Open research questions in Political Conflict and Governance
136 unresolved questions extracted from the limitations and future-work sections of 4,610 Political Conflict and Governance papers in our library. Each links back to the study that raised it.
What the literature leaves open
Additionally, since the timing of civilian abuse may carry independent theoretical significance, future work could examine not only the breadth of violations but when during a conflict they first emerge and how quickly they escalate, extending the organizational origins framework to the temporal dynamics of civilian targeting.
Previous studies have examined the domestic consequences of coups and the possibility of coup contagion across countries, yet little is known about how citizens in neighboring countries respond to coups, despite the potential implications of public opinion for incentives surrounding future coup attempts.
How are conflict dynamics affected by contexts with many different actors compared with those dominated by a few? At the aggregate level, civil conflicts with many different rebels and militias experience higher levels of violence and human rights abuse, but the causal link between these two features remains underexplored.
Our argument challenges the state-centric approach to political repression that still dominates much of the literature on contentious politics and comparative regime analysis, and it invites further research on how hybrid forms of repression manifest and operate in different types of social and political contexts, and in relation to different areas of activism.
However, many aspects of the irregular war of 1936–1952 that pitted rebel forces, and later the Francoist dictatorship, against Republican resistance fighters remain unexplored.
Survival Strategies and Non-Aggression Pacts Between the Guardia Civil and the Republican Guerrilla in Spain's Irregular War, 1936–1952 · 2024 · DOIAbstract This, mainly conceptual, paper concerns the democratic backsliding process, focusing on specific and understudied actors whose actions (or non-actions) unintentionally contribute to the undertakings of autocrats or “would-be autocrats,” instead of concentrating on often analysed incumbents.
Unintentional Democratic Backsliders. “Evil Always Wins Through the Strength of its Splendid Dupes” · 2023 · DOIAbstract What factors contribute to the differences in foreign direct investment (FDI) levels in environments characterized as high risk? While research shows that armed conflict influences foreign investment decisions, it remains unclear how conflict dynamics, specifically the relative power capabilities of warring parties, affect FDI.
Whereas most theories of why the masses protest in democratic and authoritarian regimes involve some psychological or ‘cognitive’ element, major theories that include them (a) de-emphasize the structural conditions and (b) posit an explicit structure and cognition model but lack data to test its propositions across nations and time.
How have understandings of fundamental norms of international society changed over time? How does this relate to the decline of interstate violence since 1945? Previous explanations have focused on regime type, domestic institutions, economic interdependence, relative power, and nuclear weapons, I argue that a crucial and underexplored part of the puzzle is the change in understanding of sovereignty over the same period.
Despite widely supported conclusions on EDP (in)effectiveness in fostering democratization and preventing democratic backsliding are still lacking, the literature has generated sophisticated explanations of these processes.
External Democracy Promotion in Time of Democratic Crisis: Linkage, Leverage, and Domestic Actors’ Diversionary Behaviours · 2020 · DOIRecent reviews of research on state repression highlighted contradictory findings about this effect, yet the core question is still debated: what accounts for the variation in the effects of repression? This article posits that, to make sense of the variation in repression's effect on political participation, theorization needs to move toward predictions about individuals' responses to repression.
Empirical analyses using data on the cabinets of ninety-four authoritarian leaders from thirty-seven African countries between 1976 and 2010 support the theoretical expectations for dominant party and personalist leaders, but are inconclusive for military leaders.
The role of the People’s Liberation Army in Cultural Revolution conflicts in China’s provinces, necessitated by the policy of “supporting the left” in early 1967, has been understudied.
The Policy of the Military “Supporting the Left” and the Spread of Factional Warfare in China’s Countryside: Shaanxi, 1967–1968 · 2017 · DOIHowever, analyzing all militias in armed conflicts from 1989 to 2009, we find that this argument does not account for the observed patterns of sexual violence, a form of violence that should be especially likely to be delegated by governments.
Do States Delegate Shameful Violence to Militias? Patterns of Sexual Violence in Recent Armed Conflicts · 2015 · DOIThese countries were strategically chosen based on the following criteria: 1 ) under-researched as a resistance movement, 2 ) glorification or romanticizing of violent narratives of resistance within the country, and 3) representative of major geographical areas, historically different periods, diverse cultures, distinct religions, and varied systems of governance and political control (p.
Recovering Nonviolent History: Civil Resistance in Liberation Struggles · 2014While previous research conceptualizes genocide as an outcome of complex interactions between multiple social factors, the specific ways in which these factors interact and combine with each other, and how their individual effects may be mediated through such interaction, remain to be empirically specified.
