While doing some research I stumbled upon this website. I believe (if my google translator use is correct) that this is put up by the Norwegian government. It is an interesting report but what I was most interested in were the two graphs, about half-way down the page, on frequency of armed conflict by geographical region and the map of armed conflict with ellipses drawn around concentrated regions.
I compared both of these to the Freedom House Map of Freedom in order to see overlaps and lo' and behold (as expected) the areas of conflict tend to occur in non-democratic places. At the bottom of the write up on the Norwegian government page are seceral factors and trends (including both political and economic) which are, while brief, worth taking a look at as well.
The other graph that was interesting to look at is the very first one which shows the different types of armed conflicts that have occurred since WWII.
While not a groundbreaking or shocking report, I found it easy to understand and clearly laid out with some good explanations and reasoning behind many of the current trends in armed conflict.
There could be some underlying variable that explains both associations - e.g., wealth or something along those lines. Though there is some reason to expect democratic countries to have lower levels of violence, for reasons we shall see.
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