Conflict Outbreak Research Articles

Living in the Wrong Neighbourhood: State Failure and its Implications for Neighbouring Countries

Why and how do failed states affect neighboring countries? The attention of the international community towards state failure has grown significantly in recent years, improving the understanding of this phenomenon; nevertheless, the knowledge about the influence of state failure on neighboring countries remain scarce. This research aims at contributing to filling up the existing gap by analyzing two different cases of state failure–Liberia and Afghanistan–and its consequences on four of their neighbors–Sierra Leone, Guinea, Pakistan and Tajikistan. More concretely, this research investigates the importance of insurgency movements in the relationship between these countries. The research argues that failed states generate conflict-enhancing mechanisms–which might lead to conflict outbreak–in their neighbors through the creation of informal networks. The empiric evidence shows how insurgency-based informal networks have a decisive role in the outbreak of conflict.

It’s the Local Economy, Stupid! Geographic Wealth Dispersion and Conflict Outbreak Location

Income varies considerably within countries and the locations where conflicts emerge are rarely typical or representative for states at large. Yet, most research on conflict has only examined national income averages and neglected spatial variation. The authors argue that civil conflicts are more likely to erupt in areas with low absolute income, even if a country’s gross domestic product (GDP) per capita is not necessarily low, and in areas with large deviations from national averages. The authors test these hypotheses empirically using spatially disaggregated data on the location of conflict outbreaks and per capita income estimates. The authors find that areas with absolute poverty indeed see more outbreaks of conflict, and they find some evidence that inequality increases the risk of conflict. Subnational information can improve on conventional country-based measures and help our understanding of how local features and variation can give rise to mobilization and violence.

Internal Security Crises in Punjab, Kashmir and Jaffna: The Power of Moderation

The article argues that the militarised nature of India’s initial reaction to an internal security crisis contributes to deterioration in the situation. The resulting full-blown insurgency, usually complicated by proxy war, takes several years to wind down due to the political prong of strategy not keeping pace with the military prong. This is to the detriment of the legitimacy of the state and exacts a high human price. Learning lessons from India’s initial reaction to insurgency outbreak therefore helps to highlight the importance of prevention and possibilities in non-militarised alternatives. The article considers the initial phases of three of India’s major counter-insurgency engagements—Punjab, Kashmir and in Tamil areas of Sri Lanka—to arrive at the conclusion that moderation in facing crisis prevents conflict outbreak.

Conflict analysis using Bayesian neural networks and generalized linear models

The study of conflict analysis has recently become more important due to current world events. Despite numerous quantitative analyses on the study of international conflict, the statistical results are often inconsistent with each other. The causes of conflict, however, are often stable and replicable when the prior probability of conflict is large. As there has been much conjecture about neural networks being able to cope with the complexity of such interconnected and interdependent data, we formulate a statistical version of a neural network model and compare the results to those of conventional statistical models. We then show how to apply Bayesian methods to the preferred model, with the aim of finding the posterior probabilities of conflict outbreak and hence being able to plan for conflict prevention.

Polarization, Horizontal Inequalities and Violent Civil Conflict

Recent large-N studies of civil war conclude that inequality does not increase the risk of violent conflict. This article argues that such conclusions may be premature because these studies, which usually test the conflict potential of `vertical inequality' (i.e. income inequality between individuals), tend to neglect the group aspect of inequality. Case studies suggest that what matters for conflict is a concept closely linked to both economic and ethnic polarization: `horizontal inequalities', or inequalities that coincide with identity-based cleavages. Horizontal inequalities may enhance both grievances and group cohesion among the relatively deprived and thus facilitate mobilization for conflict. This article provides a quantitative test of this argument, exploring whether various forms of polarization and horizontal inequalities affect the probability of civil conflict onset across 36 developing countries in the period 1986—2004. National household data from the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) are used to construct measures of ethnic, social and economic polarization, as well as vertical and horizontal inequalities along two dimensions: social and economic. The article also introduces a combined measure of ethnic/socio-economic polarization as an alternative to the horizontal inequality measure. Robust results from panel and cross-section analyses show that social polarization and horizontal social inequality are positively related to conflict outbreak. Variables for purely ethnic polarization, inter-individual inequalities and combined ethnic/socio-economic polarization are not significant.

Conflict and the Social Contract*

AbstractWe consider social contracts for resolving conflicts between two agents who are uncertain about each other's fighting potential. Applications include international conflict, litigation and elections. Even though only a peaceful agreement avoids a loss of resources, if this loss is small enough, then any contract must assign a positive probability of conflict. We show how the likelihood of conflict outbreak depends on the distribution of power between the agents and their information about each other.

Communicative factors, conflict progression, and use of reconciliatory strategies in pre-school boys-a series of random events or a sequential process?

Affiliative interactions between former opponents soon after a conflict, in non-human primates and pre-school children, have been documented to be followed by a reduction of future aggression and stress reactions, and to promote tolerance between individuals. The phenomenon has, therefore, been called reconciliation. Studies of non-human primates have shown that the conflict cause can influence the reconciliatory outcome, and whether the aggressor or the victim of the aggression is more likely to take the initiative to reconcile, can differ between species. Few studies in pre-school children have addressed how factors preceding the post-conflict period, such as social interactions before the conflict outbreak, or the cause of the conflict, may be related to the likelihood of reconciliation, conflict progression, and conflict outcome in the form of possible continuation or initiation of interactions. Twenty boys were video-recorded during free-play at six pre-schools. The existence of social interaction between the opponents in the upcoming conflict was examined in the pre-conflict period. The observed causes of conflict were determined and classified into five categories. The affiliative behaviors identified in the post-conflict period were classified into six categories. Finally, whether or not conflicts were followed by communicative exchanges in the succeeding non-conflict period was documented. The results revealed that the cause of the conflict is associated with whether opponents had established social interaction prior to conflict in the pre-conflict period. Acceptance rates (for the various categories of affiliative behaviors) appeared to differ. A non-random pattern of conflict progression was apparent, suggesting the conflict cause was related to the category of reconciliatory strategy shown by the individuals. The aggressor and the victim initiated reconciliation at similar rates, with the exception of verbal apologies, which were initiated most often by the aggressor. Finally, the data also showed that higher frequencies of social interaction between former opponents in the succeeding non-conflict period were associated both with whether or not social interaction had occurred in the pre-conflict period, and whether or not the conflict was reconciled. In conclusion, communicative factors preceding conflicts, and conflict cause, are distinctively correlated with both the use and the outcome of post-conflict affiliation in pre-school boys. Aggr. Behav. 00:000–000, 2005. © 2005 Wiley-Liss, Inc.