Political instability in independent black Africa: more dimensions of conflict behavior within nations

Abstract

This paper is an attempt to (1) clarify conceptual approaches to the study of political instability, conflict, and violence; (2) summarize and compare existing quantitative investigations of these phenomena in national political systems; and (3) investigate empirical relationships between different kinds of political instability in contemporary African nations, which have been largely omitted from existing publised work. The data on which the analysis of political instability in Africa is based have been collected by the African National Integration Project.'