Forecasting Civil Conflict with Zero-Inflated Count Models

Advances in the study of civil war have led to the proliferation of event count data, and to a corresponding increase in the use of (zero-inflated) count models for the quantitative analysis of civil conflict events. Our ability to effectively use these techniques is met with two current limitations. First, researchers do not yet have a definitive answer as to whether zero-inflated count models are a verifiably better approach to civil conflict modeling than are ‘less assuming’ approaches such as negative binomial count models. Second, the accurate analysis of conflict-event counts with count models – zero-inflated or otherwise – is severely limited by the absence of an effective framework for the evaluation of predictive accuracy, which is an empirical approach that is of increasing importance to conflict modelers. This article rectifies both of these deficiencies. Specifically, this study presents count forecasting techniques for the evaluation and comparison of count models' predictive accuracies. Using these techniques alongside out-of-sample forecasts, it then definitively verifies – for the first time – that zero-inflated count models are superior to comparable non-inflated models for the study of intrastate conflict events.     

Towards a practitioner-centric definition of civil war

This paper argues that current academic definitions of civil war are largely inadequate for international relations practitioners. While these casualty-based standards have the methodological consistency needed for quantitative research, they do not capture the dynamics most important to policymakers, including the degree of threat to national interests, the level of disruption to the international system, and the political implications of labelling a conflict a civil war. This paper explains how academics and practitioners use civil war definitions in different ways, creating the need for an additional but non-exclusive practitioner-centric definition of civil war. Its purpose is not to replace the existing academic standard, but rather to provide an additional tool for policymakers tailored to their specific needs – identifying when a civil war has emerged in order to implement a policy response.     

Buying Peace? Civil War Peace Duration and Private Military & Security Companies

Do Private Military and Security Companies (PMSCs) impact peace duration after civil war? I argue that the role these organisations play in a conflict can impact post-conflict stability. Specifically, I suggest that variance in services provided by PMSCs can influence rebels’ calculations about relative capabilities. These calculations then contribute to the probability for civil war recurrence. Building on the bargaining framework, with a focus on information and commitment problems, this article demonstrates that PMSCs participating in armed combat operations can jeopardise the stability of peace following civil war. Three case narratives (Angola, Sierra Leone and Croatia) are used to probe the theoretical argument and results are illustrative – PMSCs serving as force multipliers contribute to an increase in the probability for conflict recurrence.     

Anarchy’s anatomy: Two-tiered security systems and Libya’s civil wars

ABSTRACT

No issue deserves more scrutiny than the mechanisms whereby popular unrest unleashes civil wars. We argue that one institution – two-tiered security systems – is particularly pernicious in terms of the accompanying civil war risk. These systems’ defining characteristic is the juxtaposition of small communally stacked units that protect regimes from internal adversaries with larger regular armed forces that deter external opponents. These systems aggravate civil war risks because stacked security units lack the size to repress widespread dissent, but inhibit rapid regime change through coup d’état. Regular militaries, meanwhile, fracture when ordered to employ force against populations from which they were recruited.     

The ‘Happy Outcomes’ May Not Come at All – Postwar Violence in Central America

The non-recurrence of war is mostly considered as the main indicator for successful peace processes. Nevertheless, even in these postwar contexts, other forms of violence – i.e. state repression or homicide – have the potential to endanger the larger process of peace-building. Hence, the analysis of variations in postwar violence is important for the broader peace processes. Three interdependent factors explain variations in postwar violence: the patterns of war termination, policies aiming at the mitigation of the conflict root causes and last but not least institutional reforms. The different experiences of Central American postwar societies show that violence reduction does not require the resolution of major grievances but at least their political recognition.     

Does Spoiling Work? Assessing the Impact of Spoilers on Civil War Peace Agreements

Scholars and policymakers argue that violent actors – termed ‘spoilers’ – pose a significant threat to civil war peace agreements. Yet existing research, which is overly reliant on single-case studies, has not effectively determined how prevalent spoiling is, or thoroughly examined what its ultimate effects are on peace agreements. This article draws on a newly constructed cross-national dataset of spoiling following 241 civil war peace agreements in the post-Cold War era to analyze spoiling. It finds that spoiling intended to terminate an agreement is not as common as typically assumed, but still plagues a sizeable number of peace agreements. Moreover, most actors who resort to this strategy typically fail in their goals and the agreement is not at risk, despite the high publicity and attention given to these threats. Yet particular types of actors, most notably paramilitaries and state security forces excluded from the agreement, can pose a significant threat to peace.     

