Why do some armed civil conflicts last longer than others? Drawing on a contest success function model, we show that geographic factors (such as location, terrain, and natural resources) interact with rebel fighting capacity and together play a crucial role in determining the duration of...

Previous quantitative research on ethnic civil war relies on macro-level proxies in an attempt to specify the conditions under which ethnic minorities rebel. Going beyond an exclusive focus on minorities, the present study employs Geographic Information Systems (GIS) as a way to model ethnic...

Income varies considerably within countries and the locations where conflicts emerge are rarely typical or representative for states at large. Yet, most research on conflict has only examined national income averages and neglected spatial variation. The authors argue that civil conflicts are...