An official website of the United States government
Under what conditions do rebel organizations control territory during civil war? How do civilians influence the distribution of territorial control? Why do rebels invest in governance, and why do they target civilians with violence, in some locations but not others? This dissertation advances a political accountability theory to explain how civilians influence the distribution of territorial control and governance during civil war. Existing research explaining variation in rebel territorial control and behavior have emphasized structural and organizational factors, identity politics, economic conditions, and geography. However, the classic insurgency literature and recent counterinsurgency doctrine emphasize the importance of securing civilian support and protecting the population to achieving military objectives in civil war. If true, civilians retain at least some power over rebel personnel. The accountability theory of rebel conduct provides a unified framework linking inter-related conflict processes associated with rebel groups’ territorial control, governance, and strategic use of violence during civil war. It argues that community collective action capacity, the ease with which communities facilitate collective action to pursue common interests, influences the distribution territorial control and belligerent conduct during civil war. The empirical strategy draws upon complementary quantitative and qualitative methods to test the accountability against plausible alternatives using village-level data from the communist insurgency in the Philippines. The results provide robust support for the accountability theory over plausible alternatives, and yield policy implications for peace-building and economic development in conflict-affected states.
more »
« less
When do rebels sign agreements with the United Nations? An investigation into the politics of international humanitarian engagement
International actors engage rebel groups in conflict zones for better humanitarian outcomes. What are the political conditions under which such external engagement occurs in internal conflict zones? We argue that “insecure governments” and politically “modulated rebels” are the key factors that explain the international humanitarian engagement with rebels in civil conflicts. With the history of instability marred by coups and frequently changing hands of governments, insecure governments resort to international help and allow international actors to interact with their internal enemies. In contrast, with strong political control and military capacity, secure governments play a gatekeeper role, dealing with internal enemies autonomously. On the rebel side, politically “modulated rebels” are the prime candidates for international humanitarian engagement. Such modulation is likely to occur after civilian-connecting experiences over time by holding territory or after peace talks. We test these arguments using the case of the United Nations (UN) action plans between 2000 and 2015, in which some rebel groups committed to reducing the practice of child soldiering. We find that the combination of “insecure governments” and “modulated rebels” can systematically account for the UN action plans occurrence. Our analysis has implications for the role of external actors in internal conflict zones around the world.
more »
« less
- Award ID(s):
- 2049443
- PAR ID:
- 10464626
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- European Journal of International Relations
- Volume:
- 29
- Issue:
- 3
- ISSN:
- 1354-0661
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 602 to 627
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
More Like this
-
-
Abstract ObjectiveWe consider how the Peruvian government's responses to natural disaster events shaped political violence patterns from 1989 to 2020. MethodsWe gather data on government disaster response and compare the effect of positive disaster responses, such as reconstruction and regulation of domestic/international aid, and negative disaster responses, such as neglect or placing restrictions on movement near the affected areas, on violent conflict. To address the endogeneity between armed conflict and disaster responses, we estimate a structural equation model where we allow armed conflicts and disaster responses to be fully endogenous. ResultsUsing a structural equation model at the province‐year level, we show that negative disaster responses increase the risks for political violence, while positive disaster responses do not affect the risks for armed conflict. Armed conflict in turn makes negative policy responses to disasters more likely but has no effect on positive disaster responses. ConclusionsThe results suggest that poor government response to natural disasters can foster grievances and aid rebel recruitment, increasing the risks for armed conflicts.more » « less
-
State and federal governments use governance platforms to achieve central policy goals through distributed action at the local level. For example, California’s 2014 Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA) mandates local policy actors to work together to create new groundwater management institutions and plans. We argue that governance platforms entail a principal-agent problem where local decisions may deviate from central goals. We apply this argument to SGMA implementation, where local plans may respond more to local political economic conditions rather than address the groundwater problems prioritized by the state. Using a Structured Topic Model (STM) to analyze the content of 117 basin management plans, we regress each plan’s focus on core management reform priorities on local socio-economic and social-ecological indicators expected to shape how different communities respond to state requirements. Our results suggest that the focus of local plans diverges from problem conditions on issues like environmental justice and drinking water quality. This highlights how principal-agent logics of divergent preferences and information asymmetry can affect the design and implementation of governance platforms.more » « less
-
Recent studies have focused attention on the proliferation of plans in the Global South for massive infrastructure investment to accelerate peri-urbanization and link together networks of proximate cities. This paper proposes that a focus on the national politics of the infrastructure push is an essential starting point to understand this trend, both because the national state plays a constitutive role in the processes that are shaping emerging urbanity, and because national states are themselves being transformed by this moment. In pursuing infrastructure-driven extended urbanization, national state actors seek to capitalize on moments of opportunity presented by shifts in the investment priorities of transnational financial actors, and by advances in infrastructure and logistics technologies, to gain power through the formation of political regimes based on economic growth and the distribution of rents from land development. Hence extended urbanization proceeds not as a gradual and linear process, but is instead marked by waves of disruptive and politically contentious reforms and plans intended to enable real estate, infrastructure, and logistics megaprojects. The current wave of political projects around extended urbanization is marked by distinct features, including the increasingly fragmented and decentered nature of transnational finance, and geopolitical dynamics associated with the emergence of an increasingly polycentric global order. It is consequently marked by geopolitical competition to shape emergent state agendas of extended urbanization, and by increasing variegation in the models of infrastructure-driven extended urbanization that state actors adopt. The paper illustrates these arguments with examples from Southeast Asia's mega-urban regions.more » « less
-
Gender politics scholars conclude that conservatives and religious actors curtail women's rights and political participation during a democratic transition, except in post-conflict contexts. Yet, this was not the case in Tunisia. This article documents how Islamist women activists remained active throughout the democratic transition in Tunisia. I argue that Islamist women within Tounissiet remained politically active by making two strategic choices: (1) not challenging conservatives and (2) aligning with liberal feminists when it was in their interest. This article builds on the emerging scholarship on women's roles in a democratic transition, especially conservative women, by providing original empirical work on an Islamist women's rights organization in a democratizing Tunisia. I suggest that more needs to be understood about conservative women and new actors that democratic transitions empower and embolden.more » « less
- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
-
Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1177/13540661231180369
