Why do insurgencies erupt in some places and not in others? This article exploits an original violent event database of 274,428 municipality-month observations in Colombia to determine the conditions favoring organized violence at the subnational level. The data cast doubt on the conventional...

Why do some armed civil conflicts last longer than others? Drawing on a contest success function model, we show that geographic factors (such as location, terrain, and natural resources) interact with rebel fighting capacity and together play a crucial role in determining the duration of...