Denial and Punishment in the North Caucasus: Evaluating the Effectiveness of Coercive Counter-Insurgency

A growing literature on the subnational diffusion of armed conflict rests on the proposition that political violence triggers more violence, in the same locality and elsewhere. Yet state efforts to contain such uprisings remain largely unexplored, theoretically and empirically. Drawing on a mathematical model of epidemics, we formalize the logic of conflict diffusion and derive conditions under which state coercion might limit the spread of insurgent violence. Using a new dataset of insurgent and government violence in Russia's North Caucasus from 2000-2008, we evaluate the relative effectiveness of four coercive strategies: (1) denial, which manipulates the costs of expanding insurgent activity to new locations, (2) punishment, which manipulates the costs of sustained fighting in contested areas, (3) denial and punishment, which does both, and (4) no action, which does neither. We find denial to be most effective at containing insurgent violence. Punishment is least effective, and even counterproductive. Not only does such a strategy fail to prevent the spillover of violence to new locations, but it may amplify the risk of continued fighting in contested areas. In the Caucasus, denial is found to be the least inflammatory counterinsurgency option for Russia. For it to succeed, Russia should physically isolate centers of insurgent activity from regions of non-violence, avoid the temptation of punitive reprisals, limit the insurgent's options, and convince him that he cannot succeed.Governmen

Civil war settlements and the prospects for peace

In “Ending Civil Wars: A Case for Rebel Victory?” Monica Duffy Toft questions whether policymakers are correct to have a strong preference for terminating civil wars through negotiated settlements. Her main endeavor is to undertake a statistical analysis that compares the effect of negotiated settlements, military victories, and cease-fires/stalemates on war recurrence and on the state’s level of democracy and economic growth. With respect to war recurrence, which is the focus of this letter, she finds that negotiated settlements are largely ineffective, that civil wars ending in military victory by one side are less likely to recur, and that rebel victories produce the most durable settlements. Toft’s purpose is not only to understand these phenomena but also to provide policymakers with guidance. She recommends that third parties should pay greater attention to security-sector reform (SSR) during negotiations, leading to settlements that can credibly guarantee both benefits from cooperation and harm from defection; failing that, support in pursuit of victory, especially rebel victory, may be a worthy objective for policymakers.http://www.mitpressjournals.org/loi/isecnf201

Reputation, concessions, and territorial civil war

Barbara Walter’s application of reputation theory to self-determination movements has advanced our understanding of why many separatist movements result in armed conflict. Walter has shown that governments of multi-ethnic societies often respond to territorial disputes with violence to deter similar future demands by other ethnic groups. When governments grant territorial accommodation to one ethnic group, they encourage other ethnic groups to seek similar concessions. However, a number of recent empirical studies casts doubt on the validity of Walter’s argument. We address recent challenges to the efficacy of reputation building in the context of territorial conflicts by delineating the precise scope conditions of reputation theory. First, we argue that only concessions granted after fighting should trigger additional conflict onsets. Second, the demonstration effects should particularly apply to groups with grievances against the state. We then test the observable implications of our conditional argument for political power-sharing concessions. Using a global sample of ethnic groups in 120 states between 1946 and 2013, we find support for our arguments. Our theoretical framework enables us to identify the conditions under which different types of governmental concessions are likely to trigger future conflicts, and thus has important implications for conflict resolution

Talking to the Shameless?: Sexual Violence and Mediation in Intrastate Conflicts

To what extent, does sexual violence influence the likelihood of conflict management in intrastate conflicts? Despite a growing body of research that explores conflict-related sexual violence, the literature presents little insight on its effects on conflict resolution. Extending feminist international relations (IR) theory to intrastate conflicts and applying a gender lens to the power to hurt argument, I argue that when rebel sexual violence is public knowledge, the likelihood of conflict management increases because the state perceives it as a threat to its masculinity. I systematically test this argument on all intrastate conflict years from 1990 to 2009 using the Sexual Violence in Armed Conflict and the Civil War Mediation data set. The results provide robust support for the argument. This presents an important refinement of traditional rationalist conflict bargaining theories and opens new avenues for the research and practice of conflict management

SDM:A New Data Set on Self-determination Movements with an Application to the Reputational Theory of Conflict

This dataset, of self-determination movements (SDMs) with universal coverage for the period from 1945 to 2012, corrects the selection bias that characterizes previous efforts to code SDMs and significantly expands coverage relative to the extant literature. For a random sample of cases, we add information on state–movement interactions and several attributes of SDM groups. The data can be used to study the causes of SDMs, the escalation of self-determination (SD) conflicts over time, and several other theoretical arguments concerning separatist conflict that have previously been tested with incomplete or inferior data.The creators request that the associated paper is cited in place of this dataset

The geography of ethnic violence/ Toft

xii, p. 226: ill.; 23 c

The geography of ethnic violence/ Toft

xii, p. 226: ill.; 23 c