Education

SOIC Study Methodology

Definitions and Methodology
This page captures research and analysis by SSI professors, USAWC faculty and students, and research assistants into the causes and outcomes of internal conflicts since 1945 as part of the ongoing Study of Internal Conflict (SOIC). Research and analysis will also include topics in Unconventional and Irregular Warfare.

Outline (quick links)

 

Study overview

The Study of Internal Conflict (SOIC) research project at the Strategic Studies Institute began in 2014 to implement a data-driven approach in determining the actual causes of government failure in internal conflict. Since 2014, it has formed the core of the U.S. Army War College elective course S12232, 鈥淎 Problem from Hell: Civil War and Insurgency鈥� taught by Dr. Chris Mason. Each student in the course each year has conducted at least one case study from the list of SOIC conflicts (see Conflict Inclusion Criteria, below) as a part of their course written requirements. The SOIC has also been an internship option at the Army War College for several years. More than a dozen undergraduate and graduate interns have worked as research assistants conducting conflict case studies under the direction of program director Dr. Chris Mason. To date, the Study has completed more than sixty individual conflict case studies, each involving three to four weeks of guided research on a particular internal conflict. The research study and the theoretical underpinnings of the study were recently described in some detail in an article in the Summer 2021 issue of Parameters, the U.S. Army War College Quarterly.

conflict inclusion criteria

For consideration of a conflict in the research, the Study of Internal Conflict uses the Correlates of War Project database as the starting point. Since 2014, the SOIC has systematically analyzed all the conflicts in the Correlates of War Project database and identified all human conflicts in the modern era that meet the following six criteria:

  1. The conflict was an intrastate conflict, not an interstate conflict. In other words, the conflict was primarily a war inside one country, not a war between two or more countries. Conflicts frequently have external actors who support one side or another and essentially fight by proxy. External intervention does not preclude a conflict from being included, so long as the conflict was not in essence a war fought between two separate countries. Colonial wars of independence were excluded from the SOIC research project, as these were deemed essentially wars between a colonial power and one or more groups of colonized subjects, i.e., between two different countries.
  2. Since the purpose of the study is to determine why governments fail, the second criterion for inclusion in the study is that the government of the state was itself a party to the conflict. Because there are many kinds of civil conflict (for example, feuds between groups in remote areas that are not fought for control of the government), those internal conflicts listed in the Correlates of War database to which the government was not a party are excluded from the study.
  3. Because of the definition of 鈥済overnment victory,鈥� discussed in detail later, the conflict must have ended at least two years prior to the date of determination.
  4. The internal rebellion sought either full control of the government or the creation of an independent breakaway country. Internal conflicts in which the purpose of the rebel group was not political power through self-determination were excluded. This excludes a relatively small number of conflicts, but some internal conflicts have been fought over control of specific resources or other issues.
  5. The fifth criterion is that at least one thousand persons died (combatants and civilians) during a continuous twelve-month period at some point during the conflict, and as a direct result of the conflict. To keep the study size manageable and relevant to U.S. government interests, the multitudinous smaller conflicts in the Correlates of War databases have not been included up to this point in the study.
  6. The conflict began after the end of World War II, defined as August 1945. This date was selected as the political and military watershed in global affairs that shaped the modern global order, established current international borders, and created the tactics and types of weapons used in modern insurgencies.

methodology

The underlying methodology for the study is a straightforward regression analysis in which researchers sought to find correlative relationships between selected independent variables and a single dependent variable. In this sense, the purpose of the study is to forecast outcomes upon the dependent variable based on a consistent set of one or more independent variables, each of which correlate to the failure of the dependent variable in at least 90 percent of all fifty-three currently active case studies (conflicts).1 Researchers initially evaluated a large number of independent variables (see Defining the Independent Variables, below) to isolate those which correlated with the failure of the dependent variable in at least 90 percent of all cases analyzed. The five discrete independent variables now in use in the study are all of those political-military factors which were found to be present in at least 90 percent of all cases in which state governments failed to attain the stated conditions of victory (see Defining the Dependent Variable, below). Of all the independent variables considered, only these five were found to reach the 90 percent threshold (see Defining the Independent Variables, below). No other independent variables actually showed a statistically strong (consistent) correlation with outcomes. 

