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Updated: Jul 9, 2025

Author Spotlight: A Novel Setup to Conduct Naturalistic Laboratory Experiments with Real Human Actors in Scenarios
Published on: August 4, 2023
Explaining conflict violence in terms of conflict actor dynamics
Katerina Tkacova1,2, Annette Idler3,4, Neil Johnson5
1Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford, Radcliffe Observatory Quarter, Woodstock Road, Oxford, OX2 6GG, UK.
Abstract:
We study the severity of conflict-related violence in Colombia at an unprecedented granular scale in space and across time. Splitting the data into different geographical regions and different historically-relevant periods, we uncover variations in the patterns of conflict severity which we then explain in terms of local conflict actors' different collective behaviors and/or conditions using a simple mathematical model of conflict actors' grouping dynamics (coalescence and fragmentation). Specifically, variations in the approximate scaling values of the distributions of event lethalities can be explained by the changing strength ratio of the local conflict actors for distinct conflict eras and organizational regions. In this way, our findings open the door to a new granular spectroscopy of human conflicts in terms of local conflict actor strength ratios for any armed conflict.
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