There goes the neighborhood. Hot spots and the diffusion of international conflict

The conflict processes literature has provided little insight into the process by which conflict locations cluster and diffuse geographically. I explore this topic within a bargaining framework by arguing that state's behaviors are sensitive to events occurring in their neighborhoods and that, in the face of emerging localized hot spots of conflict, they are more likely to be targeted by future uses of force by their dyadic bargaining counterparts. This increased risk is the product of the perception that states experiencing conflict hot spots locally are at greater risk of those conflicts spilling over and weakening their relative capabilities. I examine this proposition by first specifying the spatial-temporal distribution of conflict---demonstrating that conflict locations cluster in localized hot spots. I next identify the political and geographic correlates of these hot spots of conflict: state- and neighborhood-level clusters of mixed and autocratic political regimes, as well as greater numbers of political boundaries. Finally, I confirm that the proximity of hot spots to state territories does indeed dramatically increase the likelihood that a state will be targeted in future uses of force by their dyadic counterparts. Each of these findings corroborates the proposition that conflict locations cluster and diffuse geographically.