Fearon & Laitin (2003) "Ethnicity, Insurgency, and Civil War" — foundational paper on civil war onset. Challenges ethnic grievance explanations, finds insurgency-opportunity factors (poverty, terrain, weak states) are stronger predictors.
Study of civil war onset, duration, and termination within sovereign states. Examines structural, economic, political, and geographic determinants of armed conflict.
mountainous_terrain
Mountainous TerrainPercentage of a country's territory that is mountainous, per the Geomorphic Units of the World dataset. Logged in regression models. Higher values increase insurgency viability by providing rebel sanctuary.
political_instability
Political InstabilityBinary indicator: 1 if there was a three-or-more-point change in Polity score in the previous three years. Captures regime transitions and political turbulence that may lower the cost of civil war initiation.
noncontiguous_territory
Noncontiguous TerritoryBinary indicator: 1 if the state has territory that is physically separated from the main territory (e.g., islands, exclaves). Noncontiguity creates zones where state capacity is lower and rebel control is easier to establish.
oil_exporter
Oil ExporterBinary indicator: 1 if fuel exports exceeded one-third of export revenues. Oil states may face conflict due to prize capture incentives, weaker tax-based state institutions, or Dutch disease effects on state capacity.
new_state
New StateBinary indicator: 1 if the state became independent within the prior two years. New states face elevated conflict risk due to weak institutions, contested borders, and unresolved ethnic or regional claims.
religious_fractionalization
Religious FractionalizationProbability that two randomly selected individuals belong to different religious groups (Herfindahl index). Ranges 0-1. Included as a control alongside ethnic fractionalization; not found to be a robust predictor of civil war onset.
per_capita_income
Per Capita IncomeGDP per capita, typically logged and lagged one year. One of the strongest predictors of civil war onset: wealthier countries have lower risk, reflecting higher opportunity costs of rebellion and greater state capacity to deter it.
population_size
Population SizeTotal population, logged and lagged one year. Larger populations increase civil war risk — more people means more potential recruits and more heterogeneous grievances, though the mechanism is contested.
anocracy
Anocracy (Mixed Regime)Binary indicator: 1 if Polity IV score is between -5 and +5, indicating a mixed or incoherent regime type. Anocracies are predicted to have higher conflict risk than either full democracies or full autocracies (inverted-U).
civil_war_onset
Civil War OnsetBinary indicator: 1 if a civil war began in this country-year, 0 otherwise. Fearon & Laitin define civil wars as internal conflicts with organized violence, at least 1,000 battle deaths, and effective resistance by both sides.
Domain: Intra-State Conflict
Study of civil war onset, duration, and termination within sovereign states. Examines structural, economic, political, and geographic determinants of armed conflict.
Temporal scope: 1945-present | Population: Sovereign states (country-year observations)
Install this PAX into your Praxis instance:
praxis_import_pax("fearon-laitin-2003.pax.tar.gz", install=True)