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Most nuclear dyads are characterized by some degree of nuclear and conventional asymmetry. This paper argues that these asymmetries create an environment in which deliberate nuclear first use (DNFU) can be rational. This possibility has been discarded in the formal literature on nuclear escalation because of the common reliance on the assumption of mutually assured destruction (MAD). This paper develops a formal model that traces how and under what circumstances two types of DNFU are rational. First, nuclear imbalances and advancements in counterforce technologies create a damage limitation incentive for a strong actor. Second, conventional asymmetry creates an incentive for the coercive use of nuclear weapons by the weaker player. Moreover, this paper illustrates that these asymmetric conditions are a relevant characteristic in important and very different nuclear dyads: DPRK–US, Pakistan–India, and Russia–US. Thus, the model demonstrates the potential core drivers of DNFU in today's nuclear landscape. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Wartime violence and authoritarian repression against civilians take various forms. Past research has explored the causes and consequences of violence, but no previous work simultaneously assessed the long-term effects of different types of violence on political identities. This paper contends that indiscriminate attacks can reinforce ingroup identity, whereas the role of civilian agency in selective violence may have a detrimental impact. Equipped with original data capturing municipality-level exposure to both selective and indiscriminate violence during the Spanish civil war (1936–1939) in Biscay (Basque Country), this study examines its legacy on voting behavior (1983–2015). Results indicate that fascist airstrikes increased Basque nationalism while selective violence diminished the popularity of Basque parties. Individual and community-level evidence suggests that airstrikes fostered the intergenerational transmission of political attitudes. Violence can boost national identities, but it can also erode them: it depends on the type. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Several studies have found restrictions on minority faith-based communities to be related to the onset of violent religious hostilities. Absent from this work, though, is a consideration of the fact that minority religious discrimination can take different forms, and, consequently, may encourage violence in different ways. This paper seeks to fill this void by examining different forms of minority religious restrictions and their relationship to religious violence. Specifically, we analyze the comparative strength of three basic types of religious discrimination—restrictions on minority religious practices, restrictions on minority religious institutions, and restrictions on conversion and proselytizing —on violence carried out by both religious majority groups and religious minority groups. Interestingly, our analysis shows all three forms of restrictions encourage violence from religious majorities, but not from minorities. We supplement the statistical analysis with a case study of faith-based discrimination and violent religious hostilities in India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The emerging literature dealing with transnational repression has identified several strategies used by authoritarian states to control and coerce their populations abroad. This article builds on existing research by investigating the domestic determinants of transnational repression. It argues that an increase in domestic repression is likely to lead to a subsequent increase in transnational repression because crackdowns at home drive dissent abroad and incentivize the state to extend its repressive gaze beyond its borders. To evaluate its arguments, the article draws on a database of approximately 1200 cases in which authoritarian states around the world threatened, attacked, extradited, abducted, or assassinated their own citizens abroad between 1991 and 2019. Offering a first quantitative test of domestic drivers of transnational repression, using multivariate regression analysis, the paper finds that as repression intensifies domestically, the likelihood of that state subsequently escalating its transnational repression also increases substantively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that existing quantitative studies mistakenly assume that all nuclear states can impose nuclear destruction on opponents by simply distinguishing nuclear states from non-nuclear states. This practice, however, does not capture variation in 1) nuclear states' possession of delivery capabilities, 2) the range of deployed nuclear delivery systems, and 3) the geographic distance between nuclear states and their dyadic counterparts. Instead of this monadic nuclear statehood approach, I propose the dyadic nuclear reach approach, which uses a new dyad-specific measure of states' strategic nuclear delivery capabilities. It codes whether a nuclear state can launch a nuclear strike against a given opponent by using the information about the estimated range of each nuclear state's strategic nuclear delivery platforms, nuclear operation bases, and states' capital cities. An empirical application shows that using an appropriate measure of nuclear capabilities does significantly alter existing empirical knowledge of nuclear weapons and international conflict. