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

While many studies have suggested 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 the Euclidean distance. These distances 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 sequences preceding peace exhibit highly similar event count structures while those preceding onset vary considerably from periods preceding peace and from each other. These findings empirically suggest that generalizable patterns do not exist between event sequences that precede conflict occurring throughout time and space.

尽管诸多研究指出，国家内部冲突爆发前的时段在不同时空维度下具有相似性，但鲜有研究对这一命题开展实证检验。本研究采用1998-2010年亚洲地区综合危机预警系统（Integrated Crisis Early Warning System）的国内事件数据，对上述命题展开实证分析。本研究通过欧氏距离（Euclidean distance），对国家内部冲突爆发前的政府-反叛团体互动序列与后续和平时期的互动序列之间的相似性进行编码。随后将上述距离作为预测因子纳入双变量逻辑回归模型，以此预测相关国家既不发生、仅单一国家发生，抑或两国均发生内部冲突的可能性。研究结果显示，和平时期前的互动序列呈现出高度相似的事件计数结构；而冲突爆发前的互动序列，不仅与和平时期前的序列存在显著差异，且彼此之间也大相径庭。上述研究结果从实证层面表明，在不同时空下发生的内部冲突前的事件序列之间，并不存在可推广的共性模式。