Publication Date
2022
Document Type
Article
Organizational Units
Josef Korbel School of International Studies, International Studies
Keywords
State failure, Quantitative models, Clustering analysis, Civil conflict
Abstract
Quantitative methods have been used to: (1) better predict civil conflict onset; and (2) understand causal mechanisms to inform policy intervention and theory. However, an exploration of individual conflict onset cases illustrates great variation in the characteristics describing the outbreak of civil war, suggesting that there is not one single set of factors that lead to intrastate war. In this article, we use descriptive statistics to explore persistent clusters in the drivers of civil war onset, finding evidence that some arrangements of structural drivers cluster robustly across multiple model specifications (such as young, poorly developed states with anocratic regimes). Additionally, we find that approximately one-fifth of onset cases cannot be neatly clustered across models, suggesting that these cases are difficult to predict and multiple methods for understanding civil conflict onset (and state failure more generally) may be necessary.
Copyright Statement / License for Reuse
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Publication Statement
This article was originally published as:
Moyer, J., Matthews, A., Rafa, M., & Xiong, Y. (2022). Identifying Patterns in the Structural Drivers of Intrastate Conflict. British Journal of Political Science, 1-8. doi:10.1017/S0007123422000229
Copyright is held by the authors. User is responsible for all copyright compliance.
Rights Holder
Jonathan D. Moyer, Austin S. Matthews, Mickey Rafa, Yutang Xiong
Provenance
Received from author
File Format
application/pdf
Language
English (eng)
Extent
8 pgs
File Size
309 KB
Publication Title
British Journal of Political Science
Volume
53
First Page
1
Last Page
8
Recommended Citation
Moyer, Jonathan D.; Matthews, Austin S.; Rafa, Mickey; and Xiong, Yutang, "Identifying Patterns in the Structural Drivers of Intrastate Conflict" (2022). International Studies: Faculty Scholarship. 27.
https://digitalcommons.du.edu/korbel_faculty/27
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0007123422000229
DOI Link
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0007123422000229
Included in
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