Despite the growing scientific interest in extreme right mobilisation, empirical studies on the various forms of protest used by these groups are still scarce, with few attempts to consider, and integrate for explanation, the context of both external (structural) and internal (organisational) factors that might affect them.
The Extreme Right, Violence and Other Action Repertoires: An Empirical Study on Two European Countries · 2013 · DOIThe first strategy grants that CWL is insufficiently valuable to lethally defend, however, other considerations can satisfy the proportionality requirement.
However, there is scarce scholarship on the phenomenon of armed groups shifting their conflict-waging strategies from violent to nonviolent means, especially in contexts which cannot be resolved by force but are also ‘unripe’ for conventional de-escalation methods through negotiation and political integration.
As the comparison suggests, postrevolutionary instability may be built into urban civic revolutions due to their reliance on a rapidly convened negative coalition of hundreds of thousands, distinguished by fractured elites, lack of consensus over fundamental policy issues, and weak commitment to democratic ends.
We conclude by suggesting that the apparent global decline in organized armed conflict and the concomitant rise in social violence in recent decades may be linked to world urbanization and the ‘third wave’ of democratization in the global South, although further research is required to confirm this hypothesis.
How do subnational authoritarian enclaves emerge (or survive) in a democratic transition at the federal level? How can they endure large-scale social protests, like the one that shook Oaxaca in 2006? While federal tolerance for subnational authoritarian practices is a necessary condition, it is insufficient in itself to explain why subnational political systems sustain and eventually reproduce authoritarian practices in the first place.
Given this strong connection however, an important gap in the literature remains—what are the pathways linking wealth and democracy? This paper attempts to establish the validity of one of the possible paths by testing the three-fold relationship between per capita Gross Domestic Product (GDP), unconventional political participation and democratic consolidation.
Why do richer democracies survive?—The non-effect of unconventional political participation · 2010 · DOIWe argue that the instability, unrest, and civil war that increase the risk for state collapse are not limited to the failed/collapsed state; states neighboring—or located within close distance of—a failed state are also likely to experience subsequently higher levels of political instability, unrest, civil war, and interstate conflict.
Yet while policy analysts have debated the factors that contribute to successful DDR programs and scholars have reasoned about the macro conditions that facilitate successful peace building, little is known about the factors that account for successful reintegration at the micro level.
Most-cited papers in Political Conflict and Governance
- Protest and Political Opportunities · Annual Review of Sociology · 2004 · 808 citations
- Movements, Countermovements, and the Structure of Political Opportunity · American Journal of Sociology · 1996 · 742 citations
- Introducing Archigos: A Dataset of Political Leaders · Journal of Peace Research · 2009 · 642 citations
- Deterrence or Escalation? · Journal of Conflict Resolution · 1987 · 515 citations
- Demobilization and Reintegration · Journal of Conflict Resolution · 2007 · 229 citations
- Global Nationalism in Times of the COVID-19 Pandemic · Nationalities Papers · 2020 · 227 citations
- The Uneven Geography of Global Civil Society: National and Global Influences on Transnational Association · Social Forces · 2005 · 213 citations
- Democracy, Volatility, and Economic Development · The Review of Economics and Statistics · 2005 · 205 citations
- Protest, Deterrence, and Escalation: The Strategic Calculus of Government Repression · Journal of Conflict Resolution · 2009 · 198 citations
- Unpacking nonviolent campaigns · Journal of Peace Research · 2013 · 185 citations
Most recent work
- Democratic backsliding in Honduras and MACCIH’s effects (2016–2021) · Policy Studies · 2026
- Too Many to Fight: Elite Free Riding and the Origins of Personalism · Political Studies Review · 2026
- Geopolitics and autocratisation in hybrid regimes: the case of Georgia · East European Politics · 2026
- A duty to defend: survey analysis of citizen wartime engagement in Ukraine · East European Politics · 2026
- From killing many to targeting few: economic growth and selective repression in Taiwan’s White Terror period · Japanese Journal of Political Science · 2026
- Social Movements and International Order Formation · International Organization · 2026
- Political Violence and Civilian Targeting: Explaining Variation in Combatant Conduct: Theoretical Framework and Empirical Analysis · Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) · 2026
- Article 114 TFEU: The wrong choice for the 28th regime · European Law Blog · 2026
- Can Power-Sharing Reforms Mitigate Subnational Autocratization in Autonomous Regions? Experimental Evidence from Gagauzia · Ethnopolitics · 2026
- Introducing the War-Related Protests data · Journal of Peace Research · 2026
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