Replication data for: D.M. Gibler and S.V. Miller. External Threats, State Capacity, and Civil War. Journal of Peace Research. 51(September): 634-646. 2014.

We argue that the regional threat environment a state faces plays a consequential role in its political development and the likelihood of experiencing future intrastate wars. Challenges to a state’s territorial integrity lead governments to increase their military personnel, and the resources that support these increases most often come willingly from a public that seeks security. Territorial threats are unlike other types of threats because they challenge individual lives and livelihoods, which both connects the average citizen with the state and allows for easier government extraction of necessary resources. Thus, external territorial threats increase state capacity by unifying the state and by increasing the repressive power of the central government. We identify territorial threats as both latent and realized claims against state territories and find that the presence of an external threat to territory leads to an increase in the capacity of central governments to connect and extract from its citizens, as well as the capacity to repress potential regime dissidents. We also find that the presence of a claim against a state’s territory from a neighbor corresponds with a substantial decrease in the likelihood of intrastate conflict at both high and low levels of intensity. The effect of territorial threat is observed even in the short term after a territorial threat has been resolved. Our tests, using standard models of state capacity and insurgency models of conflict on a sample of all states from 1946 to 2007, are robust to multiple model specifications.

本文认为，一国所面临的周边威胁环境，对其政治发展以及未来遭遇国内武装冲突（intrastate war）的可能性具有显著影响。对一国领土完整的挑战，会促使该国政府扩充军事人员规模，而支撑这类扩军所需的资源，往往来自寻求安全保障的民众的自愿支持。领土威胁与其他类型威胁有所不同，因其直接威胁民众的个体生命与生计，这一方面能拉近普通公民与国家的联结，另一方面也便于政府汲取必要资源。因此，外部领土威胁通过凝聚国家共识、强化中央政府的压制能力，从而提升国家能力（state capacity）。本文将领土威胁界定为针对一国领土的潜在主张与既存主张，并发现：外部领土威胁的存在，会促使中央政府提升与民众联结、汲取民众资源的能力，同时强化其镇压潜在政权异见者的能力；此外还发现，若一国领土遭到邻国的主权主张，那么无论冲突强度高低，该国发生国内武装冲突的概率都会大幅降低。即便在领土威胁解除后的短期内，这类威胁的影响依然存在。本文基于1946年至2007年全球所有国家的样本，运用标准国家能力模型与冲突叛乱模型开展检验，结果在多种模型设定下均保持稳健。