Linear Temporal Structure and Short-Term Persistence of Conflict Activity in Middle Eastern Countries
Abstract
Conflict events in Middle Eastern countries exhibit complex temporal fluctuations. As a simple baseline, we examine whether their conflict-frequency time series contain measurable linear temporal structure using the autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) framework, which assumes linear dependence on past observations and errors. Despite this simple linear assumption, the temporal dependence is largely captured for most countries by ARIMA. Predictions based on the selected ARIMA models reproduce the overall temporal behavior to some extent, although abrupt changes remain difficult to predict. We further examine the short-term persistence of changes in conflict activity using the first zero-crossing point k*, which characterizes the duration of the initial positive temporal correlation, and the integrated correlation time τint, which additionally reflects its strength and decay. The resulting k* values are approximately 2--6 days, while τint ranges from approximately 0.6 to 1.7 days. The significant negative association of τint with mean GDP per capita suggests a possible relation between short-term conflict persistence and broader socioeconomic conditions. These results reveal measurable linear temporal structure and country-dependent short-term persistence in the temporal patterns of conflict activity across the Middle East.
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BibTeX
@misc{ahn2026linear,
title = {{Linear Temporal Structure and Short-Term Persistence of Conflict Activity in Middle Eastern Countries}},
author = {Hyuntae Ahn and Mi Jin Lee},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2609.26296},
eprint = {2609.26296},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.26296},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Linear Temporal Structure and Short-Term Persistence of Conflict Activity in Middle Eastern Countries
AU - Hyuntae Ahn
AU - Mi Jin Lee
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/22
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2609.26296
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.26296
AB - Conflict events in Middle Eastern countries exhibit complex temporal fluctuations. As a simple baseline, we examine whether their conflict-frequency time series contain measurable linear temporal structure using the autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) framework, which assumes linear dependence on past observations and errors. Despite this simple linear assumption, the temporal dependence is largely captured for most countries by ARIMA. Predictions based on the selected ARIMA models reproduce the overall temporal behavior to some extent, although abrupt changes remain difficult to predict. We further examine the short-term persistence of changes in conflict activity using the first zero-crossing point k^*, which characterizes the duration of the initial positive temporal correlation, and the integrated correlation time τ_int, which additionally reflects its strength and decay. The resulting k^* values are approximately 2--6 days, while τ_int ranges from approximately 0.6 to 1.7 days. The significant negative association of τ_int with mean GDP per capita suggests a possible relation between short-term conflict persistence and broader socioeconomic conditions. These results reveal measurable linear temporal structure and country-dependent short-term persistence in the temporal patterns of conflict activity across the Middle East.
ER -