Violent and Non-Violent Strategies of Counterinsurgency

Responses to insurgency include both a large-scale societal reform directed at improving the lives of civilians and a direct military response with no additional programs to improve civilian welfare. In this paper, we as, what is the optimal combination of aid and military response from the viewpoint of the state? Using a computational model, we evaluate what mix of these two strategies helps the government defeat an insurgency more quickly. Our model yields that aid may boost a military strategy that avoids civilian casualties, but it may not compensate for a military strategy that targets civilians indiscriminately

External Subsidies and Lasting Peace

Third parties are thought to face a trade-off in that those actions most likely to bring peace in the short run appear least likely to ensure its long-run stability. Yet the trade-off between conflict management and conflict resolution may be overstated. Analyzing an iterated three-player bargaining model with both information and commitment problems, we first demonstrate two conditions under which third parties may produce lasting peace through conditional subsidies, even without addressing underlying informational or commitment problems. Second, we illustrate this possibility by analyzing the impact of US foreign aid on patterns of conflict and peace between Israel and her neighbors. Our analysis indicates that the termination of the rivalry between Israel and Egypt was most likely not brought about by the Camp David accords or peacekeeping operations, but by sustained foreign aid provision. We discuss the implications for both this conflict and conflict management more broadly. </jats:p

Third-Party Pressure for Peace

Third-party pressure for peace is any threat issued or any penalty applied toward one or both sides of the warring dyad with an intention to halt hostilities. Some studies find that pressure shortens peace, while others conclude that it has no effect. This paper advances our understanding of how outside pressure affects peace by differentiating the levels of costs associated with various instances of pressure. I argue that outside pressure to halt hostilities leaves at least one belligerent in the dyad unhappy with the political settlement, because reputational or other costs force belligerents to accept settlements that do not fully reflect a potential military outcome. Disagreeing with political settlement provides incentives to revise it. More crippling types of pressure raise the cost of another war, making formal renegotiation off the battlefield more attractive even in the presence of bargaining failures. Cheaper methods of pressure do not. I test this intuition, using original data on all cases of outside pressure for peace in a sample of ceasefires initiated in 1914–2001. The results show that diplomatic pressure is associated with ceasefire breakdown, while economic pressure has no effect in the long run (most instances of economic pressure coincide with diplomatic sanctions), and military pressure is associated with longer peace. To circumvent the empirical challenge of outside actors selecting themselves into certain types of wars, I also match ceasefires, so that the most similar cases with and without pressure are compared; all results hold

Elite Selection in Single-Party Autocracies: Minimizing Protests and Counterproductive State Violence to Maintain Social Stability

Why are some but not other officials selected for promotion in single-party regimes? Understanding inner-elite dynamics of these regimes is important for explaining their resilience. Recent evidence suggests that these polities prioritize patronage connections over competence, when deciding who receives advancement at the top echelons of power hierarchy. By contrast, this paper proposes that, besides patronage, competence (demonstrated as an official’s ability to maintain social stability) also contributes to the promotion of top officials. While it is widely acknowledged that social stability is a key concern for autocracies, prior quantitative research on career outcomes of single-party elites has largely ignored this criterion for promotion. We argue that evaluating officials based on their ability to minimize protests demonstrates another dimension of competence (in addition to economic growth) that is designed to address the problem of authoritarian control, that is, managing popular discontent. We test this argument in the context of China, using a sample of 116 party secretaries in 2003–2017 who faced a total of 10,085 labor protests. Our findings are consistent with this argument

Who Undermines Peace at the Ballot Box? The Case of Colombia

Electoral politics and violent civil conflict often coexist. Citizens exposed and unexposed to violence bear the costs of conflict unevenly and, thus, conceive of militant vs. accommodationist state response to the perpetrators of violence differently. The literature has found that victims of political violence tend to endorse militant state response against nonstate actors seen as responsible. This result is mostly based on secessionist conflicts in which victims of violence are often shielded from the costs of state counterinsurgency or counterterrorism campaigns. By contrast, we argue, in non-secessionist conflicts, individuals exposed to violence tend to also experience the state militant anti-guerrilla operations, which often lead to state abuses of civilians. We expect that civilians exposed to nonstate and state attacks will be more likely to support pro-peace policies. We find support for this argument analyzing Colombia’s 2014 presidential election and 2016 peace agreement referendum. In addition, we use original data on local candidates’ pro- and anti-peace process positions in Colombia’s 2014 congressional election to test the underlying logic of the argument that local communities exposed to both nonstate and state violence are more likely to demand pro-peace policies

How Do Civilians Assign Blame and Praise amidst Civil Conflict?