Dangerous Demographics? The Effect of Urbanisation and Metropolisation on African Civil Wars, 1961–2010

Whether urbanisation promotes or inhibits the risk of civil war is disputed: while case studies usually support the former, quantitative investigations have found either the latter or no significant correlation at all. I argue that this contradiction is due to a conceptual and operational over-aggregation of urbanisation, ignoring its intrastate variation. I claim that a high relative concentration of the urban population and political, economic and social institutions in the largest city – so-called metropolisation – can increase both the motivation for and the feasibility of rebellion in a country. Triangulating case study evidence with a quantitative cross-national time series design, I show that metropolisation significantly and robustly increases the risk of governmental conflict in particular and hence civil war in general.     

In pursuit of accountability during and after war

ABSTRACT

This article aims to identify and elaborate the causes and ramifications of applying transitional justice, in particular accountability measures, to situations of war. It focuses on the correlations between peace and justice – and hence an important perspective on the question ‘how do wars end’. The article seeks to understand some of the main challenges associated with pursuing accountability for crimes committed in contemporary forms of conflict, including civil wars and abuses committed by major powers in armed conflict.     

From Domestic to Regional: The Civil War Conundrum and the Cases of Syria and Algeria

This paper seeks to answer a simple question: When do regional powers get involved in civil wars? Some civil wars see a significant involvement of regional actors, while others show a remarkable level of isolation. What explains this difference? This research answers this question by looking at two case studies: the Algerian civil war (1991–2002) and the Syrian civil war (2011–up to date). The paper identifies and develops five factors of regional involvement. These are: capabilities, regional dynamics, country’s relevance, regional security issues/containment and domestic–external links. civil wars are today one of the most prominent and deadly forms of conflict, and this paper contributes to understanding the important but understudied issue of regional involvement.     

Conflict Studies and Causality: Critical Realism and the Nomothetic/Idiographic Divide in the Study of Civil War

The study of civil war has increased exponentially during the post-cold war period. This has not, however, resulted in greater levels of consensus with regard to the causes and nature of this phenomenon. In order to alleviate this situation the current article will draw on critical realist philosophy. It will argue (1) that critical realism provides conflict studies authors with a more sophisticated and coherent understanding of causality than has previously been available to them, and (2) that this understanding paves the way for an approach to social science which – rather than consistently abstracting from context – systematically engages with it.     

What Goes Up Must Come Down: Military Expenditure and Civil Wars

Abstract

This paper examines the impact of civil war on military expenditure. We employ two measures of military expenditure: the share of military expenditure in general government expenditure and the logarithm of military expenditures. We would reasonably expect a priori that military expenditure as a share of general government expenditure increases during a civil war and that such increases would taper off over the duration of a civil war. We also explore whether the termination of a civil war induces a decline in the share of military expenditure as a share of the general government expenditure in the short-run. We find evidence the of share of military expenditure increases during a civil war and falls in the year succeeding the end of a civil war, and, in particular, if a war ends in a peace treaty. The level of military expenditures, however, rises during civil wars and does not appear to decline in the short-term after the end of a civil war.     

Conflict and fiscal capacity

We examine the role of war in retarding state fiscal capacity in developing countries, measured by tax revenue ratios to GDP. We build a simple theoretical model of a factionalized state, where patronage substitutes for common interest public goods, along with violent contestation over a rent or prize. Our dynamic panel empirical analysis applied to 79 developing countries, during 1980–2010, indicates that war, especially civil war, retards fiscal capacity, along with imperfect democracy, political repression, poor governance, and dependence on oil and macroeconomic mismanagement. High intensity conflict is particularly destructive of state capacity. In countries experiencing low intensity wars, other institutional factors may matter more than war. The diminution of fiscal capacity due to war appears less pronounced after the end of the cold war.     

Historical and Political Background to the Erosion of the Rule of Law and Human Rights During Sri Lanka’s Civil War and the Way Forward

The Sri Lankan Civil War (1983–2009) is regarded as a violent reflection of deepening divides along political and ethnic lines. During this civil war the Sri Lankan Government and its security forces have been implicated in unlawful killings carried out in a pervasive manner against civilians, whilst at the same time specifically targeting ethnic Tamils, humanitarian workers and journalists. The human rights of all citizens suffered as a result and ultimately led to the weakening of the rule of law. With the end of the civil war, the Sri Lankan Government has made little progress in providing accountability for wartime abuses. Its absence of and reluctance to ensure justice is seen as a logical culmination of decades of impunity. The importance of acknowledging historical behaviour and taking accountability for past violations will be discussed. In an analysis for paving the way to a new democracy in Sri Lanka, the main outcomes of this article are calls for accountability arising out of the government’s actions during the war; an investigation into the present state of human rights, the rule of law and finally; an examination into the political solution going forward to ensure a process of reconciliation and peaceful co-existence.     

