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

A Generative Model of the Mutual Escalation of Anxiety Between Religious Groups

We propose a generative agent-based model of the emergence and escalation of xenophobic anxiety in which individuals from two different religious groups encounter various hazards within an artificial society. The architecture of the model is informed by several empirically validated theories about the role of religion in intergroup conflict. Our results identify some of the conditions and mechanisms that engender the intensification of anxiety within and between religious groups. We define mutually escalating xenophobic anxiety as the increase of the average level of anxiety of the agents in both groups overtime. Trace validation techniques show that the most common conditions under which longer periods of mutually escalating xenophobic anxiety occur are those in which the difference in the size of the groups is not too large and the agents experience social and contagion hazards at a level of intensity that meets or exceeds their thresholds for those hazards. Under these conditions agents will encounter out-group members more regularly, and perceive them as threats, generating mutually escalating xenophobic anxiety. The model\u27s capacity to grow the macro-level emergence of this phenomenon from micro-level agent behaviors and interactions provides the foundation for future work in this domain

Introduction to Special Issue on “Disaggregating Civil War”

We introduce the contributions to this special issue on “Disaggregating Civil War.” We review the problems arising from excessive aggregation in studies of civil war, and outline how disaggregation promises to provide better insights into the causes and dynamics of civil wars, using the articles in this special issue as examples. We comment on the issue of the appropriate level of disaggregation, lessons learned from these articles, and issues for further research. </jats:p

American political affiliation, 2003–43: a cohort component projection

The recent rise and stability in American party identification has focused interest on the long-term dynamics of party bases. Liberal commentators cite immigration and youth as forces which will produce a natural Democratic advantage in the future while conservative writers highlight the importance of high Republican fertility in securing Republican growth. These concerns foreground the neglect of demography within political science. This paper addresses this omission by conducting the first ever cohort component projection of American partisan populations to 2043 based on survey and census data. A number of scenarios are modeled, but, on current trends, we predict that American partisanship will shift much less than the nation’s ethnic composition because the parties’ age structures are similar. Still, our projections find that the Democrats gain two to three percentage points from the Republicans by 2043, mainly through immigration, though Republican fertility may redress the balance in the very long term

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

Scaling relations of metallicity, stellar mass, and star formation rate in metal-poor starbursts: II. Theoretical models

Scaling relations of metallicity (O/H), star formation rate (SFR), and stellar mass give important insight on galaxy evolution. They are obeyed by most galaxies in the Local Universe and also at high redshift. In a companion paper, we compiled a sample of ~1100 galaxies from redshift 0 to ~3, spanning almost two orders of magnitude in metal abundance, a factor of $\sim10^6$ in SFR, and of ~10^5 in stellar mass. We have characterized empirically the star-formation "main sequence" (SFMS) and the mass-metallicity relation (MZR) for this sample, and also identified a class of low-metallicity starbursts, rare locally but more common in the distant universe. These galaxies deviate significantly from the main scaling relations, with high SFR and low metal content for a given M*. In this paper, we model the scaling relations and explain these deviations from them with a set of multi-phase chemical evolution models based on the idea that, independently of redshift, initial physical conditions in a galaxy's evolutionary history can dictate its location in the scaling relations. Our models are able to successfully reproduce the O/H, M*, and SFR scaling relations up to z~3, and also successfully predict the molecular cloud fraction as a function of stellar mass. These results suggest that the scaling relations are defined by different modes of star formation: an "active" starburst mode, more common at high redshift, and a quiescent "passive" mode that is predominant locally and governs the main trends.Comment: 17 pages, 7 figures, accepted for publication by MNRA

It Takes Two

Theories of conflict emphasize dyadic interaction, yet existing empirical studies of civil war focus largely on state attributes and pay little attention to nonstate antagonists. We recast civil war in a dyadic perspective, and consider how nonstate actor attributes and their relationship to the state influence conflict dynamics. We argue that strong rebels, who pose a military challenge to the government, are likely to lead to short wars and concessions. Conflicts where rebels seem weak can become prolonged if rebels can operate in the periphery so as to defy a government victory yet are not strong enough to extract concessions. Conflicts should be shorter when potential insurgents can rely on alternative political means to violence. We examine these hypotheses in a dyadic analysis of civil war duration and outcomes, using new data on nonstate actors and conflict attributes, finding support for many of our conjectures. </jats:p