Testing the Power-Law Hypothesis of the Inter-Conflict Interval

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that the time intervals between conflicts in interstate dyads follow a power-law distribution, supported by statistical tests and an information-theoretic model, enhancing understanding of war dynamics.

Contribution

It provides empirical evidence that inter-conflict intervals follow a power-law distribution and introduces a model explaining this pattern as independent draws from the same distribution.

Findings

Inter-conflict intervals follow a power-law distribution.

The series of ICIs are independently generated from an identical distribution.

Statistical tests confirm the power-law nature of ICIs.

Abstract

The severity of war, measured by battle deaths, follows a power-law distribution. Here, we demonstrate that power law also holds in the temporal aspects of interstate conflicts. A critical quantity is the inter-conflict interval (ICI), the interval between the end of a conflict in a dyad and the start of the subsequent conflict in the same dyad. Using elaborate statistical tests, we confirmed that the ICI samples compiled from the history of interstate conflicts from 1816 to 2014 followed a power-law distribution. We propose an information-theoretic model to account for the power-law properties of ICIs. The model predicts that a series of ICIs in each dyad is independently generated from an identical power-law distribution. This was confirmed by statistical examination of the autocorrelation of the ICI series. Our findings help us understand the nature of wars between normal states, the significance of which has increased since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022.