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Begin New Search Topic Conflict Publishing Institution Empirical Studies of Conflict Project (ESOC)

1. Elite Political Cues and Attitude Formation in Post-Conflict Contexts

Author:
Natalia Garbiras-Díaz, Miguel García-Sánchez, and Aila M. Matanock
Publication Date:
07-2020
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Empirical Studies of Conflict Project (ESOC)
Abstract:
Citizens are often asked to evaluate peace agreements seeking to end civil conflicts, by voting on referendums or the negotiating leaders or, even when not voting, deciding whether to cooperate with the implementation of policies like combatant reintegration. In this paper, we assess how citizens form attitudes towards the provisions in peace agreements. These contexts tend to have high polarization, and citizens are asked to weigh in on complex policies, so we theorize that citizens will use cues from political elites with whom they have affinity, and, without these cues, information will have less effect. We assess our theory using survey experiments in Colombia. We find citizens rely on political elites’ cues to form their opinion on a peace agreement’s provisions, with the direction depending on the citizen’s affinity with the political elites. Additional information about these policies has little effect. The paper suggests that even these high stakes decisions can be seen as political decisions as usual.
Topic:
Conflict Resolution, Peace Studies, Treaties and Agreements, Citizenship, Conflict, Peace, and Elites
Political Geography:
Colombia and Latin America

2. Peacekeeping and the Enforcement of Intergroup Cooperation, Evidence from Mali

Author:
William G. Nomikos
Publication Date:
08-2020
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Empirical Studies of Conflict Project (ESOC)
Abstract:
Despite the abundance of evidence that peacekeeping works, we know little about what actually makes peacekeepers effective. Recent work suggesting that local agendas are central to modern conflicts make this omission particularly problematic. The article demonstrates that the presence of peacekeepers makes individuals more optimistic about the risks of engagement and the likelihood that members of outgroups will reciprocate cooperation. I use data from a lab-in-the-field experiment conducted in Mali, a West African country with an active conflict managed by troops from France and the United Nations (UN), to show that UN peacekeepers increase the willingness of individuals to cooperate relative to control and French enforcers. Moreover, I find that UN peacekeepers are especially effective among those participants who hold other groups and institutions in low esteem as well as those who have more frequent contact with peacekeepers. Follow-up interviews and surveys suggest that perceptions of the UN as unbiased rather than other mechanisms account for its effectiveness.
Topic:
Conflict Resolution, Conflict Prevention, United Nations, Peacekeeping, and Conflict
Political Geography:
Africa and Mali

3. Heat and Hate: Climate Security and Farmer-Herder Conflicts in Africa

Author:
Ulrich J. Eberle, Dominic Rohner, and Mathias Thoenig
Publication Date:
12-2020
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Empirical Studies of Conflict Project (ESOC)
Abstract:
This paper investigates the impact of climate shocks on violence between herders and farmers by using geolocalized data on conflict events for all African countries over the 1997-2014 period. We find that a +1℃ increase in temperature leads to a +54% increase in conflict probability in mixed areas populated by both farmers and herders, compared to +17% increase in non-mixed areas. This result is robust to controlling for the interaction between temperature and ethnic polarization, alternative estimation techniques, disaggregation levels, and coding options of the climatic/conflict/ethnic variables. When quantifying at the continental level the impact on conflict of projected climate change in 2040, we find that, in absence of mixed population areas, global warming is predicted to increase total annual conflicts by about a quarter in whole Africa; when factoring in the magnifying effect of mixed settlements, total annual conflicts are predicted to rise by as much as a third. We also provide two pieces of evidence that resource competition is a major driver of farmer-herder violence. Firstly, conflicts are much more prevalent at the fringe between rangeland and farmland - a geographic buffer of mixed usage that is suitable for both cattle herding and farming but is particularly vulnerable to climate shocks. Secondly, information on groups' mobility reveals that temperature spikes in the ethnic homeland of a nomadic group tend to diffuse its fighting operations outside its homeland, with a magnified spatial spread in the case of conflicts over resources. Finally, we show that violence is substantially reduced in the presence of policies that empower local communities, foster participatory democracy, enforce property rights and regulate land dispute resolution.
Topic:
Agriculture, Climate Change, Conflict, Violence, and Farming
Political Geography:
Africa

4. Cohesive Institutions and Political Violence

Author:
Thomas Fetzer and Stephan Kyburz
Publication Date:
11-2018
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Empirical Studies of Conflict Project (ESOC)
Abstract:
Can institutionalized transfers of resource rents be a source of civil conflict? Are cohesive institutions better at managing conflicts over distribution? We exploit exogenous variation in revenue disbursements to local governments and use new data on local democratic institutions in Nigeria to answer these questions. There is a strong link between rents and conflict far away from the location of the resource. Conflict over distribution is highly organized, involving political militias, and concentrated in the extent to which local governments are non-cohesive. Democratically elected local governments significantly weaken the causal link between rents and political violence. Elections produce more cohesive institutions, and vastly limit the extent to which distributional conflict between groups breaks out following shocks to the rents. Throughout, we confirm these findings using individual level survey data.
Topic:
Civil Society, Natural Resources, Military Affairs, Conflict, Violence, and Institutions
Political Geography:
Africa and Nigeria

