Identifying the effect of climate variability on communal conflict through randomization

Journal article

Vestby, Jonas; Siri Aas Rustad & Monika Salmivalli (2017) Identifying the effect of climate variability on communal conflict through randomization, Climatic Change. DOI: 10.1007/s10584-017-1914-3.

Read the article here (Open Access)

In this paper, we ask two questions: (1) what type of research design allows us to treat climate variability as randomized and (2) what can we say about the relationship between climate variability and communal violence using this new design? To answer these questions, we analyze six large subnational areas, at a monthly time scale, and calculate the standardized precipitation index for each area for each month. We find that both short, unusually dry intervals and long, unusually wet intervals increase the likelihood of a communal conflict event.

An error has occurred. This application may no longer respond until reloaded. Reload 🗙