Class Year
2023
Document Type
Student Research Paper
Date of Creation
Spring 2022
Department 1
Political Science
Abstract
I examine the relationship between political terror and the annual incidence of internal armed conflict. Studies have found that other factors associated with violence have a curvilinear relationship to internal conflict, including regime type, GDP, and ethnic fractionalization. I seek to find if political terror has a significant impact on instances of conflict and, more particularly, whether a curvilinear relationship exists between these two variables. I hypothesize that the relationship will be significant and in the shape of an inverse U. If a country uses no political terror, or extensive political terror, then the number of internal armed conflicts will be low. If the level of political terror employed by a regime is somewhere in the middle, I expect to see a greater number of internal armed conflicts. The results of my test do not support my hypothesis. There is a statistically significant relationship between political terror and instances of internal armed conflict, and the relationship is curvilinear. However, the relationship is convex, rather than being concave as I had predicted. This is a relationship I had yet to come across in previous literature. It could add a new dimension of thought for policy makers and scholars, requiring them to consider different roles violence may play in preventing and starting internal conflicts.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Recommended Citation
Morrell, Lilian A., "The Curvilinear Relationship between Political Terror and Internal Armed Conflict" (2022). Student Publications. 990.
https://cupola.gettysburg.edu/student_scholarship/990
Comments
Written for POL 351: Political Economy of Armed Conflict