The Relationship Between State Capacity and Internal Armed Conflict

Authors

Rodrigo L. Cotto-Abreu, Gettysburg CollegeFollow

Class Year

2023

Document Type

Student Research Paper

Date of Creation

Spring 2022

Department 1

Political Science

Abstract

This paper seeks to evaluate the impact that state capacity has had on the annual incidences of internal armed conflicts in the post-WWII period. This paper proposes that the state’s coercive, administrative, and extractive capabilities are the most effective tools at its disposal when attempting to decrease the likelihood of the onset of internal civil conflict. This paper hypothesizes that the higher the level of state capacity in a given nation-state is, the lower the number or occurrences of internal armed conflict will be. The key finding this paper presents is a statistically significant result linking state capacity to the number of internal conflicts in a nation-state. Thus, this paper concludes that a lack of properly developed state capacity is what has resulted in a greater number of internal armed conflicts. This paper validates state capacity as a legitimate explanation of civil conflict.

Comments

Written for POL 351: Political Economy of Armed Conflict

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Recommended Citation

Cotto-Abreu, Rodrigo L., "The Relationship Between State Capacity and Internal Armed Conflict" (2022). Student Publications. 984.
https://cupola.gettysburg.edu/student_scholarship/984