Halvard Buhaug

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The Origin of Conflict Clusters Contagion or
Bad Neighborhoods?

• Halvard Buhaug
• Kristian Skrede Gleditsch

CSCW WG3 meeting 21 Sept. 2006
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Conflicts seem to cluster in space, but why?
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Is it because other factors are similarly
arranged?
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or is it also because conflicts are contagious?

• Armed conflict has been likened to infectious
  disease ? the risk of contagion is proportional
  to the opportunities for interaction
• Interaction is above all a function of geographic
  distance
• Possible mechanisms of contagion, such as arms
  trade, smuggling, refugee flows, and ethnic
  linkages, are mediated by distance

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Does the type of conflict matter?

• Some studies suggest that different types of
  conflict are shaped partly by different factors
  and also display different dynamics
• Separatist conflicts should be particularly
  contagious as they more often involve minority
  groups with ethnic kin abroad and as they tend to
  occur in the rural periphery, close to neighbor
  states
• Governmental conflicts are often ideologically
  motivated revolts, employing universalistic
  principles that do not decay over distance

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Research design

• Dependent variables onset of intrastate conflict
  (Uppsala/PRIO)
• All conflicts, territorial conflicts,
  governmental conflicts
• Neighboring conflict
• Dummy variables a weighted average of global
  conflict incidence
• Opportunities for cross-border contagion
• Boundary length
• Distance to neighboring conflict zone
• Dummy for conflict at the border
• Two samples
• Annual observations of all countries, 19502001
• Annual observations of all countries with
  neighboring conflict, 19502001

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Onset of conflict, all countries
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Onset of conflict, conflict neighbors only
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What have we learned?

• Characteristics of the neighborhood matter, but
  only until we control for similar attributes of
  the country of observation
• The neighborhood effect of conflict persists, but
  main distinction runs between the haves and the
  have-nots
• Measures of interaction opportunities do not
  explain the direction of contagion
• Separatist conflicts are significantly more
  contagious, suggesting that transnational ethnic
  ties are an important mechanism of diffusion