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper exploits the sharp escalation of violence in Colombia in the 1980s associated with the emergence of drug cartels to provide novel evidence on the long-run effects of violence exposure throughout the life-course, on children's educational attainment and academic achievement using administrative data. I find that, a higher homicide rate in early-childhood is associated with a higher probability of school dropout and conditional on completing high school, lower scores on a national end-of-high school exam. Results are robust to several falsification tests, and analyses of potential sources of selection bias. I provide supportive evidence that changes in fetal, child, and adolescent health outcomes are important potential mechanisms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Secret police are generally viewed as key institutions in autocrats' repression apparatus. However, we lack clear empirical evidence on the link between secret police and repression. Instead, recent studies indicate that the surveillance provided by secret police reduces physical human rights abuses. This paper re-examines the relationship between secret police and physical state repression. We identify four mechanisms linking these variables, deterrence, targeting, organizational practices, and institutional self-preservation. These mechanisms provide contrasting expectations for the overall relationship but also contextual expectations on when secret police may (not) increase repression. To test these expectations, we collect data on the global existence of secret police. Results indicate that secret police are associated with increased physical repression, particularly when they must develop a reputation to deter dissidents or when multiple rival security organizations exist. In contrast, older, more established secret police or ones without institutional rivals are not associated with physical repression. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While many scholars find that security cooperation increases the foreign aid that allies receive from a major power, other studies show that an alliance also has negative effect and its terms can change over time. This article argues that a donor's security environment impacts its participation in security cooperation and, subsequently, foreign aid allocation to allies. When the security environment is competitive, a donor will concentrate its resources on strengthening its ties with allies. In contrast, when the environment is favorable to a donor, it can use security cooperation as leverage to obtain policy concessions from allies, thus reducing its own foreign aid expenditures. This paper analyzes the aid allocation of three major power donors as well as 72 formal defense pacts and 70 bilateral defense cooperation agreements, and it finds that a favorable security environment allows a donor to reduce its economic contribution to its allies by 19 percent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do childhood experiences of wartime violence affect individuals' preferences for nuclear proliferation? This paper argues that individuals who experienced severe war violence during childhood are more likely to value the security-enhancing aspects of nuclear weapons. These individuals are more concerned about being exposed to additional wartime violence, so they view nuclear weapons as a deterrent against large-scale invasions. By utilizing the geographic variation of violence intensity during the Korean War, this paper compares the pre-war and post-war cohorts who resided in severely damaged regions and relatively safe areas. Within the pre-war cohort, I find that individuals who resided in war-torn areas are more supportive of nuclear proliferation than those who were exposed to less violence. This regional difference, however, is not substantial in the post-war generation. The results suggest that direct exposure to wartime violence during childhood increases public demand for nuclear weapons when confronted with security threats. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prevailing accounts of alliance formation emphasize either external threats or domestic politics, without an explicit consideration of how the two factors might interact. Instead, this paper theorizes about a specific type of interaction: coup-prevention strategies in nondemocratic regimes and external threats. Through quantitative analyses using the Alliance Treaty Obligations and Provisions (ATOP) and the State Security Forces (SSF) data, we find that "coup-proofing" reduces the probability of alliance formation when potential allies are under high external threat and that this effect is driven by the coup-proofing regime's reduced capability to defend their allies, rather than the regime's increased vulnerability to aggression. Furthermore, we find evidence for the interactive relationship at the negotiation stage of alliance formation. Upon entering an alliance, a coup-proofing regime facing a higher level of external threat offers more policy concessions to the ally, whereas an ally under higher threat could make fewer concessions to the coup-proofing regime. Our study highlights the way nondemocratic domestic political institutions can interact with external threat to shape states' alliance behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The "rally 'round the flag" effect—a short-term boost in a political leader's popularity during an interstate political dispute—was first proposed by Mueller (1970) more than half a century ago. However, there is no scholarly consensus on its empirical validity and the circumstances under which the effect becomes most prominent. In this paper, based on a natural experimental design, we analyze large-scale worldwide surveys of 34,118 responses and causally identify the effects of 46 militarized interstate disputes (MIDs) on the approval ratings of political leaders in 27 countries. We find that MIDs, on average, decrease public support for national leaders. However, the public backlash could be attenuated depending on theoretically relevant contexts. Our finding implies that political leaders cannot rely on MIDs for public support increases, as they are generally penalized for such decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper first introduces a theoretical formalization connecting a polity's income level to terrorism. Our framework can accommodate different underlying assumptions about individual- and society-level grievances, yielding competing hypotheses. We then construct a panel database to study terrorism for 1527 subnational regions in 75 countries between 1970 and 2014. Results consistently imply an inverted U-shape that remains robust to incorporating a comprehensive set of region-level covariates, region- and time-fixed effects, as well as estimating an array of alternative specifications. The threat of terrorism systematically rises as low-income polities become richer, peaking at GDP/capita levels of ≈ US$12,800 (in constant 2005 PPP US$), but then falls consistently above that level. This pattern emerges for domestic and transnational terrorism alike. While peaks differ by perpetrator ideology, the inverted U shape also prevails across ideology-specific subsamples. In sum, alleviating poverty may first exacerbate terrorism, contrary to much of the proposed recipes advocated since 9/11. