Conflict Dynamics and Feedback: Explaining Change in Violence against Civilians within Conflicts

Clionadh Raleigh and Hyun Jin Choi

International Interactions, 2017, vol. 43, issue 5, 848-878

Abstract: Conflicts are complex, dynamic processes wherein the frequency and intensity of violence changes throughout the contest. In this article, we explore the temporal dynamics of two long-term civil wars—DR-Congo and Sudan—to identify systematic and random conditions that lead to changes in civilian targeting. Violence committed by rival political actors, territorial exchange, and the number and addition of violent agents strongly shape the likelihood that civilian targeting events and casualties increase or decrease over time. General and country differences emerge from vector autoregression analysis to suggest that (1) three types of violent agents—rebels, militias, and the government—are locked in spirals of violence where violence against civilians by one actor leads to subsequent violence by another actor; (2) rebels and government forces respond to the other side’s acquisition of contested territory by increasing counterattacks on civilians, specifically in DR-Congo; and (3) increasing numbers of active nonstate agents lead to higher violence rates in the following months. Among these, civilian targeting by rival actors triggers the most follow-on violent events against civilians.

Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/03050629.2017.1235271 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:ginixx:v:43:y:2017:i:5:p:848-878

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/GINI20

DOI: 10.1080/03050629.2017.1235271

Access Statistics for this article

International Interactions is currently edited by Michael Colaresi and Gerald Schneider

More articles in International Interactions from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().