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Understanding the dynamics of identity-based conflict remains a central challenge of contemporary peace research.

Insurgency and counterinsurgency are widely described as "population-centric warfare": a competition between military actors over civilian loyalties. Drawing on a high-resolution conflict event data set and a new approach for analyzing reactive behavior in space and time, this article answers the question of how civilian cooperation and defection are systematically driven by incumbent and insurgent violence. Theoretically, the study contributes to resolving a dispute between proponents of deterrence- and alienation-based approaches to population-centric warfare. Empirically, this analysis improves upon the mixed results from previous microstudies in favor of an integrated picture: indiscriminate violence has almost no effect on collaboration with the adversary in its immediate spatiotemporal vicinity. At larger levels of aggregation, however, a clear reactive pattern of collaboration with the adversary becomes visible which is in line with alienation-based reasoning.

What determines the type of violence used by military actors in civil wars? Drawing on Kalyvas's "information problem" and Boulding's "loss of strength gradient", this paper proposes a simple model of how the violence becomes more indiscriminate as a function of distance from the actors' power centers. The proposed mechanism is a growing inability of the actors to distinguish between collaborators of the adversary and innocent bystanders. Tested on the conflict event level for 11 cases of insurgency, the results indicate that a simple distance-decay mechanism can explain the occurrence of indiscriminate violence to a large extent.

A method for predicting conflict zones in civil wars based on point process models is presented in this paper. Instead of testing the validity of specific theoretical conjectures about the determinants of violence in a causal framework, this paper builds on classic literature and a wide body of recent studies to predict conflict zones based on a series of geographic conditions. Using an innovative cross-validation design, the study shows that the quantitative research program on the micro-foundations of violence in civil conflict has crafted generalizable insights permitting out-of-sample predictions of conflict zones. The study region is delimited to ten countries in Sub-Saharan Africa that experienced full-blown insurgencies in the post-Cold War era.

Insurgency and counterinsurgency are widely described as "population-centric warfare": a competition between military actors over civilian loyalties. Drawing on a high-resolution conflict event data set and a new approach for analyzing reactive behavior in space and time, this article answers the question of how civilian cooperation and defection are systematically driven by incumbent and insurgent violence. Theoretically, the study contributes to resolving a dispute between proponents of deterrence- and alienation-based approaches to population-centric warfare. Empirically, this analysis improves upon the mixed results from previous microstudies in favor of an integrated picture: indiscriminate violence has almost no effect on collaboration with the adversary in its immediate spatiotemporal vicinity. At larger levels of aggregation, however, a clear reactive pattern of collaboration with the adversary becomes visible which is in line with alienation-based reasoning.

What determines the type of violence used by military actors in civil wars? Drawing on Kalyvas's "information problem" and Boulding's "loss of strength gradient", this paper proposes a simple model of how the violence becomes more indiscriminate as a function of distance from the actors' power centers. The proposed mechanism is a growing inability of the actors to distinguish between collaborators of the adversary and innocent bystanders. Tested on the conflict event level for 11 cases of insurgency, the results indicate that a simple distance-decay mechanism can explain the occurrence of indiscriminate violence to a large extent.

This study introduces a theoretical model of how insurgency develops as a function of reactive mobilization. The theory extends a classic distance-decay model by incorporating Kalyvas' typology of violence. It implies that geographic conditions crucially determine the accuracy of applied violence and thereby its public perception, which in turn determines the actors' ability to mobilize. As a first test of these effects, I propose a new geographic indicator that expresses the spatial accessibility of a country's population for both central governments and peripheral insurgent movements. Two empirical implications of the theory are tested with a large- N data set on outcomes and casualties in insurgencies. The new indicator is significantly associated with both military outcomes and the number of casualties in insurgencies since 1970 and strengthens statistical predictions.

AbstractThis brief article argues for a narrow definition of cyberwar and a technology-centric approach to understanding its strategic implications. Based on a review of the underlying technologies, approaches to facilitating peace in this rather new form of confrontation will be derived. This brief discussion already shows that Cold War era strategies such as credible deterrence through retaliation are ill-suited to serve peace in the digital domain. Generally, building offensive capabilities for cyberwar does not increase an actor's security. Instead, geographically unrestricted security communities (Deutsch et al., 1957) of nationstates that employ similar technologies seem to serve individual security best.

Can developmental aid bring peace to war-torn communities? The current literature is divided on this issue. One line of reasoning suggests that aid is likely to decrease violence by improving employment and prosperity, thereby making participation in conflict more costly. Another view cites evidence showing an association between aid projects and increased insurgent activity. Addressing this contradiction, we argue that different types of aid projects lead to different outcomes, as some projects foster an unequal distribution of benefits within communities. Our reasoning draws on qualitative accounts from conflict zones, recent research on how grievances associated with exclusion can foster civil war onset, and experimental findings regarding perceived inequity and punishment. Building on this scholarship, we use a recently developed event-matching methodology to offer insight from contemporary Afghanistan. Aid projects that tend to exclude portions of the community yield more insurgent activity in their wake than more inclusive projects. These results shed light on why some aid projects reduce violence while others do not, emphasizing that efforts to 'win hearts and minds' can be a source of both contentment and contestation.