Dyadic Conflict Analysis

Dyadic conflict analysis is the dominant research design in quantitative conflict studies: it treats the pair of states (the dyad), observed year by year, as the unit of analysis and models the probability that a pair experiences militarized conflict as a function of their joint and individual attributes. Stuart Bremer's 'Dangerous Dyads' (1992) is the canonical statement, identifying which conditions — contiguity, the absence of alliance, power parity, the absence of joint democracy, and others — make a pair of states war-prone. The design aligns conflict data with the relational theories that dominate the field.