or would the two America's be forever separate? If the federal government didn't have the monopoly on force, would Dubya opponents have tried to secede?

At what point do a people stop seeing war as a way to settle differences, and instead cede power via a democratic system? I'm thinking that perhaps you NEED a civil war to settle the question of what exactly constitutes a country and when people will stop trying to use force to determine the limits of power. Unless you have a determinative fight to answer that question, you're going to have people who are insisting they're a separate country.

If that's the case, then does Iraq need a civil war? Has there ever been a country, which from its inception, has voluntarily agreed to never have a civil war and instead always cooperate via democracy? Or has every nation state we see today fought its way to its present borders and system of governance?

And if a country has fought its way to democracy, then to what extent is it stable? Is a democracy, won via force, inherently more stable than a dictatorship won via force? Or are the two equally fragile?

[PetriW]

That the populace desires it.

No seriously.

When did ETA start reconsidering their ways? When major opinion at home turned against them.
The IRA? The Japanese? The Germans? Eastern Europe? And so on...

If a large majority wants change, it'll happen. However, if a large number of people are poorly informed or even misinformed via propaganda then a government can get away with a lot (like for example the former Thai government which is still popular among the poor despite significant corruption, or why not the Venezuelan government which fosters corruption and discrimination).