“Opportunity, strategy and intensity of violence: Explaining subnational variation in civil war”

Existing literature on civil war points out that opportunities provided by such factors as geographical terrain are likely to lead to civil war onset. Others argue that ethnic or private grievances are more important as causes of conflict. While the causes of civil war are still being debated, less work has been done on understanding the severity of conflict. This study extends the arguments of civil war onset to explain variation in levels of violence. Using newly collected data on violence and ethnicity at the subnational level in Nepal, we extend the literature on civil war onset to examine the causes of sub-national levels of violence during the decade long civil war.