MASS FEARS, STRONG LEADERS AND THE RISK OF RENEWED CONFLICT: THREE ESSAYS ON POST-CONFLICT ELECTIONS

Countries emerging out of armed conflicts face immense challenges in their efforts to build electoral democracies. Contrary to our intuition that elections can transform violent competition to peaceful political contests, past research suggests that holding post-conflict elections only increases the chance of renewed violence. Why are elections unable to build sustainable democracies as expected? In this dissertation, I examine the question by focusing on two levels of analysis. First, I study the effects of violence on political behavior of mass publics at the individual level using the World Values survey Dataset. I argue that citizens are more inclined to support undemocratic leaders, when they are faced with threats from armed violence. Empirically, I find that presence of pre-election violence in post-conflict elections leads voters to prefer parties that are stronger in terms of their violence-wielding capacities over more moderate and peaceful parties. Second, I investigate how such an outcome might influence the risk of renewed conflicts in a country emerging out of armed conflict. The hypothesized mechanism can only be described as tragic. At individual level, fearful voters support violent parties mainly to maintain the status quo, fearing that parties with a violent reputation are likely to renew conflict if they lose the election. Tragically, however, placing undemocratic and violent parties in power only increases the likelihood of renewed conflicts. I test this expectation using an event history model to analyze all post-conflict countries from 1950 to 2010 and find that the presence of pre-election violence in a country increases its risk of renewed armed conflicts. The study has important implication for policymakers and election monitoring bodies. Rather than the current practice of observing only a single event Election Day, this study emphasizes the importance of creating a secure environment during the pre-election phase, about six months prior to the first election, in order to achieve a sustainable peace in post-conflict countries

Should I Signal Trust? Effect of Terrorism on Interpersonal Trust in Post-Conflict and Non-Post-Conflict Countries

Generalized interpersonal trust is an essential component of a functioning society. While some studies have examined how the perception of terrorism affects trust, cross-national works investigating the impact of actual terrorist attacks on individual trust remain mixed. In this paper, I use insights from existing studies to disaggregate generalized interpersonal trust in response to terrorism in two distinct dimensions, prosocial motivation, and strategic signaling. While threat perception from terrorism lowers interpersonal trust in all contexts, I argue that actual events distinctively shape a person’s interpersonal trust. In a relatively stable and secure context of a non-post-conflict country, individuals living closer to terrorist incidents express increased interpersonal trust. But in post-conflict countries, those closer to terrorist incidents tend to show more distrust. To test the argument, I use the World Values Survey dataset of fifty-two states and create a terrorism scale for 717 survey regions within the countries, considering their spatial and temporal closeness to each terrorist incident. Results obtained from three-level hierarchical models (state, region, and individual) are robust and contribute to our understanding of how terrorism shapes interpersonal trust in different contexts

UN Troop Deployment and Preventing Violence Against Civilians in Darfur

Does the presence of UN peacekeeping force lower civilian fatalities at the local level? If it does, is it because of their coercive military capacity or for other reasons such as their roles in monitoring and reporting violent atrocities? To explore these questions, I study the deployment of peacekeeping units in Darfur and its impact on violence against civilians. Using original geocoded data of UN deployments before and after the intervention, I examine what aspects of such deployments impact one-sided civilian killings by government and rebel groups. Results indicate that deploying UN peacekeepers in an area restrains belligerent from targeting civilians. However, results also show that the military capacity of peacekeepers is not a significant factor in lowering civilian killings. While their ability to defend themselves is extremely important for peacekeepers, these findings caution against the militarization trend in UN peacekeeping and seek to re-shift focus on other substantive aspects of peacekeeping

Deploying to Protect: The Effect of Peacekeeping Troop Deployments on Violence Against Civilians

Do UN peacekeeping forces protect civilians from harm in post-war environments? Current evidence suggests that the answer to this question is yes. But extant research mostly examines this relationship at the country-level and consequently has logical difficulty tracing decreases in civilian fatalities to actual peacekeeper activities. We would have more confidence in the ability of peacekeepers to limit harm and protect non-combatants if the reduction in violence occurred locally where blue helmets were positioned. Using original geocoded data of yearly UN deployments in four Sub-Saharan African conflicts (Sudan, South Sudan, Democratic Republic of Congo, and Ivory Coast), we find that peacekeeping units go to violent post-war areas and reduce the level of civilian harm almost immediately. But, we find peacekeeping units more responsive to rebel violence against civilians than government violence, which indicates a reluctance among peacekeepers to confront government forces that target civilians. While host nation consent is crucial for the success of a peacekeeping mission, the findings from this study cautions against nurturing illiberal regimes by failing to check government atrocities. The failure to confront government abuse can jeopardize long-term peace and reconciliation

Who Wins, Who Loses, Who Negotiates Peace in Civil Wars: Does Regime Type Matter?

