Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-rcrh6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-22T03:07:14.508Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Regions at Risk: Predicting Conflict Zones in African Insurgencies*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 February 2016

Sebastian Schutte
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

A method for predicting conflict zones in civil wars based on point process models is presented in this paper. Instead of testing the validity of specific theoretical conjectures about the determinants of violence in a causal framework, this paper builds on classic literature and a wide body of recent studies to predict conflict zones based on a series of geographic conditions. Using an innovative cross-validation design, the study shows that the quantitative research program on the micro-foundations of violence in civil conflict has crafted generalizable insights permitting out-of-sample predictions of conflict zones. The study region is delimited to ten countries in Sub-Saharan Africa that experienced full-blown insurgencies in the post-Cold War era.

Type
Original Articles
Information
Political Science Research and Methods , Volume 5 , Issue 3 , July 2017 , pp. 447 - 465
Copyright
© The European Political Science Association 2016 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

Sebastian Schutte, Marie Curie Fellow, Department of Politics and Management, Zukunftskolleg, University of Konstanz, 78457 Konstanz, Germany ([email protected]). The author would like to thank Rolf Turner for having saved the day twice when the author got lost in the intricacies of the spatstat package for the R programming language. Yuri Zhukov provided very helpful feedback as a discussant for this paper at the Peace Science Society Workshop “Disaggregation in Terrorism Studies,” Philadelphia, PA, October 9, 2014. Participants of the Workshop on “Early Warning and Conflict” hosted by the Peace Research Institute Oslo also provided great advice and helpful in April 2015. Finally, the author would also like to thank the EU FP7 Marie Curie Zukunftskolleg Incoming Fellowship Program (Grant No. 291784) for financial support. Replication data and code are available both on the PSRM dataverse and the author’s personal website at http://sebastianschutte.net/. To view supplementary material for this article, please visit http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/psrm.2015.84

