Violence, geography, and mobilization: a theory of insurgency

@phdthesis{violence-geography-and-mobilization,
   title = {Violence, geography, and mobilization: a theory of insurgency},
   author = {Schutte, Sebastian},
   school = {ETH Zurich},
   type = {{PhD} dissertation},
   doi = {10.3929/ethz-a-010032050},
   url = {http://e-collection.library.ethz.ch/view/eth:7740},
   year = {2013},
   abstract = {Civil wars are the most frequent and most severe type of armed conflict since World War II. Most civil wars are fought as insurgencies in which at least one military actor is not recognized as belligerent and relies on irregular tactics. Despite the public awareness of the ongoing war in Afghanistan, as well as the uprisings in Libya and Syria during the Arab Spring of 2011, the processes that drive violence, mobilization, severity, and outcome of insurgencies remain disputed in conflict research and largely elusive to quantitative analysis. Traditionally divided research programs focusing either on the socioeconomic conditions that foster war onset or the dynamics of violence within conflicts have not yet produced an integrated picture of how insurgencies develop over time and how they end. Filling this gap, this thesis articulates, simulates, and tests a unified model of insurgency that can be used to predict the severity and termination type of such conflicts.}
}