Arizona State University Why Some Countries Experience Civil Wars Discussion
Provide a paragraph-long explanation that does three things: 1) clearly indicates the political or social outcome that the question is asking about (the dependent variable) and the political or social factor that the question suggests is related to that outcome (the independent variable); 2) explains the basic logic of how the factor leads to the outcome; and 3) provides a way to measure both the outcome and the factor leading to it. Your explanation should be 200-400 words.
EXAMPLE:
There are many possible causes to the presence or absence of civil wars across countries. In my argument, one necessary cause to the variation of occurrence of civil war is a frustration at the individual level that stems from political exclusion and violent repression. Freedom of expression is one of the fundamental rights of human beings. International bodies such as the United Nations, through the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1984, have proclaimed that all human beings are endowed with reason and conscience. Therefore, every human being has the right to acquire information, hold opinions, and share their thoughts and beliefs. Such ability to express opinions is fundamental to the advancement of knowledge and quality of living standard of any society in the world. Unfortunately, this right is sometimes restricted through practice of censorship, harassment, restrictive public assembly legislation. When the basic need is not met, people can become frustrated because they do not get what they deserve. Of course, frustration does not automatically lead to violence. It is only when the repression happens so intense that people become angry and eventually violent. In order to examine my hypothesis that the level of frustration leads to civil war, I will use a measure that scores the level of political rights each country’s population has. The higher the score, the freer the country and the less intense the frustration that people hold towards their government. The dependent variable, civil war, is defined as a war that:1) involves military action/violence by politically and militarily organized unit within that territory against the national government, and 2) causes between 500 to 1.000 combatants and civilians deaths in the first year of the conflict. Based on this definition of civil war, conflicts that satisfy all criteria will be coded 1, and those who do not will be coded 0. If my proposed hypothesis is correct, the lower the score of political rights, the higher the likelihood of civil war.
