How mediator leadership transitions influence mediation effectiveness

Little is known about how transitions in the government of mediators affect conflict dynamics and resolution. To address this shortcoming, we study executive turnovers of mediators during ongoing interventions in civil war. Mediation effectiveness is largely driven by (trustworthy) information provision and sharing. Changes in mediators’ leaderships have the potential to undermine this, lowering mediation performance. Using data on civil conflicts in 1946–2017, we find robust support for this argument. This research sheds light on a previously neglected factor in conflict resolution that is of particular interest to practitioners and policymakers

Indirect Governance at War: Delegation and Orchestration in Rebel Support

Instead of attacking their adversaries directly, states often do so indirectly by supporting rebel groups. While these support relationships vary considerably, existing research lacks a comprehensive account thereof. To explain states’ choice of support, we suggest differentiating between two modes of support relationships according to the control opportunities they offer states over rebels: while delegation enables “hands-on” control, “hands-off” orchestration allows for plausible deniability and does not harm rebels’ local legitimacy. We argue that sponsors prefer orchestration when “hands-on” control can be substituted by goal alignment or competition; and they prefer delegation when the conflict is highly salient. Tests using global data for the period 1975-2009 support the first two expectations. Surprisingly, states’ capabilities also render “hands-off” orchestration more likely. The paper advances the understanding of external rebel support by transferring insights from indirect governance theory to the study of indirect wars and putting it to statistical test

Female Combatants and Wartime Rape: Reconsidering the Role of Women in Armed Conflict

Whereas existing research posits that the presence of female fighters in armed groups decreases their propensity for wartime rape, one recent study tests this claim quantitatively and is unable to detect a statistically significant effect. This leads the author to conclude that female combatants do not decrease rape. Using that study’s original data, this article reexamines the evidence for the relationship between female rebel combatants and wartime sexual violence. Replications of the original models suggest that they make strong functional form assumptions regarding numerous independent variables and time dependence and that relaxing them results in substantively different findings. Namely, women’s participation in armed groups decreases groups’ use of wartime rape. In support of Loken’s organizational theory of rape, results also suggest that this effect is moderated by group norms. These findings contribute to the literature on female participation in rebel groups and beyond. </jats:p

The security implications of transnational population movements: A meta-analysis

Are migrants and refugees systematically linked to insecurity? This article, for the first time, takes stock of the interdisciplinary quantitative research on this question using meta-analysis. We compiled a unique dataset comprising more than 70 published studies across a variety of spatial and temporal scales covering 1951–2016. We show that an overall effect linking foreign-born populations to insecurity may exist, but there is little evidence for refugees or migrants consistently leading to more insecurity when assuming a disaggregated perspective. Specifically, foreign-born populations are unlikely to be systematically related to terrorism and hate crimes, while they can be associated with a higher risk of state-based disputes, inter-group conflict, and one-sided violence. This study adds to our understanding of the security implications of refugees and migrants as it sheds more light on the actual effect transnational population movements have on insecurity, thereby informing the research agenda in the years to come

The Role of Governmental Weapons Procurements in Forecasting Monthly Fatalities in Intrastate Conflicts: A Semiparametric Hierarchical Hurdle Model

Accurate and interpretable forecasting models predicting spatially and temporally fine-grained changes in the numbers of intrastate conflict casualties are of crucial importance for policymakers and international non-governmental organisations (NGOs). Using a count data approach, we propose a hierarchical hurdle regression model to address the corresponding prediction challenge at the monthly PRIO-grid level. More precisely, we model the intensity of local armed conflict at a specific point in time as a three-stage process. Stages one and two of our approach estimate whether we will observe any casualties at the country- and grid-cell-level, respectively, while stage three applies a regression model for truncated data to predict the number of such fatalities conditional upon the previous two stages. Within this modelling framework, we focus on the role of governmental arms imports as a processual factor allowing governments to intensify or deter from fighting. We further argue that a grid cell's geographic remoteness is bound to moderate the effects of these military buildups. Out-of-sample predictions corroborate the effectiveness of our parsimonious and theory-driven model, which enables full transparency combined with accuracy in the forecasting process

Dependence matters: Statistical models to identify the drivers of tie formation in economic networks

