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.