The Role of Trigger Events in Explaining and Predicting the Escalation and Diffusion of Intrastate Conflicts

升级动态和空间扩散是冲突的普遍方面：随着时间的推移，所有冲突的强度和范围都在演变。然而，事实上，升级和扩散是二维空间中更普遍的传播过程的实例：一个代表地理表面或涉及暴力手段及其后果的冲突强度的二维度量的空间。一场冲突的历史相当于它在这样一个两层、两维状态空间中的轨迹。对升级和扩散的研究发现，结构性基线风险和启动触发事件的相互作用是这一过程的核心。在复杂网络中，无穷小的触发器实现了现有的潜力，因此可以引起级联或雪崩连锁反应，几乎任何规模的传播通过给定的网络。越来越多的证据表明，国家内部暴力冲突的强度和范围遵循“幂律”：虽然事件的规模和发生频率之间存在高度规律性的关系，但事件在时间上的分布非常不规则，几乎不可能做出可靠的预测。虽然对结构性风险的评估属于冲突研究的标准内容，但仍然缺乏对触发事件的系统分析，包括导致这些事件的过程和由此产生的轨迹。该项目的目的是增加我们的理解是什么解释了波动和往往意想不到的变化的强度和扩展的国家内部冲突。通过将注意力集中在触发事件上，该项目推进了一个理论统一和经验证实的国家内部暴力冲突扩散和升级模型的发展。该项目分五个步骤进行。第一步是筛选触发事件，调查这些事件发生的地点和时间。第二步使用定性新闻分析，以重建冲突行为体的通信和活动以及冲突与外部的不连续性，从而导致具体的起始事件。第三步是系统地比较经验语境化的启动事件，从而形成触发事件的类型学。第四步，观察在初始事件发生后，哪些后续事件随之发生，调查我们是否可以检测到某种类型的触发器与冲突的进一步发展之间的冲突。在第五步和最后一步中，对结果进行二元分类器评估，以评估触发事件类型的预测性能。

Escalation dynamics and spatial diffusion are universal aspects of conflicts: Over time, all conflicts evolve in their intensity and extension. In fact, however, escalation and diffusion are instances of a more general spreading process in a two-dimensional space: A space representing either a geographical surface or a two-dimensional measure of conflict intensity involving the means of violence and its consequences. A conflict’s history is equivalent to its trajectory through such a two-layered, two-dimensional state space. Research into both escalation and diffusion has found that an interaction of structural baseline risk and initiating trigger events is at the heart of such processes. In complex networks, infinitesimal triggers actualize an existing potential and can thus cause cascades or avalanching chain reactions of virtually any size propagating through a given network. Increasing evidence shows that the intensity and extension of intrastate violent conflicts follow a “power law”: While there is a highly regular relationship between the size of an event and the frequency with which it occurs, the events are distributed highly irregularly over time, making reliable predictions almost impossible. Whereas the assessment of structural risk belongs to the standard repertoire of conflict research, a systematic analysis of trigger events, with the processes leading up to them and the trajectories which emerge from them, is still lacking. The project aims to add to our understanding of what explains the fluctuating and often unexpected variation in the intensity and extension of intrastate conflicts. By zeroing in on trigger events, the project advances the development of a theoretically unified and empirically substantiated model of the diffusion and escalation of intrastate violent conflicts. The project proceeds in five steps. The first step consists in a screening of trigger events, investigating where and when such events took place. The second step uses qualitative news analysis in order to reconstruct the conflict actors’ communications and activities as well as conflict-external discontinuities, leading to a specific initiating event. The third step consists in a systematic comparison of the empirically contextualized initiating events, resulting in a typology of trigger events. The fourth step looks at which consequent incidents ensued after the initiating event occurred, investigating whether we can detect regularities between triggers of a certain type and the further progression of the conflict. In the fifth and final step, the findings are subjected to a binary classifier evaluation in order to assess the predictive performance of the trigger event types.