5. Does Counterinsurgent Success Match Social Support? Evidence from a Survey Experiment in Colombia

Author:
Aila M. Matanock and Miguel García-Sánchez
Publication Date:
07-2016
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Empirical Studies of Conflict Project (ESOC)
Abstract:
Dominant theories of counterinsurgency suggest that state forces must win over citizens to identify insurgents among them. Yet even where state forces are losing, polling shows consistently strong support for counterinsurgents. How can we explain this discrepancy? It could be that the dominant theory of counterinsurgency is incorrect, or, as we posit, it could be that individuals systematically falsify their preferences. This study builds on the intuition that individuals may feel pressure and potentially fear that encourages them to report consistently strong support for the military when asked directly—even, perhaps especially, when they rely on an illegal organization or an illicit economy for their livelihood. We argue that this pressure decreases when individuals are asked indirectly, in a way that allows them to conceal their response. We thus assess whether support for the military is lower when measured indirectly than directly and whether the difference is more pronounced in areas of insurgent control. We test this theory of preference falsification, as well as its novel implications about spatial variation, by randomizing direct and indirect survey questions (a list experiment) in a face-to-face survey conducted across conflict contexts in Colombia.
Topic:
Development, Insurgency, Counterinsurgency, Military Affairs, Citizenship, Conflict, and Violence
Political Geography:
Colombia and Latin America

6. Employment Status and Support for Wartime Violence: Evidence from the Iraq War

Author:
Andrew Shaver
Publication Date:
05-2016
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Empirical Studies of Conflict Project (ESOC)
Abstract:
The unemployed are often inculpated in the production of violence during conflict. A simple yet common argument describes these individuals as disaffected and inclined to perpetrate affectively motivated violence. A second holds that they are drawn to violent political organizations for lack of better outside options. Yet, evidence in support of a general positive relationship between unemployment and violence during conflict is not established. Drawing from a large body of psychological research, I argue that a basic but important relationship has been overlooked: Loss of employment, rather than rendering individuals angry, increases feelings of depression, anxiety, helplessness, and belief in the power of others. Members of this segment of society are more likely than most to reject the use of violence. Drawing on previously unreleased data from a major, multi-million dollar survey effort carried out during the Iraq war, I uncover evidence that psychological findings carry to conflict settings: unemployed Iraqis were consistently less optimistic than other citizens; displayed diminished perceptions of efficacy; and were much less likely to support the use of violence against Coalition forces.
Topic:
Conflict Resolution, Development, Labor Issues, Conflict, Violence, War on Terror, and Quantitative
Political Geography:
United States, Iraq, and Middle East

7. The Effect of Civilian Casualties in Afghanistan and Iraq

Author:
Radha Iyengar, Luke N. Condra, Joseph Felter, and Jacob N. Shapiro
Publication Date:
10-2010
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Empirical Studies of Conflict Project (ESOC)
Abstract:
A central question in intrastate conflicts is how insurgents are able to mobilize supporters to participate in violent and risky activities. A common explanation is that violence committed by counterinsurgent forces mobilizes certain segments of the population through a range of mechanisms. We study the effects of civilian casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan to quantify the effect of such casualties on subsequent insurgent violence. By comparing uniquely detailed micro-data along temporal, spatial, and gender dimensions we can distinguish short-run 'information' and 'capacity' effects from the longer run 'propaganda' and 'revenge' effects. In Afghanistan we find strong evidence that local exposure to civilian casualties caused by international forces leads to increased insurgent violence over the long-run, what we term the 'revenge' effect. Matching districts with similar past trends in violence shows that counterinsurgent-generated civilian casualties from a typical incident are responsible for 1 additional violent incident in an average sized district in the following 6 weeks and lead to increased violence over the next 6 months. There is no evidence that out-of-area events—errant air strikes for example—lead to increased violence, nor is there evidence of short run effects, thus ruling out the propaganda, information, and capacity mechanisms. Critically, we find no evidence of a similar reaction to civilian casualties in Iraq, suggesting the constraints on insurgent production of violence may be quite conflict-specific. Our results imply that minimizing harm to civilians may indeed help counterinsurgent forces in Afghanistan to reduce insurgent recruitment.
Topic:
Conflict Resolution, War, Conflict, Violence, War on Terror, Civilians, and Casualties
Political Geography:
Afghanistan, United States, Iraq, and Middle East