The relationship between domestic and international conflict serves as the primary focus of this article. A research approach is used that is different from that found in most previous studies. We use the international system as the unit of analysis and employ a dynamic time series research orientation. We suggest and present empirical evidence supporting the idea that the change in magnitude of domestic conflict and the change in magnitude of international conflict are intimately related in a behavioral pattern that we call the global conflict process.
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.
The most prominent form of violent conflict in the world today occurs within states rather than between them. Since 1945, over 75 percent of militarized disputes have been civil conflicts. From the African continent to the Balkans, civil wars have raged and self-determination movements have mobilized for collective violence. Conflict over identity has emerged as a central problem for nations and the internal community as nationalist groups battle the state and each other in places like Iraq and Sudan. The comparative decline of conventional interstate war casts a spotlight on the myriad of conflicts involving nonstate actors, be they in conflict with each other or with existing states. We define a nonstate actor as an organized political actor not directly connected to the state but pursing aims that affect vital state interests. The dominant approach to analysis of conflicts involving nonstate actors views them, like interstate conflicts, as the outcome of bargaining between antagonists (Fearon 1995; for review, see Walter 2009). This bargaining framework entails identifying key players -- typically just two -- and specifying their preferences, the limits of their capabilities and resolve, and the information they have about each other. Given such information, analysts derive predictions about when their strategic interaction will result in conflict, as well as the characteristics of that conflict. Most scholars are careful to note that nonstate actors have objectives and capacities that can differ markedly from that of states. After all, the imperatives and possibilities of a collective striving to attain statehood, secede from a state, or seize control of a state are quite different from those of the duly constituted government of a state with a monopoly on violence and internationally recognized sovereignty. [Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications Inc., copyright holder.]
War is an inherently social process, from the mobilization of new, armed organizations, to the relational aftershocks of violence affecting families and local communities. This essay synthesizes existing feminist research on dynamics of conflict and peacebuilding and brings a social network approach to understanding gendered patterns of intersectional inequality. It presents a framework for understanding how civil war affects social structures vis-à-vis personal support networks, and in turn how that can constrain or enable women's and men's social and economic opportunities. Through a descriptive analysis of communities in Eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, I argue that war's social processes, and ongoing militarization in particular, can create structural constraints for people seeking to participate peacefully in civilian life, and incentivize maintaining armed group connections. Network research shines light on the social processes that reproduce gendered inequalities and cleavages after conflict. It also reveals opportunities for bridging divides and transforming wartime networks into peacetime support structures.
The dynamical behavior of domestic political hostility is modeled in terms of the interaction between hostile (challenger) and ruling (regime) groups. The conditions under which the conflict situation will either settle down in a steady state or evolve in time are derived for various forms of collective action costs. The model presented is a general framework for explaining the various outcomes of the repression/dissent nexus as special cases of the same fundamental process. We also obtain critical parameter values of discontent that bring about discontinuous jumps in the level of hostility.
