What Is Civil War? Conceptual and Empirical Complexities of an Operational Definition

• Published in: The Journal of conflict resolution Vol. 48; no. 6; pp. 814 - 858
• Main Author: Sambanis, Nicholas
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Thousand Oaks, CA Sage Publications 01.12.2004; SAGE Publications; SAGE PUBLICATIONS, INC
• Subjects: Armed conflict; Civil War; Civil wars; Coding; Coding standards; Conflict; Data analysis; Datasets; Death; Definitions; Government (Administrative Body); Gross domestic product; Inferences; Insurgency; International relations; Measurement; Methodological Problems; Militia groups; Operational Definitions; Political violence; Politics; Population growth; Studies; Terrorism; Variable coefficients; Violence; War; data sets; coding rules; civil war; Correlates of War

The empirical literature on civil war has seen tremendous growth because of the compilation of quantitative data sets, but there is no consensus on the measurement of civil war. This increases the risk of making inferences from unstable empirical results. Without ad hoc rules to code its start and e...