Better the Devil You Know? How Fringe Terrorism Can Induce an Advantage for Moderate Nonviolent Campaigns

Fringe terrorism is common during nonviolent campaigns. We examine how this can modify the strategic environment between dissident groups and the state in ways that present both challenges and opportunities to moderate factions. Terrorism is intended to promote violent escalation in a conflict, but we argue that fringe terrorist activities in a nonviolent campaign under certain conditions can induce an advantage for well-organized moderate factions. The risk of escalation following terrorism can give the government more incentives to offer concessions to moderate campaign leaders if the movement can credibly prevent armed escalation. The ability to control and prevent violence is more likely when nonviolent movements have a hierarchical structure and a centralized leadership, as such campaigns are better able to prevent shifts by supporters towards violent fringes. Using new data on terrorist attacks by factions sharing the same overall objectives as ongoing nonviolent campaigns, we show that nonviolent campaigns are more likely to see substantial gains in spite of fringe terrorist activities when a movement has a hierarchical structure and a centralized leadership

Going underground: Resort to terrorism in mass mobilization dissident campaigns

© The Author(s) 2018. When and why do groups participating in mass dissent choose to initiate terrorist campaigns? I argue that groups involved in civil wars and mass civil resistance might face similar organizational pressures, which encourage the initiation of terrorism due to higher tactical effectiveness. Internal organizational pressure might depend on leaders’ expectations of a decline in followers’ commitment with protracted use of mass tactics. This is likely to motivate leaders to initiate terrorist campaigns to secure organizational survival. External organizational pressures might depend on increasing dissident campaigns’ fragmentation. This intensifies competition making leaders more likely to initiate terrorism so as to establish themselves at the forefront of their movements. The findings provide empirical support consistent with my claims and indicate no significant difference between civil wars and mass civil resistance movements with regards to these effects. Contrary to the common idea that the use of conventional violence should entail a higher willingness to engage in illegal violence against non-combatants, this finding suggests that conflict dynamics affect the decision to initiate terrorism and that terrorist campaigns have a coherent strategic logic across different types of mass dissent.Economic and Social Research Council (1511095

The Choice of Terrorism in Conflict and the Outcomes of Mixed Methods of Dissent

This thesis aims at understanding the choice of terrorism in mass dissident movements and the outcomes of civil resistance campaigns that coexist with the use of terrorist tactics by radicals. Towards this end, it focuses on dissident organizations and conflict dynamics and therefore contributes to the existing literature on terrorism and conflict, both methodologically and theoretically. Study one investigates the conditions under which groups that participate in mass dissent choose to initiate terrorist campaigns. I find that groups involved in either civil war or mass civil resistance might face strategic constraints that encourage them to resort to terrorism, due to perceived lower costs and higher tactical effectiveness. These constraints are higher repression and longer duration of mass dissent. Study two contributes to the literature on ‘radical flanks effect’. I find that terrorism generates incentives for the state to accommodate civil resistance movement, especially if nonviolent movements have a centralized leadership and hierarchical structure and can thereby credibly commit to nonviolent discipline and to avoid the escalation of the conflict to large-scale violence. Study three focuses on international support to rebel groups as determinants of the variation in the portfolio of killings across rebel groups. I find that rebels that receive financial support from external non-state actors are less likely to target civilians than combatants. This is because investing financial support domestically is more economically efficient and increased rebel dependency on the local population generating incentives to restrain the use of terrorism. In turn, rebels that receive military support from external non-state actors are more likely to target civilians than combatants. Military resources are efficiently invested in warfare activities without the need to increase reliance on the population. To test these mechanisms empirically, I model the portfolios of killings of rebel groups as a proportion of terrorist-related deaths and battle-related deaths

Female Fighters and Deadliness of Terrorist Campaigns in Civil War

We argue that rebel groups with a higher share of female fighters carry out more lethal terrorist operations using more female perpetrators. Rebels have incentives to exploit gender-specific tactical and propaganda advantages of their female operatives in terrorist operations to cause more damage to the opponents and to attract support. Gender stereotypes make female fighters more effective in terrorist operations, and common media narratives on female perpetrators discredit the government and allow rebels to shame men and encourage other female sympathizers to take up arms. We test this mechanism using casual mediation analysis against new data on the prevalence of female fighters in terrorist operations on a sample of 186 rebel groups fighting in civil wars. We find robust empirical evidence that rebels with a higher prevalence of female fighters employ a higher share of females in terrorist attacks leading to more lethal terrorist violence

Replication Data for: "The Physics of Dissent and the Effects of Movement Momentum"

Data and code accompanying the article "The Physics of Dissent and the Effects of Movement Momentum.

Local deprivation predicts right-wing hate crime in England.

We argue that community deprivation can increase the risk of right-wing radicalization and violent attacks and that measures of local deprivation can help improve forecasting local hate crime rates. A large body of research stresses how experiences of deprivation can erode the perceived legitimacy of political leaders and institutions, increase alienation, and encourage right-wing radicalization and hate crime. Existing analyses have found limited support for a close relationship between deprivation and radicalization among individuals. We provide an alternative approach using highly disaggregated data for England and show that information on local deprivation can improve predictions of the location of right-wing hate crime attacks. Beyond the ability to predict where right-wing hate crime is likely, our results suggest that efforts to decrease deprivation can have important consequences for political violence, and that targeting structural facilitators to prevent far-right violence ex ante can be an alternative or complement to ex post measures

Tangled Up in Blue: The Effect of UN Peacekeeping on Nonviolent Protests in Post-Civil War Countries

Do peacekeeping missions facilitate nonviolent political contention in post-civil war countries? The nonviolent expression of political grievances is a crucial part of the post-civil war peacebuilding process but is understudied thus far. We claim that the presence of peacekeepers significantly contributes to establishing a secure environment for nonviolent political contention, particularly nonviolent public protest. In addition, we claim that peacekeeping missions with personnel from countries with robust civil societies are more likely to promote nonviolent political contention because of prior socialization to civic engagement and bottom-top political participation. This is particularly true for UN police personnel (UNPOL), who both train local police forces and have the most direct interaction with protesters. We test our hypotheses using a newly-crafted dataset on nonviolent protests in post-civil war countries and peacekeeping missions’ presence, size, and home-country composition. We find that peacekeeping missions’ presence significantly increases nonviolent protests in post-civil war country-years. This effect is largely explained by the presence of UNPOL from countries with strong civil societies. Our findings have important implications for our understanding of post-civil war political revitalization and policy implications for the composition of peacekeeping missions