The Political Economy and Complex Interdependency of the War System in Syria

Duration of civil wars has been an elusive area of study particularly because of the tedious task of disentangling the interplay of actors’ agencies, incentives' structures and constraints. This article tackles Syria’s civil war that has completed its fifth year with little hope for an end any time soon. I examine a plausible cause leading to its protraction. Namely the formation of a war system, which made the costs of war less than the expected risks of peace giving the local, regional and international actors that are shouldering the costs. The war system approach combines class analysis with system-structural analysis capturing nuances and dynamics of conflict. This article is based in part based on primary sources collected by author in the Summers of 2014 and 2015 in Lebanon.     

Ethnicity,class, and civil war: the role of hierarchy,segmentation, and cross-cutting cleavages

Why are some countries prone to ethno-nationalist conflict, whereas others are plagued by class conflict? This is a question that has seldom been raised and rarely been examined empirically. This paper presents a social-structural theory to account for the variable incidence of these two forms of political instability. These two types of conflict result from distinct principles of group solidarity – ethnicity and class – and since each individual is simultaneously a member of an ethnic group (or many such groups) and a particular class, these two principles vary in the degree to which they are mutually exclusive or cross-cutting. The degree of economic stratification between groups and economic segmentation within them shapes the relative salience of each principle of group solidarity in any society and is associated with a characteristic form of political mobilization. In places where between-group inequalities are high, and within-group inequalities low, ethnicity should be the dominant principle of group solidarity and serve as the primary basis of group conflict. By contrast, in countries where between-group inequalities are low, and within-group inequalities high, class is more likely to serve as the dominant principle of group solidarity, and conflicts along class lines are more likely. We test these conjectures with data in over 100 countries on cross-cutting cleavages, ethnic war, and class conflict. The results are supportive of the theory, and provide evidence that how groups are stratified and segmented in societies shapes the type of civil war.     

TERRORIST THREATS AND TRANSITIONAL DYNAMICS IN AN OVERLAPPING GENERATIONS MODEL

Previous research has shown that the duration of a civil war is in part a function of how it ends: in government victory, rebel victory, or negotiated settlement. We present a model of how protagonists in a civil war choose to stop fighting. Hypotheses derived from this theory relate the duration of a civil war to its outcome as well as characteristics of the civil war and the civil war nation. Findings from a competing risk model reveal that the effects of predictors on duration vary according to whether the conflict ended in government victory, rebel victory, or negotiated settlement.     

Country survey VIII: Federal republic of Yugoslavia

This survey article focuses on defence economics issues and provides data and analysis on the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia's (FRY) defence policy, defence spending, the size of its armed forces, its defence industries and the cost of the civil war. The main section is devoted to the period from 1990 to the present and deals with the following aspects: the situation after the break‐up of the former Yugoslavia, general economic data; the cost of the civil war, the defence budget; the armed forces; the manufacture of armaments and the structure of the defence industry.     

The FARC’s militaristic blueprint

This article intends to explain the outstanding sequence of success and failure exhibited by the FARC, the main Colombian guerrilla since the 1980s. It claims that such sequence is unintelligible unless the adoption by the FARC of a militaristic organizational blueprint at its 1982 7^th Conference is taken into account. By building itself like an army, the FARC could boost its combat capacity, maintain its structural integrity, and develop powerful mechanisms that held the whole structure together. At the same time, the militarization of the FARC also entailed significant risks and costs like political isolation and high personnel turnover. After describing the militaristic blueprint, the article compares the FARC with other irregular forces that operated in the Colombian context – a comparison which is important to understand the specificity of the FARC trajectory, as well as the benefits and costs involved in it. The analysis highlights the critical role of organizational dimensions in the explanation of civil war outcomes, and suggests that at least for some problems organizational dynamics should be observed at a low level of granularity.     

突袭敌方指挥所兵力需求仿真

甲方以特种部队突袭乙方师(旅)指挥所的行动是未来渡海登岛作战中的重要内容,能大大加快战役进程.战前通过侦察已知对方实力,通过作战模拟的方法确定规定时间内完成任务所需派遣特种部队的规模有决定性意义.采用指数-Lanchester理论模拟作战过程,在考虑气象、士气因素对作战过程影响的基础上,以甲方在消灭乙方50%有生力量后作战结束,通过MATLAB7 0仿真工具得出在一定的作战想定条件下甲方需要投入兵力的综合战斗力指数.     

Webs of Smoke: Drugs and Small Wars

War and drugs share many characteristics – both are destructive of human life, highly profitable to some, and efforts to regulate them have failed. In fact, at various times throughout history, war and drugs have been intertwined, prolonging human suffering, bedeviling political leaders and enriching a select few. The pernicious role of drugs in organized political violence is often overlooked. Drugs have been the cause of war, the funding for military operations, used by combatants and a part of the post-war political landscape. The insidious nature of drugs is especially visible in a certain type of war – small wars – yet is virtually unexamined by scholars and decision-makers.