The Conflict Process

Abstract

This article proposes and tests a self-generative theory of conflict processes within nations. We dissect the "conflict breeds conflict" truism into three hypotheses: (1) the present extent of conflict simultaneously determines its intensity, while the present intensity of conflict determines its future extent; (2) the present extent of protest determines the present extent of rebellion and vice versa; and (3) the extent and intensity of both protest and rebellion persist over time. Our principal findings are: (1) man-days of protest is a weak positive and linear function of simultaneous man-days of rebellion and lagged man-days of protest; (2) deaths from protest is a strong curvilinear function of simultaneous man-days of protest; (3) man-days of rebellion is a weak positive and linear function of simultaneous man-days of protest and lagged man-days of rebellion, and a U-shaped function of lagged deaths from rebellion; (4) deaths from rebellion is a strong exponential function of present man-days of rebellion, and a linear and positive function of lagged deaths from protest and from rebellion. We conclude that the self-generative model provides a less-than-sufficient explanation of variations in internal conflict.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 155 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.