Conflict Recurrence Analysis

Conflict recurrence analysis studies why and when conflicts that have ended return, treating renewed war as a time-to-event outcome. Most civil wars in recent decades have occurred in countries with a prior war, making recurrence a central puzzle. Using survival and repeated-events models — as in Barbara Walter's (2004) analysis of recurring civil war — researchers model the hazard that a post-conflict country relapses into violence as a function of how the war ended and the underlying conditions, while accounting for the fact that the same country can experience multiple conflict spells.