References

Baddeley, Adrian, and Turner, Rolf. 2000. ‘Practical Maximum Pseudoliklihood for Spatial Point Patterns’. Australian and New Zealand Journal of Statistics 42(3):283–322.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baddeley, Adrian, and Turner, Rolf. 2005. ‘Spatstat: An R Package for Analyzing Spatial Point Patterns’. Journal of Statistical Software 12(6):1–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Basedau, Matthias, and Pierskalla, Jan Henryk. 2014. ‘How Ethnicity Conditions the Effect of Oil and Gas on Civil Conflict: A Spatial Analysis of Africa from 1990 to 2010’. Political Geography 38:1–11.Google Scholar
Berman, Mark, and Rolf, Turner. 1992. ‘Approximating Point Process Likelihoods with Glim’. Applied Statistics 41:31–38.Google Scholar
Bhavnani, Ravi, Miodownik, Dan, and Nart, Jonas. 2008. ‘REsCape: An Agent-Based Framework for Modeling Resources, Ethnicity, and Conflict’. Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation 11:2–7.Google Scholar
Bhavnani, Ravi, Donnay, Karsten, Miodownik, Dan, Mor, Maayan, and Helbing, Dirk. 2013. ‘Group Segregation and Urban Violence’. American Journal of Political Science 58(1):226–245.Google Scholar
Braithwaite, Alex. 2010. Conflict Hotspots: Emergence, Causes, and Consequences . Surrey: Ashgate.Google Scholar
Braithwaite, Alex, and Johnson, Shane D.. 2012. ‘Space-Time Modeling of Insurgency and Counterinsurgency in Iraq’. Journal of Quantitative Criminology 28(1):31–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Broxton, P. D., Zeng, X., Scheftic, W., and Troch, P. A.. 2014. ‘A Modis-Based Global 1-km Maximum Green Vegetation Fraction Dataset’. Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology 53(8):1996–2004.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Buhaug, Halvard. 2010. ‘Dude, Where’s My Conflict? LSG, Relative Strength, and the Location of Civil War’. Conflict Management and Peace Science 27(2):107–128.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Buhaug, Halvard, and Rød, Jan-Ketil. 2006. ‘Local Determinants of African Civil Wars, 1970–2001’. Political Geography 25:315–335.Google Scholar
Buhaug, Halvard, Gleditsch, Kristian Skrede, Holtermann, Helge, Østby, Gudrun, and Tollefsen, Andreas Forø. 2011. ‘It’s the Local Economy, Stupid! Geographic Wealth Dispersion and Conflict Outbreak Location’. Journal of Conflict Resolution 55(5):814–840.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Buhaug, Halvard, and Gates, Scott. 2002. ‘The Geography of Civil War’. Journal of Peace Research 39:417–433.Google Scholar
Buhaug, Halvard, Gates, Scott, and Lujala, Päivi. 2009. ‘Geography, Rebel Capacity, and the Duration of Civil Conflict’. Journal of Conflict Resolution 53(4):544–569.Google Scholar
Butcher, Charles. 2014. ‘‘Capital Punishment’: Bargaining and the Geography of Civil War’. Journal of Peace Research 52(2):171–186.Google Scholar
CIA. 2009. ‘Guide to the Analysis of Insurgency’. Available at http://www.fas.org/irp/cia/product/insurgency.pdf, accessed 17 November 2015.Google Scholar
CIESIN. 2005. Gridded Population of the World, version 3 (GPWv3). Columbia University; and Centro Internacional de Agricultura Tropical (CIAT). 2005. Gridded Population of the World version 3 (GPWv3): Population Grids. Palisades, NY: Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC), Columbia University. Available at http://sedac.ciesin.columbia.edu/gpw.Google Scholar
Crawford, Oliver. 1958. The Door Marked Malaya. London: Rupert Hart-Davis.Google Scholar
Cressie, Noel. 1993. Statistics for Spatial Data. Sussex: Wiley.Google Scholar
DeRouen, Karl, and Heo, Uk. 2007. Civil Wars of the World: Major Conflicts since World War II. Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO.Google Scholar
Diggle, Peter J. 1985. ‘A Kernel Method for Smoothing Point Process Data’. Applied Statistics 34:138–147.Google Scholar
Fearon, James D., and Laitin, David D.. 2003. ‘Ethnicity, Insurgency and Civil War’. American Political Science Review 97(1):75–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fjelde, Hanne, and Hultman, Lisa. 2013. ‘Weakening the Enemy: A Disaggregated Study of Violence Against Civilians in Africa’. Journal of Conflict Resolution 58(7):1230–1257.Google Scholar
Galula, David. 1964. Counterinsurgency Warfare: Theory and Practice. Santa Barbara: Praeger Security International.Google Scholar
Gilmore, E., Gleditsch, N. P., Lujala, P., and Rød, J. K.. 2005. ‘Conflict Diamonds: A New Dataset’. Conflict Management and Peace Science 22(3):257–292.Google Scholar
Gleditsch, Kristian Skrede, and Ward, Michael. 2012. ‘Forecasting is Difficult, Especially About the Future: Using Contentious Issues to Forecast Interstate Disputes’. Journal of Peace Research 50(1):17–31.Google Scholar
Goldstone, J. A., Bates, R. H., Epstein, D. L., Gurr, T. R., Lustik, M. B., Marshall, M. G., Ulfelder, J., and Woodward, M.. 2010. ‘A Global Model for Forecasting Political Instability’. American Journal of Political Science 54(1):190–208.Google Scholar
Guevara, Ernesto. 1961. Guerrilla Warfare Authorized ed. Melbourne: Ocean Press.Google Scholar
Hallberg, Johann Dittrich. 2012. ‘Prio Conflict Site 1989-2008: A Geo-Referenced Dataset on Armed Conflict’. Conflict Management and Peace Science 29(2):219–232.Google Scholar
Hegre, Håvard, Østby, Gudrun, and Raleigh, Clionadh. 2009. ‘Poverty and Civil War Events: A Disaggregated Study of Liberia’. Journal of Conflict Resolution 53(4):598–623.Google Scholar
Herbst, Jeffrey. 2000. States and Power in Africa-Comparative Lessons in Authority and Control. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Herbst, Jeffrey. 2004. ‘African Militaries and Rebellion: The Political Economy of Thread and Combat Effectiveness’. Journal of Peace Research 41(3):357–369.Google Scholar
Kalyvas, Stathis. 2005. ‘Warfare in Civil Wars’. In Isabelle Duyvesteyn and Jan Angstrom (eds), Rethinking the Nature of War, 88–108. Frank Cass: Abingdon.Google Scholar
