Elsevier

Social Science Research

Volume 38, Issue 4, December 2009, Pages 921-933
Social Science Research

A global risk assessment model for civil wars

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssresearch.2009.06.007Get rights and content

Abstract

In this study, we construct a multivariate model that assesses the risk of an outbreak of civil war in a country over a period of 5 years into the future. In addition to structural factors of state weakness, which have dominated the literature on civil war onset, this model includes repression of basic human rights to personal integrity – an important harbinger of wars to come – as an aspect of state behavior. Our aim is not to explore the causal factors of civil war onset, but to build a model that includes indicators that correlate with civil war outbreak and may be used to predict it. Based on two versions of the model – logit and neural network – out-of-sample risk assessments for three different time periods are generated and compared to the historical record of civil war outbreak during those years. In addition, the model’s ability to produce in-sample risk assessments over a 5-year period is tested. Finally, we compute truly predictive civil war risk assessments for all countries for which data are available, for the years 2008–2012. The analyses show that with a relatively simple model and based on publicly available data sources, meaningful civil war risk assessments can be computed. The quality of the predictions exceeds that of prominent studies, in which the risk of interstate war is assessed.

Introduction

In recent years, much emphasis in academic research and international politics has been put on bringing civil wars to an end, and keeping and building the peace in volatile post-conflict situations. One of the main reasons for post-conflict intervention is the prevention of further violent conflict. At least partly due to an increase in international conflict management efforts to prevent civil wars, their number worldwide has substantially decreased from a peak in the early 1990s (Human Security Centre, 2005, Human Security Centre, 2006). To allocate scarce resources efficiently, target countries for preventive interventions need to be selected prudently. While potential supporters of a preventive intervention will also take their own interests into account (Bercovitch and Schneider, 2000, Gilligan and Stedman, 2003, Greig, 2005, Greig and Rost, 2005), the main criterion should be the level of risk a country faces for experiencing a civil war in the near future.

In this study, we assess the expected risk countries face to see a civil war erupt within the next 5 years. These risk assessments are generated from multivariate models that are based on theoretical and practical considerations about the factors that correlate with or precede civil war onset. Our aim is thus not further to examine the causes of civil war outbreak in addition to the empirical studies that already explore these causes (e.g., Fearon and Laitin, 2003, Collier and Hoeffler, 2004, Sambanis, 2004, Hegre and Sambanis, 2006). While this study is only a first step towards constructing a comprehensive early warning scheme, practical international conflict management would greatly benefit from such a model, providing policy makers with methodological guidance on how to allocate scarce resources.

After discussing the relevant literature on risk assessment, early warning and civil war, and laying out theoretical expectations about factors that likely are linked to or precede civil war onset, we construct logit and, for comparison, neural network models that take these factors into account. To generate in-sample predictions, we calculate the predicted probability of civil war onset over the next 5 years for each country-year (our unit of analysis). In addition to analyzing the quality of our models with ROC-curves, the highest predicted probabilities are compared to the actual occurrence of war onset. Next, we simulate a situation of genuine risk assessments by restricting the model and data to generate out-of-sample assessments for three test periods (2003–2007, 1998–2002, and 1993–1997). Again, we compare the predicted probabilities to the historical record of civil wars that broke out during each of these 5-year periods and analyze the predictive quality of the models. Finally, we capture the situation as of 2007 (the last year with fully available data) to generate risk assessments for 2008–2012. The current political and security situation in the highest-risk countries is briefly described, as well as observers’ perceptions of the risk that these countries slide into violent conflict. In the conclusion, we discuss strengths and limitations of the presented approach with a view to further improve and extend it in the future.

Section snippets

Early warning and risk assessment, civil war and human rights violations

Early warning and risk assessment models have been constructed and tested for a number of humanitarian catastrophes, using a variety of methods and data types. One can broadly distinguish between models based on qualitative and quantitative data (or those that combine the two), and, among the quantitative models, between those using events-data and those using standards-based data. Along with the methods used, different objectives have been pursued: Whereas qualitative and events-data models,

Building a global risk assessment model for civil war

In this section, we describe a series of steps towards generating global risk assessments for civil war onset, producing forecasts for civil war risk up to the year 2012. Our goal is to explore the possibility of applying social science research to inform practical conflict management. While we do not aim to test causal theory and although there are important differences between theory testing and forecasting, out-of-sample predictions, as several authors have argued, can also be used as a test

In-sample risk assessments

In a first step, based on Model 1a in Table 1, we produce in-sample risk assessments, compare them to the historical record, and analyze their predictive quality. Some of the results of Model 1a are in line with existing research on the onset of civil war, but there are also some surprisingly diverging findings, as well as some new ones. The risk of civil war onset decreases with a higher level of economic development. This is one of the most robust findings in the civil war literature (

Conclusion

There are today a number of early warning and risk assessment models, to warn of various potential humanitarian catastrophes, including drought, tsunamis and political instability. Yet, Kofi Annan, a former UN Secretary General, in a report on conflict prevention, found that the UN had made “no significant progress” in strengthening capacities for early warning, information collection and analysis and that it lacked the “capability to analyze and integrate data from different parts of the

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    The views expressed in this paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the United Nations or OCHA. Earlier versions of this study were presented at a convention of the International Relations section of the German Political Science Association, Darmstadt, Germany, 13–14 July 2007; the Annual Conference of the German Peace Psychology Association, Konstanz, Germany, 15–17 June 2007; and the Polarization & Conflict meeting, Gaillac, France, 7–9 June 2007. We are grateful for the suggestions we have received at these conferences as well as the comments from two anonymous reviewers. We thank Thorsten Meinl for his invaluable help with calculating the neural network models in this study.

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