A Civil War by any Other Name? Building a Qualitative Model to Support Quantitative Datasets: The Cypriot Civil War

A case study of the Cypriot Civil War (1963–1967) demonstrates that existing scholarly definitions of civil war are inadequate. The arbitrary death thresholds that qualify conflicts for inclusion in civil war datasets are demonstrably biased against smaller countries and do not account for all internal conflicts that exhibit the qualitative characteristics of civil war. An alternative model of study showcases how quantitative data might be better supported by qualitative analysis through the use of relative death thresholds.