Abstract
This research considers how armed conflict is shaped by a country's political stability, military expenditures and type of government. It theorizes that higher levels of political stability, smaller armed forces, and lower amounts of military expenditures will result in less armed conflict for a country. Also, a country's type of government (i.e. Democratic, Authoritarian, Socialist, etc.) will be of significant influence upon the amount of armed conflict that the country engages in. After analyzing the data for the 208 countries, the paper finds that there is in fact a strong negative relationship between the political stability of a country and its involvement in armed conflict. The more stable the political climate of a country, the less likely it is for that country to be involved in armed conflict, and the less stable the political climate of a country, the more likely it is for that country to be involved in armed conflict. With respect to a country's spending on its military, as well as the size of that military, the paper finds no significant relationship between these factors and a country's propensity to be involved in armed conflict. Furthermore, although the paper notes that communist and Islamic governments appear more prone to be engaged in armed conflict, it argues that this is merely a spurious relationship. It finds, instead, that a country's particular form of government has no real bearing on whether or not it will be involved in armed conflict. The paper includes several graphs and tables.

Paper Outline:
Abstract
Influencing Elements on Armed Conflict: Expectations from Previously Published Literature
General Methodology and Operationalization of Variables
Understanding Possible Causes Associated With Armed Conflict
Conclusion
Appendix: Graphs and Tables
Bibliography

From the Paper
"The second indicator which we examined in order to test a possible relationship between armed conflict and military buildup and spending concerns the total number of armed forces a country supports in thousands . Recoded to allow greater legibility within a cross-tabulation, while the data support a relationship between low armed conflict and a lower level of armed forces, the relationship does not continue to the high level. Table 6 reports that countries with less than 500,000 total armed forces in the 0-250 category have low or low-medium levels of armed conflict 60% of the time, while countries in the 250.1-500 category reach 66.7%."

Tags:governance, Charles, Boehmer, regime, rationalism