The timing of conflict violence: Hydraulic behavior in the Ugandan civil war

Timothy Allen Carter and Daniel Jay Veale
Additional contact information
Timothy Allen Carter: Gustavus Adolphus College and Center for Peace and Conflict Studies, Wayne State University, USA
Daniel Jay Veale: Wayne State University, USA

Conflict Management and Peace Science, 2015, vol. 32, issue 4, 370-394

Abstract: Researchers generally examine how variables directly affect events in war. Some variables, however, may not simply increase or decrease conflict events but may instead displace them. In wartime, this dynamic may result from the conditional decision-making made by militaries constrained, at least partially, by time. When there is a necessary regularity to military operations, decision-making may be complicated by factors such as inclement weather, and this regularized pressure to act may produce a hydraulic relationship between inclement weather and events. In this dynamic, today’s inclement weather, such as rain, may displace today’s events. Conversely, yesterday’s rain may increase today’s, with planned events postponed. Similarly, tomorrow’s rain may also increase today’s events, with planned activities moved forward. We test this hydraulic argument with geo-referenced data from the recent Ugandan civil war and find significant evidence that conflict events are fluid in time. Inclement weather constrains and also displaces events.

Keywords: Civil war; climate; conflict violence; GIS; Uganda; weather (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0738894214559674 (text/html)

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:sae:compsc:v:32:y:2015:i:4:p:370-394

DOI: 10.1177/0738894214559674

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Conflict Management and Peace Science from Peace Science Society (International)
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().