At this Africa Lunch Meeting, Dr. Clionadh Raleigh, Professor of Political Geography and Conflict at Sussex University and  Director of the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED), explored how domestic political arrangements between elites can incentivise political violence, looking in particular at experiences in sub-Saharan Africa. She presented a framework for understanding the ways in which subnational governance arrangements produce divergent types and dynamics of political violence. She showed how the variation in agents of governance, i.e. how a regime shapes its territorial presence and subnational relationships, structures the forms of violent conflict that emerge within and across states.