Networks are ubiquitous in economic research on organizations, trade, and many other areas. However, while economic theory extensively considers networks, no general framework for their empirical modeling has yet emerged. We thus introduce two different statistical models for this purpose -- the Exponential Random Graph Model (ERGM) and the Additive and Multiplicative Effects network model (AME). Both model classes can account for network interdependencies between observations, but differ in how they do so. The ERGM allows one to explicitly specify and test the influence of particular network structures, making it a natural choice if one is substantively interested in estimating endogenous network effects. In contrast, AME captures these effects by introducing actor-specific latent variables affecting their propensity to form ties. This makes the latter a good choice if the researcher is interested in capturing the effect of exogenous covariates on tie formation without having a specific theory on the endogenous dependence structures at play. After introducing the two model classes, we showcase them through real-world applications to networks stemming from international arms trade and foreign exchange activity. We further provide full replication materials to facilitate the adoption of these methods in empirical economic research

Military Technology and Human Loss in Intrastate Conflict: The Conditional Impact of Arms Imports

Though often conjectured, there is a lack of empirical evidence that international transfers of military technology render intrastate conflicts more violent. We address this question and argue that expansions in governments’ ability to fight aggravate the lethality of war. However, we expect this effect to be conditioned by rebels’ military endowments and their choice of tactics. Where rebels are weak, they avoid open combat and additional governmental arms imports have no effect on the number of casualties. In contrast, governmental arms imports cause human losses to multiply when rebels have achieved military parity or superiority and, as a consequence, use conventional combat tactics. This hypothesis is tested on the number of battle-related deaths in intrastate conflict, 1989-2011, using, for the first time, data on governmental imports of both major conventional weapons and small arms. Results support our propositions and are robust to instrumenting for imports of both types of weapons

How Mechanization Shapes Coups

Civil-military relations are characterized by a fundamental dilemma. To lower coup risk, leaders frequently empower the military, which satisfies the armed forces with the status quo and enables them to fight against threats challenging the civilian leadership. Simultaneously, a too powerful military itself constitutes a potential threat that is capable of overthrowing the government. Our research adds to this debate by examining the impact of mechanization, that is, the degree to which militaries rely on armored vehicles relative to manpower, on coup risk. We discuss several (opposing) mechanisms before developing the theoretical expectation that higher levels of mechanization should lower the likelihood of a coup due to the increased costs of coup execution. Empirical evidence strongly supports this claim and, thus, contributes to our understanding of the emergence of coups as an essential breakdown of civil-military relations, while adding to the debate surrounding the many trade-offs leaders face when coup-proofing their regimes

Rebel Organizations, Force Structure, and the Dynamics of Violence in Armed Intrastate Conflicts

A burgeoning literature examines how armed groups’ force structure, i.e. who fights for them, and their external support contributes to conflict dynamics. Building on this, this thesis seeks to further our understanding of rebel organizations’ use of violence in civil war. Across four substantive chapters, it studies how rebel organizations’ force structure and their external support affect their use of violence against civilians, combat violence, and sexual violence. Chapter one focuses on child soldiering, suggesting that the practice does not have a uniformly positive effect on violence against civilians, as indicated by earlier work, but that the effect is conditioned by whether rebels receive civilian support. Chapters two and three use a quantitative case-study of the Nepalese civil war and a replication of a prominent earlier study to analyse how women’s participation in rebel organisations affect group behaviour. They find that female fighters decrease rebels’ civilian victimization and use of sexual violence, but also their combat performance. Finally, chapter four differentiates two modes of external support to rebel groups, hard and soft delegation, which vary in the control they afford to sponsors. While hard delegation increases combat deaths but not rebel violence against civilians, the opposite is the case for soft delegation. This thesis thus offers new theoretical and empirical insights into the drivers of civil war violence. It shows that the attributes of individual rebels crucially affect how rebel groups fight, challenging recent studies that emphasize the role of top-down socialization, such as ideological training, over that of combatant attributes while also suggesting a way forward by theoretically and empirically documenting the interaction of these two factors. In addition, it refines existing accounts of external state sponsorship of rebel groups, arguing that its effects on conflict dynamics depend on the control opportunities it affords to sponsors