Persistence and Recurrence of Internal Armed Conflict

I wrote this thesis during my senior year of college through the honors program at Stanford's Center for International Security and Cooperation. My thesis advisor was Professor James D. Fearon. The thesis explores the reasons why some internal conflicts last so long and why they tend to keep coming back.

Abstract

This thesis analyzes factors that affect the duration and relapse of internal armed conflicts. I use a data set containing 173 conflicts that occurred worldwide between 1946 and 2008. I find that ethnically diverse, poor, and populous countries are prone to persistent and recurrent internal conflict. I find that decisive victories tend to be more stable than agreements, which in turn are more stable than conflicts that end due to low activity. My research indicates that peacekeepers are highly effective in reducing the chances that a conflict will relapse. Through a set of case studies focused on recurrence, I determine that countries with a large plurality ethnic group and several smaller groups are prone to recurrent conflict. In a second set of case studies, I argue that exogenous support for rebel organizations is crucial to sustaining many persistent conflicts. I stress that negotiators and policymakers must be acutely aware of the risks of recurrence when mediating internal conflicts. I recommend the deployment of peacekeepers to enforce agreements and the inclusion of ethnic minorities in government, especially in situations at high risk of relapse. Finally, I argue that isolating and neutralizing exogenous support for rebels is critical to ending persistent conflicts.

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Download Full Text (PDF)

Dowload the full text of Persistence and Recurrence of Internal Armed Conflict. This document contains the entire theis, including all figures, tables, and references (127 pages, 1.3MB).

Data

All the data from my thesis are available in several formats for replication and use in other projects. You may download and use my data in any project as long as attribution is included.

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Download Entire Data Set (XLSX)

This file includes the entire data set in a single Excel document. Each worksheet contains information at a different level of analysis, such as years, countries, conflicts, etc. (311KB).

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Download Data by Level of Analsysis (CSV)

Here you can download individual CSV documents for easy import into Stata or R. Each document contains information one of the levels of analysis available in the full data set XLS document above.

CSV Files

  • Conflict-Year Data: Each row in this file is a conflict-year, so there is one row for each year of every conflict (121KB).
  • Episode Data: This file aggregates the country-year data into continuous episodes of the same conflict (23KB).
  • Conflict Data: Each row in this file aggregates the conflict-year data into conflicts (32KB).
  • Country Data: This file aggregates the conflict-year data by country, regardless of conflict (44KB).

Citation

Cassman, Daniel R. Persistence and Recurrence of Internal Armed Conflict. Honors Thesis. Stanford: Center for International Security and Cooperation, May 18, 2010.