Brittany Gates
SIS, American University
4400 Massachusetts Avenue NW, Washington DC 20016
bg8153a@american.edu
Abstract
The likelihood of a country to get into conflict is substantial. There seems to be an
association between the probability of going into conflict as a result of ethno-political
fractionalization, civil liberties, political rights, and GDP per capita. In this study, I examine the
factors that determine the likelihood of countries entering into conflict. In particular, I used cross-
country data from the Democracy Cross-National Dataset to estimate the relationship between a
countries number of conflicts, ethno-political fractionalization, focusing primarily in Africa, GDP
per capita, the civil liberties as well as the political rights of the citizens of each country. My
findings seem to suggest that political rights as well as civil liberties have no negative relationship
with conflict; they have an inverse relationship with the likelihood for conflict. As these two
factors go up, conflict decreases. GDP as well as ethno-political fractionalization does affect
conflict. If GDP goes down then the propensity for conflict goes up in a country, likewise as the
ethno-political fragmentation rises in specifically African countries, then the propensity for
conflict also rises.