1 A number of early case studies were conducted on conflicts which were subsequently determined not to meet the six criteria for inclusion in the Study.

research utilizing soic

  1. Mason, Chris. 鈥淐OIN Doctrine is Wrong.鈥� U.S. Army Parameters, 2021.
  2. Miller, John. 鈥淭he Katanga Secession, the Five Factors Model, and Counterinsurgency (COIN) Theory.鈥� Small Wars Journal, 21 November 2024.
  3. Mason, Chris. 鈥淢easuring and Quantifying State Fragility.鈥� Found in Resilience and Resistance: Interdisciplinary Lessons in Competition, Deterrence, and Irregular Warfare, edited by Robert Burrell. Joint Special Operations University Press, 2025.
  4. Burrell, Robert and John Collison. 鈥淎 Guide for Measuring Resiliency and Resistance.鈥�  Small Wars & Insurgencies, 14 December 2023.

defining the dependent variable

For the parameters of the Study of Internal Conflict, the established dependent variable is termed 鈥済overnment victory.鈥� The definition of government victory has two components which must both be true. Government victory parameters are assessed as having been met if the end state of the conflict is a political condition in which: (1) the same government which was in control of the apparatus of state power at the time of the start of the internal conflict or its natural successor remained in power eighteen months after the end of the conflict; and, (2) the integrity of the state boundaries at the start of the conflict remained substantially intact. These two victory conditions correlate to the two rebel intentions as established by Inclusion Criterion 4 above (i.e., the intent either to take over all state power or to establish an independent country; such as East Timor, for example). In other words, the definition of 鈥済overnment victory鈥� infers the rebels did not succeed in their objective and the government remained in power.

defining the independent variable

The study began with a list of more than forty social, economic, political and geographical parameters (such as, for example, whether the population was primarily rural or urban, the predominant religion, overall poverty levels) to identify all political, military and economic factors which correlate with government failure in at least 90 percent of all the internal conflicts studied. A 90 percent correlation rate was established as the threshold for determining sufficiently predictive relationships using observational data. Of all the potential factors studied which might plausibly have correlated to conflict outcomes, only five have been identified which meet or exceed the 90 percent correlative threshold:

  1.  Less than 85 percent of the total population located their personal identities at the level of the nation, i.e., expressed a national identity as defined by political science. (See the Glossary below for a full set of research definitions).
  2. Less than 85 percent of the total population of the country believed the government in power to be a legitimate holder of state power again as defined by political science. (See the Glossary below for a full set of research definitions).
  3. Less than 85 percent of population was fully isolated from meaningful contact with the rebel group. (See Glossary, below, for the definition used for 鈥渕eaningful contact鈥�).
  4. The existence of persistent external sanctuary for militarily significant numbers of the rebel group. (See Glossary, below, for the definition used for 鈥榩ersistent sanctuary鈥� and 鈥渕ilitary significant numbers鈥�).
  5. The lack of sustainable, pre-existing security forces under the control of the government at the outset of the conflict (See Glossary, below, for the definition used).

Although the threshold for statistical correlation was set at 90 percent, in actuality, each the five individual factors described above has been found in at least 94 percent of all internal conflicts. No additional factors crossed the 70 percent correlation threshold and were not considered sufficiently correlative for predictive purposes. The two binary Boolean independent variables (the existence of external sanctuary and the lack of a pre-existing security force under government control) were actually each independently fatal in 100 percent of all internal conflicts that met the six criteria for inclusion in the study (see Conflict Inclusion Criteria, above). In the cases of protracted conflicts spanning several years, researchers sought multiple benchmarks across time throughout the course of the conflict (from which the percentages of the population holding a national identity and believing the go