Battle Diffusion Matters: Examining the Impact of Microdynamics of Fighting on Conflict Termination

Gaku Ito and Kaisa Hinkkainen Elliott

Journal of Conflict Resolution, 2020, vol. 64, issue 5, 871-902

Abstract: How does diffusion of civil war battles influence conflict termination? Recent advances in civil war literature have found that battle dynamics shape conflict termination by affecting the intra-conflict bargaining between disputants. This article extends the theoretical perspective and argues that how battles diffuse matters in determining conflict termination. While battlefield dynamics should in principle reveal previously unavailable private information, the relevance of information-revealing effect depends on the diffusion patterns of battles. The persistent, and possibly battle-exacerbated, commitment problem can also alter the prospects of conflict termination. We test the argument by distinguishing two distinct diffusion patterns of battles: distant and proximate. The empirical results reveal that distant diffusion, but not proximate diffusion, of battles makes civil conflicts less likely to terminate. The analysis also demonstrates that incorporating diffusion dynamics significantly improves our ability to predict conflict termination.

Keywords: civil wars; conflict resolution; event data; internal armed conflict; negotiation; spatial analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0022002719885428 (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:jocore:v:64:y:2020:i:5:p:871-902

DOI: 10.1177/0022002719885428

Access Statistics for this article

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