Actor proliferation and the fragmentation of violent groups in conflict
This paper proposes a novel application of a measure of actor fragmentation drawn from electoral studies to the growing field of conflict event data. The application facilitates comparison of conflict environments over time and across cases, while enabling researchers to take account of the relative...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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SAGE Publishing
2015-09-01
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| Series: | Research & Politics |
| Online Access: | https://doi.org/10.1177/2053168015607891 |
| Summary: | This paper proposes a novel application of a measure of actor fragmentation drawn from electoral studies to the growing field of conflict event data. The application facilitates comparison of conflict environments over time and across cases, while enabling researchers to take account of the relative activity levels of diverse actors. Analysis of the measure suggests that a fragmentation index diverges from a simple count of active conflict agents in important instances, including in providing a more accurate measure of dominant and weaker conflict agents, capturing dynamics of escalation and continuation of conflict over time and across country cases, and reflecting the coalescence of conflict agents around dominant conflict cleavages. The findings suggest that future research may benefit from combining measures of the discrete count of groups and their relative activity levels in order to accurately capture evolving conflict dynamics. |
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| ISSN: | 2053-1680 |