Kalyvas, Stathis. 2006. The Logic of Violence in Civil Wars. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Kalyvas, Stathis, and Balcells, Laia. 2010. ‘International System and Technology of Rebellion: How the End of the Cold War Shaped Internal Conflict’. American Political Science Review 104(3):415–429.Google Scholar
Kocher, Matthew A., Pepinsky, Thomas B., and Kalyvas, Stathis. 2011. ‘Aerial Bombing and Counterinsurgency in the Vietnam War’. American Journal of Political Science 55(2):201–218.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lyall, Jason. 2009. ‘Does Indiscriminate Violence Incite Insurgent Attacks? Evidence from Chechnya’. Journal of Conflict Resolution 53(3):331–362.Google Scholar
Lyall, Jason, and Wilson, Isaiah. 2009. ‘Rage Against the Machines: Explaining Outcomes in Counterinsurgency Wars’. International Organization 63(1):67–106.Google Scholar
Mao, Tse-tung. [1938] 1967. On Protracted War. Beijing: Foreign Language Press.Google Scholar
McColl, Robert W. 1969. ‘The Insurgent State: Territorial Bases of Revolution’. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 59(4):613–631.Google Scholar
McGovern, Mike. 2011. Making War in Côte d’Ivoire. Chicago: Chicago University Press.Google Scholar
Mitchell, Tom M. 1997. Machine Learning. New York: McGraw-Hill International Editions.Google Scholar
Nelson, Andrew. 2008. ‘Estimated Travel Time to the Nearest City of 50000 or More People in Year 2000’. Available at http://bioval.jrc.ec.europa.eu/products/gam/.Google Scholar
Nordhaus, William D. 2006. ‘Geography and Macroeconomics: New Data and New Findings’. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 103(10):3510–3517.Google Scholar
O’Loughlin, John, and Witmer, Frank. 2010. ‘The Localized Geographies of Violence in the North Caucasus of Russia, 1999–2007’. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 100(3):2379–2396.Google Scholar
Pierskalla, Jan H., and Hollenbach, Florian M.. 2013. ‘Technology and Collective Action: The Effect of Cell Phone Coverage on Political Violence in Africa’. American Political Science Review 107(2):207–224.Google Scholar
Prunier, Gerard. 2009. Africa’s World War. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Raleigh, Clionadh, and Hegre, Håvard. 2005. Introducing ACLED: An Armed Conflict Location and Event Dataset.Google Scholar
Raleigh, Clionadh, and Hegre, Håvard. 2009. ‘Population Size, Concentration, and Civil War. A Geographically Disaggregated Analysis’. Political Geography 28(4):224–238.Google Scholar
Rustad, Siri Camilla Aas, Buhaug, Halvard, Falch, Ashild, and Gates, Scott. 2011. ‘All Conflict is Local: Modeling Sub-National Variation in Civil Conflict Risk’. Conflict Management and Peace Science 28(1):15–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Salehyan, Idean. 2009. Rebels Without Borders. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Salehyan, I., and Gleditsch, K. S.. 2006. ‘Refugees and the Spread of Civil War’. International Organization 60(2):335–366.Google Scholar
Schrodt, Philip A. 2014. ‘Seven Deadly Sins of Contemporary Quantitative Political Analysis’. Journal of Peace Research 51(2):287–300.Google Scholar
Schutte, S., and Donnay, K.. 2014. ‘Matched Wake Analysis: Finding Causal Relationships in Spatiotemporal Event Data’. Political Geography 41:1–10.Google Scholar
Schutte, Sebastian, and Weidmann, Nils B.. 2011. ‘Diffusion Patterns of Violence in Civil War’. Political Geography 30(3):143–152.Google Scholar
Scott, James C. 2009. The Art of Not Being Governed. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Sheehan, Neil. 1988. A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and the USA in Vietnam. London: Jonathan Cape.Google Scholar
Sundberg, Ralph, Lindgren, Mathilda, and Padskocimaite, Ausra. 2011. UCDP GED Codebook version 1.5-2011. Available at http://www.ucdp.uu.se/ged/data.php.Google Scholar
Toellefsen, Andreas, Strand, Håvard, and Buhaug, Halvard. 2012. ‘Prio-Grid: A Unified Spatial Data Structure’. Journal of Peace Research 49(2):363–374.Google Scholar
Vorrath, Judith. 2010. ‘Democratization as Integration: Exile, Return and Changing Conflict Lines in Burundi’s Democratic Post-War Transition’. PhD Thesis, ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland. Available at http://ecollection. library.ethz.ch/view/eth:2179.Google Scholar
Ward, Michael D., Greenhill, Brian D., and Bakke, Kristin. 2010. ‘The Perils of Policy by p-Value: Predicting Civil Conflicts’. Journal of Peace Research 47(4):1–13.Google Scholar
Ward, Michael D., Metternich, Nils W., Dorff, Cassy L., Gallop, Max, Hollenbach, Florian M., Schultz, Anna, and Weschle, Simon. 2013. ‘Learning from the Past and Stepping into the Future: Toward a New Generation of Conflict Prediction’. International Studies Review 15(4):473–490.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weidmann, Nils B., Kuse, Doreen, and Gleditsch, Kristian Skrede. 2010. ‘The Geography of the International System: The CShapes Dataset’. International Interactions 36(1):86–106.Google Scholar
Weidmann, Nils B., and Salehyan, Idean. 2013. ‘Violence and Ethnic Segregation: A Computational Model Applied to Baghdad’. International Studies Quarterly 57(1):52–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weidmann, Nils B., and Ward, Michael. 2010. ‘Predicting Conflict in Space and Time’. Journal of Conflict Resolution 54(6):883–901.Google Scholar
Zammit-Mangion, Andrew, Dewar, Michael, Kadirkamanathan, Visakan, and Sanguinetti, Guido. 2012. ‘Point Process Modelling of the Afghan War Diary’. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 109(31):12414–12419.Google Scholar
Zhukov, Yuri M. 2012. ‘Roads and the Diffusion of Insurgent Violence: The Logistics of Conflict in Russia’s North Caucasus’. Political Geography 31:144–156.Google Scholar
Supplementary material: PDF

Schutte supplementary material

Schutte supplementary material 1

Download Schutte supplementary material(PDF)
PDF 551 KB