Project Civil Strife: Multi-actor Models of Internal Conflict and Cooperation

政府和持不同政见者何时以及为何升级和降级他们对彼此的敌意？这个项目开发了一个理论来回答这个问题，并指定了经验时间序列模型来测试理论所隐含的一些假设。具体而言，该项目提出了新的理论，重点是政府和持不同政见者的领导人，以及他们的动机对国内冲突过程中战术决策的影响。借鉴领导和政治生存的理论，行为规则推导出，导致行动者在给定的上下文条件下作出某些战术选择。其次，该理论被扩展到分析多个不同政见群体在与政府竞争中的行为交换。内乱项目最近产生的数据能够通过收集关于多个国内行为者之间交换的行为水平的信息，克服目前数据的局限性。第三，该项目分析了政府与持不同政见者互动的结果如何影响领导人更替的倾向，以及领导人更替、政变和政权更迭等关键事件如何影响政府与持不同政见者的互动。这种经验性工作有助于预测冲突的升级和降级，并制定政策处方，以减少社会行为者与政府之间的紧张关系。最后，该项目直接分析领导者与其联盟之间的关系，并测试领导者的策略选择是否以及如何受到其联盟愿望的影响。该研究将在学术和政策领域做出贡献，从提高对政府和持不同政见领导人在国内冲突中的战术决策的学术理解，到为参与对抗的从业者的努力提供信息国内挑战。作为次要目标，该项目还开发可用于其他各种研究项目的研究工具和数据集，如侧重于贸易与冲突、投资与冲突、被迫移徙和国内-国际冲突联系的研究项目。

When and why do governments and dissidents escalate and de-escalate their hostility towards one another? This project develops a theory to answer this question and specifies empirical time series models to test a number of hypotheses implied by the theory. Specifically, the project advances new theory focusing on government and dissident leaders and the impact that their motivations have on tactical decisions over the course of a civil conflict. Drawing on theories of leadership and political survival, behavioral rules are deduced that lead actors to make certain tactical choices under given contextual conditions. Second, the theory is expanded to analyze behavioral exchanges among multiple dissident groups in competition with a government. Recent data produced from Project Civil Strife (PCS) is able to overcome present data limitations by collecting information on the levels of behavior exchanged among multiple domestic actors. Third, the project analyzes how outcomes of government-dissident interactions affect the propensity of leader turnover and how critical events such as leader turnover, coup d'etats, and regime changes affect government-dissident interactions. Such empirical work aids in forecasting the escalation and de-escalation of conflict and developing policy prescriptions to reduce tensions between social actors and the government. Finally, the project directly analyzes the relationship between leaders and their coalitions and tests if and how leaders' tactical choices are influenced by their coalitions' desires.Broader Social Value: The study will make contributions in both the academic and policy arenas ranging from improved academic understanding of government and dissident leaders' tactical decisions in domestic conflict to informing the efforts of practitioners involved in confronting domestic challenges. As a secondary objective, the project also develops research tools and data sets that can be used in a variety of other research projects such as those focusing on trade and conflict, investment and conflict, forced migration, and domestic-international conflict linkages.