This study analyses the relationship between war and population. The impact of the growth and decline of population on important types of warfare--great power, small power, civil war as well as terrorism--is illustrated, with the objective in each case to be descriptive of risk. I find that population change has a significant impact on each, with the greatest causal impact on small power confli...

Syria’s ongoing three-year civil war has displaced 6.5 million Syrians, left hundreds of thousands wounded or killed by violence, and created a vacuum in basic infrastructures that will reverberate throughout the region for years to come. Beyond such devastation, the civil war has introduced epidemics of infections that have spread through vulnerable populations in Syria and neighboring countri...

Constipation is a common childhood disease. It is associated with exposure to stressful events. Sri Lanka was involved in three decades of civil war causing significant emotional stress. This study assessed the prevalence of childhood constipation during and after war. Data were collected from 10- to 16-year olds in five randomly selected schools, in three provinces (two schools from Eastern pr...

This paper links the share of the population supporting the government to the risk of civil war. We study the question both theoretically and empirically. The theoretical model shows that having a smaller group of individuals control the government has an ambiguous effect on conflict risk: although a smaller group is less able to resist rebellion, its high per capita office rent, cost of regain...

This research note provides a general introduction to REsCape: an agent-based computational framework for studying the relationship between natural resources, ethnicity, and civil war. By permitting the user to specify: (i) different resource profiles ranging from a purely agrarian economy to one based on the artisanal or industrial extraction of alluvial or kimberlite diamonds; (ii) different ...

International peacebuilding can improve the prospects that a civil war will be resolved. Although peacebuilding strategies must be designed to address particular conflicts, broad parameters that fit most conflicts can be identified. Strategies should address the local roots of hostility; the local capacities for change; and the (net) specific degree of international commitment available to assi...

We document a non-monotonic effect of economic downturns on civil war onset using a novel country panel dataset. Declining commodity terms of trade or income levels increase civil war risk significantly in countries with intermediate levels of ethnic diversity. In highly diverse or homogenous societies, if anything, economic declines help to prevent civil war. Given that the size of the largest...

How does civil war affect society and citizen interaction with politics? Civilians who live through warfare face numerous challenges that can have permanent effects on society even after peace is achieved. This project uses the Liberian civil wars as a case study to examine the impact of war through one channel – disruptions in education for an entire generation of children. The paper shows tha...