Evaluating Conflict Dynamics

• Published date: 01 April 2018
• Author: Benjamin T. Jones,Shawna K. Metzger
• Date: 01 April 2018
• DOI: 10.1177/0022002716656448
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

Evaluating Conflict

Dynamics: A Novel

Empirical Approach to

Stage Conceptions

Benjamin T. Jones

1

and Shawna K. Metzger

2

Abstract

Interest in processes has become increasingly pronounced in international conflict

research in recent years, especially how these processes unfold across time

‘‘dynamics’’. We focus in particular on ‘‘stage conceptions’’ of dynamics: processes

that unfold over a series of sequential, and possibly recurrent, stages. We suggest

that stage conceptions have two key properties: plurisectality and conditional

covariate effects. We propose a novel econometric application to quantitatively

assess claims regarding stage conceptions of dynamics: survival modeling. Specifically,

we use multistate models to examine how a process evolves through its individual

stages, and also whether covariate effects differ across these stages. We use Huth

and Allee’s territorial dispute data to demonstrate the importance of con-

ceptualizing conflict as a dynamic process, as well as empirically modeling it as such.

We show democracy has different effects on dispute resolution, depending on the

dispute’s stage, but that these different effects disappear after time passes.

Keywords

conflict dynamics, militarized disputes, militarized interstate disputes, conflict

process, democratic peace, territorial disputes, conflict

1

Department of Political Science, University of Mississippi, Oxford, MS, USA

2

University Scholars Programme, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore

Corresponding Author:

Shawna K. Metzger, National University of Singapore, 18 College Avenue East, #02-03 Cinnamon West

Learn Lobe, Singapore 138593, Singapore.

Email: smetzger@nus.edu.sg

Journal of Conflict Resolution

2018, Vol. 62(4) 819-847

ªThe Author(s) 2016

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DOI: 10.1177/0022002716656448

journals.sagepub.com/home/jcr

Russia and Finland’s territorial dispute over the Karelia region in the aftermath of

the Winter War (1940–1941) lasted for approximately six years. After the initial

challenge, the dispute militarized for thirty-nine months before transitioning to a

dormant phase for close to two years, in which neither Russia nor Finland actively

attempted to settle the dispute. Russia and Finland then engaged in seven months of

formal negotiations, which ultimately resolved the dispute (‘‘No. 74 Finland-USSR

Boundary,’’ 1967). The dispute’s overall duration of six years obscures its evolution

over time, and how resolution occurred only after transitions between periods of

militarization, inactivity, and negotiations.

1

The Russo-Finnish dispute is far from unique. On average, territorial disputes

experience around eleven transitions between these various stages during their life-

times. We have a substantive interest in understanding how these territorial disputes

unfold (e.g., Huth and Allee 2002)—how one particular transition can parlay into

others, for example, and why some transitions are more likely to occur than others.

Put differently, we are interested in territorial disputes as a holistic process. Yet,

despite this interest, we have few empirical tools that consider all of a dispute’s

transitions within a single framework.

2

Instead, we normally focus on one or two

specific transitions in isolation—the onset of militarization, for example—and say

that this gives us some sense of how the dispute unfolds, though the picture it paints

is admittedly incomplete.

Our territorial dispute example represents a particular conception of conflict

dynamics: a process that unfolds across several stages. We call this a stage concep-

tion of dynamics. This conception has garnered increasing attention from scholars,

albeit often implicitly, but has yet to receive explicit theoretical and econometric

consideration. Conceptions of dynamics matter because they have implications for

empirical testing. Econometric models appropriate for one conception may be inap-

propriate for other conceptions, precisely because these different conceptions imply

distinct theoretical mechanisms.

A stage conception of dynamics has two key properties, at minimum, with sub-

stantive and empirical implications. What we call plurisectality is the first. We use

the word to describe processes in which many stage transition sequences eventually

terminate with the same outcome (e.g., resolution, for territorial disputes).

3

There-

fore, differences may exist in how each unit arrives at this outcome. Did the unit

experience only one transition between stages, from the starting stage directly to the

end stage? Did it experience two transitions, perhaps from the starting stage to an

intermediate stage and then to the end stage? Twelve transitions? Between which

stages did the unit transition—what is the sequence?

4

If multiple sequences do

indeed produce the same outcome, implications exist for our empirical calculations.

If, for instance, we are interested in calculating the overall probability of arriving at

the end stage, we would need to account for all the possible transition sequences into

that end stage.

Second, a stage conception of dynamics suggests that covariate effects may be

conditional. This point is often made in the context of the proport ional hazards

820 Journal of Conflict Resolution 62(4)