A sub national approach to internal conflict

The objective of this dissertation is to explain the onset and severity of internal violence by determining the distribution of political capabilities within individual countries. Utilizing insights from economic theories of civil conflict, this research incorporates the opportunity cost of conflict into a structural explanation of internal conflict that analyzes violence based on the relative capabilities of sub national governments.;Existing approaches to the study of internal conflicts are rife with conflicting explanatory factors that appear significant across large samples but bear little relationship to the actual events within countries. The observation that severe civil wars occur in countries that are poor is not particularly helpful in a prescriptive context. Civil wars are relatively rare and poor countries are relatively common. While the empirical record demonstrates a robust relationship between poverty and conflict, observation of limited instability in the face of endemic poverty calls this observation into question.;An assessment of the relative capabilities of sub national governments provides a more nuanced picture of the opportunity cost of conflict identified in prevailing theoretical approaches. Consistent with these arguments, this study finds that high levels of violence occur in weak and declining regions. By assessing the distribution and changes in distribution of capabilities, the study also contributes compelling evidence for the evaluation of internal conflict from the level of sub national analysis.