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Kickoff to Conflict: A Sequence Analysis of Intra-State Conflict-Preceding Event Structures

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  • Vito D'Orazio
  • James E Yonamine

Abstract

While many studies have suggested or assumed that the periods preceding the onset of intra-state conflict are similar across time and space, few have empirically tested this proposition. Using the Integrated Crisis Early Warning System's domestic event data in Asia from 1998–2010, we subject this proposition to empirical analysis. We code the similarity of government-rebel interactions in sequences preceding the onset of intra-state conflict to those preceding further periods of peace using three different metrics: Euclidean, Levenshtein, and mutual information. These scores are then used as predictors in a bivariate logistic regression to forecast whether we are likely to observe conflict in neither, one, or both of the states. We find that our model accurately classifies cases where both sequences precede peace, but struggles to distinguish between cases in which one sequence escalates to conflict and where both sequences escalate to conflict. These findings empirically suggest that generalizable patterns exist between event sequences that precede peace.

Suggested Citation

  • Vito D'Orazio & James E Yonamine, 2015. "Kickoff to Conflict: A Sequence Analysis of Intra-State Conflict-Preceding Event Structures," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 10(5), pages 1-21, May.
  • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0122472
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0122472
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

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    2. Shannon M. Fast & Louis Kim & Emily L. Cohn & Sumiko R. Mekaru & John S. Brownstein & Natasha Markuzon, 2018. "Predicting social response to infectious disease outbreaks from internet-based news streams," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 263(1), pages 551-564, April.
    3. Juan D Botero & Weisi Guo & Guillem Mosquera & Alan Wilson & Samuel Johnson & Gicela A Aguirre-Garcia & Leonardo A Pachon, 2019. "Gang confrontation: The case of Medellin (Colombia)," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 14(12), pages 1-19, December.

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