Youthful Age Structures and the Risks of Revolutionary and Separatist Conflicts

Abstract

This chapter addresses gaps in the age-structural theory of state behaviour, specifically as it pertains to the statistical expectation that states with a youthful population age structure (a median age 25.5 years or less) are the most vulnerable to intrastate conflict. The authors test variations of this expectation by employing logistic regression to generate two sets of two-dimensional logistic probability functions: one set representing the probability (on the y-axis) of experiencing a non-territorial (revolutionary) conflict in the next five years, over the course of the age-structural transition (on the x-axis, measured in median age), the other doing the same for territorial (separatist) conflicts. The results disclose that: (1) whereas statistical vulnerability to both types of intrastate conflict is highest in the youthful phase, the declining pattern of vulnerability to non-territorial (revolutionary) conflict is statistically much more sensitive to a state’s advancement through the age-structural transition than the pattern of territorial (separatist) conflicts; and (2) whereas, when submitted to testing on in-sample and out-of-sample data, the pattern of non-territorial (revolutionary) conflicts appears wholly consistent with theoretical expectations, this is not entirely the case for territorial (separatist) conflicts.