Understanding the process by which civilians ascribe blame, praise, and intentionality to governments in conflict is key to formulating a successful counterinsurgency strategy. We conducted survey experiments with Palestinian civilians to examine perceived intentionality of Israeli forces for the outcomes of riot control methods with various consequences. We extend a psychological theory, the side-effect effect, to examine how individuals evaluate actors within conflict. Consistent with expectations, civilians assign more responsibility to state actors with regards to negative (versus positive) outcomes of an action. Additionally, we find a moderator: individuals exposed to violence assign even more responsibility for negative outcomes

Group-affirmation and trust in international relations: Evidence from Ukraine.

How can states with a history of recent armed conflict trust one another? Distrust between Ukraine and Russia aggravates security fears and limits hopes for a meaningful resolution of the bloodiest armed conflict in Europe since 1994. Hostility levels have risen dramatically between the populations of Ukraine and Russia after the events of 2013-2015. Political psychology offers two competing approaches to increase trust between the publics of different countries: appealing to an overarching, common identity above the national level vs. affirming a sense of national identity. This project asks which of these approaches increases trust towards Russia among the Ukrainian public. The study employs a survey experiment (between-subjects design) to evaluate these competing claims. The survey is to be fielded by a reputable public opinion research firm, the Kiev International Institute of Sociology, based in Ukraine

Testing the effects of group-affirmation in active conflict: Ukrainians' trust toward Russia.

How can states with a history of recent armed conflict trust one another? Political psychology offers two competing approaches to increase trust between the publics of different countries: appealing to an overarching, common identity above the national level vs. affirming a sense of national identity. This study aims to examine the scope conditions of group-affirmation effects on trust in active conflicts by testing which group-affirmation approach increases trust towards Russia among the Ukrainian public. Distrust between Ukraine and Russia aggravates security fears and limits hope for a meaningful resolution of the bloodiest armed conflict in Europe since 1994. Hostility levels have risen dramatically between the populations of Ukraine and Russia after the events of 2013-2015. The study employs a survey experiment (between-subjects design) to evaluate these competing approaches. The survey was fielded in late May-June 2020 by a reputable public opinion research firm, the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS), based in Ukraine. The results suggest that in areas where conflict is salient, national identity affirmation can increase trust in subsamples that hold preexisting baseline levels of affinity toward the outgroup. When combined with the more anti-Russian Ukrainians however, this positive effect was cancelled out. In contrast, emphasis on an overarching, common ingroup identity did not raise trust in any subgroups. Examining the disparate effects of national identity affirmation in anti-Russian and pro-Russian regional subsamples helps specify the scope conditions of which group-affirmation can be most effective

Battle Stalemates and Rebel Negotiation Attempts in Civil Wars

This manuscript examines how battlefield events influence belligerents’ pursuit of negotiated settlements in civil wars. We argue that successive stalemates are most likely to precipitate rebel demands for negotiations because they offer groups both the opportunity and willingness to push for a compromise settlement. Unlike rebel losses, stalemated battles demonstrate that rebels can offer military resistance to the state. Yet, unlike rebel battle gains, draws do not raise the prospects of a rebel war victory. Using monthly data on rebel demands for negotiations and battle outcomes for 63 African dyads fighting between 1997 and 2010, we find support for this argument; more battlefield stalemates decrease the time until a proposal to negotiate by rebels. Additionally, we examine whether the same battlefield dynamics explain the onset of formal negotiations. The results reveal only a relationship between rebel battle gains and the onset of talks. The contrast in these findings suggests that rebels and governments may conceive of battlefield outcomes, especially stalemates, differently. Although rebels perceive a window of opportunity from a battlefield deadlock, governments appear to be influenced most by rebel gains