%0 Journal Article
%T Geographic determinants of indiscriminate violence in civil wars
%J Conflict management and peace science
%D 2017
%A Schutte, Sebastian
%V 34
%N 4
%P 380-405
%X What determines the type of violence used by military actors in civil wars? Drawing on Kalyvas's "information problem" and Boulding's "loss of strength gradient", this paper proposes a simple model of how the violence becomes more indiscriminate as a function of distance from the actors' power centers. The proposed mechanism is a growing inability of the actors to distinguish between collaborators of the adversary and innocent bystanders. Tested on the conflict event level for 11 cases of insurgency, the results indicate that a simple distance-decay mechanism can explain the occurrence of indiscriminate violence to a large extent.<p /> <p>Language: en</p>
%G en
%I SAGE Publishing
%@ 0738-8942
%U http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0738894215593690