Previous research has shown that the outcome of a civil war is related to conflict duration: military victory by either the government or the rebels occurs early if it occurs at all, and the longer a civil war lasts, the more likely it is to end in a negotiated settlement. The models of civil war duration and outcome that have produced these findings are built on characteristics of the civil war and less on attributes of the state itself, other than where the state lies on the Polity autocracy-democracy scale. We propose that the risk of government victory versus negotiated settlement varies not only between democracies versus authoritarian regimes but across the different authoritarian regime types as identified by Geddes, Wright, and Franz. The distinguishing attributes of these regime types – democracy, one-party, personalist, military, monarchical – result in variation across regime types in their ability to defeat a rebel movement, their vulnerability to being defeated by such a movement, and their willingness and ability to negotiate a peace agreement with rebel movements. Results from a series of competing risk models using the Uppsala-PRIO Armed Conflict Dataset demonstrate that how civil wars end is partly a function of the characteristics of the regime

The unexpected consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic on maritime crime: Evidence from Indonesia and Nigeria

The economic fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic has been devastating. Job losses, negative growth rates, and increased poverty have all followed rising infection rates. The economic costs have been especially challenging for many piracy-prone countries. The international monetary fund anticipates sizable unemployment increases in many Indo-Pacific countries. Deeper and more durable economic damage may materialize in some West African countries. Often, negative economic shocks produce surges in crime, both on land and at sea. The present study evaluates the effects of COVID-19 on maritime pirate attacks in two countries, Nigeria, located in the Gulf of Guinea, and Indonesia, located in the Indo-Pacific. We employ monthly and quarterly data on government measures to prevent infection, sea-piracy incidents, and economic conditions to explore whether the subsequent economic fallout produced more maritime crime. We do not find clear evidence of this relationship in Indonesia. However, COVID-19-induced stringency measure does appear to have increased sea-piracy incidents in Nigeria

Fueling rebellion: maritime piracy and the duration of civil war

Extant research shows that the presence of natural resources can prolong civil wars. But research also indicates that as rebel groups become stronger, conflicts tend to shorten. These studies suggest an unclear association among the three variables—resources, rebel strength, and conflict duration. If resources increase the fighting ability of rebels, then why do they not shorten conflicts? To understand this relationship, we examine incidents of maritime piracy, which unlike other resources are more clearly exploited by rebel groups rather than states and offer new insight on how this might affect the persistence of civil war. The findings suggest that the use of piracy by weaker rebel groups shortens conflict but prolongs it when exploited by stronger rebel groups. We think our conditional analyses allow us to discern insurgencies driven at least in part by greedy rebels and therefore better illuminate the causal process by which resource wealth prolongs civil war

What Makes an Ex-Combatant Happy? A Micro-Analysis of Disarmament, Demobilization, and Reintegration in South Sudan

Successful management of combatants through disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration (DDR) remains one of the main challenges of post-conflict peacebuilding. While DDR is meant to contribute to a secure post-conflict environment conducive to economic and political development, the success of DDR efforts remains mixed. Unlike previous work focusing on procedural aspects or post-conflict reconstruction and development, we shift the focus to understand microlevel conditions—economic, security, and ethnic concerns—that influence ex-combatants' satisfaction with DDR. We argue that ex-combatant satisfaction with DDR should increase as individual-level economic conditions increase, as security situations improve, and as ethnic tensions decrease. We test our expectations using an original data set collected with field interviews and surveys from 122 ex-combatants in South Sudan in 2011–2012. We find that participants are more satisfied when their income-generating activity is based on DDR job training and when the UN has a large presence in their area. Concerns about political instability and an abundance of firearms make ex-combatants less satisfied with DDR

UN Troop Deployment and Preventing Violence Against Civilians in Darfur

Does the presence of UN peacekeeping force lower civilian fatalities at the local level? If it does, is it because of their coercive military capacity or for other reasons such as their roles in monitoring and reporting violent atrocities? To explore these questions, I study the deployment of peacekeeping units in Darfur and its impact on violence against civilians. Using original geocoded data of UN deployments before and after the intervention, I examine what aspects of such deployment impact one-sided civilian killings by government and rebel groups. Results indicate that deploying UN peacekeepers in an area restrains belligerent from targeting civilians. But results also show that the military capacity of the peacekeepers is not a significant factor in lowering civilian killings. While their ability to defend themselves is extremely important for peacekeepers, these findings caution against the militarization trend in UN peacekeeping and seek to re-shift focus on other substantive aspects of peacekeeping

Fuelling Rebellion: Maritime Piracy and the duration of Civil War

Extant research shows that the presence of natural resources can prolong civil wars. But research also indicates that as rebel groups become stronger, conflicts tend to shorten. These studies suggest an unclear association among the three variables—resources, rebel strength, and conflict duration. If resources increase the fighting ability of rebels, then why do they not shorten conflicts? To understand this relationship, we examine incidents of maritime piracy, which unlike other resources are more clearly exploited by rebel groups rather than states and offer new insight on how this might affect the persistence of civil war. The findings suggest that the use of piracy by weaker rebel groups shortens conflict but prolongs it when exploited by stronger rebel groups. We think our conditional analyses allow us to discern insurgencies driven at least in part by greedy rebels and therefore better illuminate the causal process by which resource wealth prolongs civil war