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A purported advantage of secrecy in international politics is its ability to reduce pressures for conflict escalation by obscuring responsibility for hostile actions. Delegating these actions to proxies is one strategy states use to retain plausible deniability and limit escalation risks. Yet, proxies often have strong ties to sponsoring states, raising questions about their ability to influence blame and demands for retaliation. This paper tests these effects by analyzing American responses to hypothetical attacks by Chinese, Russian, and Iranian actors through experiments administered on three surveys. The results show that using proxies for these attacks modestly reduced how much Americans blamed the respective foreign governments, while also limiting demands that their senior leadership be sanctioned. However, the use of proxies did not affect Americans' attitudes toward more forceful responses by the US government. These findings contribute to understanding of how proxies shape plausible deniability and escalation risks in international conflicts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Existing research portrays militant splinter groups as more violent than their parent organizations due to factors like more extreme preferences or capacity-building needs. Though widely held, the assumption that splinters are particularly violent has not been systematically tested. In this paper, we develop and test an alternative explanation for splinter behavior. We argue splinter groups often appear less violent than their parents due to an underlying selection effect. Splinters break away where there are large organizational barriers to internally address a faction's grievances. These barriers tend to exist in well-organized parents that are also capable of high levels of violence. Splinter groups lack this established organizational infrastructure, resulting in lower levels of relative violence. We test this logic with an original dataset on parent and splinter groups and a pair of comparative case studies. We find that splinters are less violent than parent organizations, challenging conventional wisdom. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper revisits the latest statistical evidence for the nuclear emboldenment thesis—nuclear-armed states are more likely to initiate military aggression than non-nuclear states—from (Bell and Miller 2015). If correct, their findings have important theoretical and policy implications regarding the effect of nuclear proliferation on international conflict. This paper shows, however, that Bell and Miller's findings heavily rely on two important components of their statistical analysis: (1) using all state dyad observations, and (2) employing pooled regression models to analyze time-series-cross-sectional (TSCS) data. I argue that those components are based on questionable assumptions on heterogeneity in their dataset. Based on alternative strategies dealing with heterogeneity in dyadic data, my reanalysis shows that the emboldening effect of nuclear weapons is not as robust as originally claimed. Instead, I find the robust deterrent effect of nuclear weapons: nuclear-armed states are less likely to be targeted in military disputes. These findings highlight the need for careful application of quantitative methods to produce a more robust understanding of nuclear issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Can an individual impact a phenomenon as overwhelming and complex as war? Do leaders impact interstate war dynamics? Leaders high in grandiose narcissism focus their efforts on maintaining their inflated self-image during war by striving desperately for victory. While most leaders sacrifice their historical image for state interests, more narcissistic leaders only exit wars if they "win", or overcome threats to their self-image. Narcissists essentially ignore revealed information and create deadlock to avoid looking like losers. In other words, narcissistic leaders encourage us to look beyond traditional rationalist models of wartime dynamics. This paper analyzes United States' interstate war duration from 1897 to 2007 and finds support for the argument that more narcissistic United States presidents extend war duration. This paper also compares Eisenhower's handling of the Korean War and Nixon's handling of the Vietnam War as an illustrative probe of causal mechanisms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the escalation dynamics of cyber attacks. Two main theories have been advanced. First, "means-based" theory argues attack type determines response; cyber attacks are less likely to escalate than kinetic attacks. Second, "effects-based" theory argues an attack's material consequences determine the likelihood of retaliation. We advance a third perspective, arguing that the covertness of an attack has the largest effect on its propensity towards escalation. We identify two characteristics of covertness that affect support for retaliation: the certainty of attribution and its timing. We use a survey experiment to assess public support for retaliation, while varying the means, effects, timing, and attribution certainty of attacks. We find no evidence for the effects-based approach, instead finding high levels of support for retaliation regardless of an attack's scale. We find that the most significant contributor to support for retaliation is an attack's covertness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Standard economic theory would predict that costly demands placed by the United Nations on its members should be rewarded. Similarly, when rewards are not attractive enough, countries are not expected to comply with such demands. In this paper, we study whether the rewards offered by the United Nations are seats at the Security Council. We show empirically that countries that have greater demands placed upon them by Security Council resolutions are more likely to be elected. Furthermore, although countries comply with resolutions leading up to their election, compliance decreases after they are elected. Finally, we show that countries that have not been in the Security Council recently, and thus are due for election, have additional requests made of them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How does organized crime affect foreign direct investment (FDI) in developing countries? Some research examines the effects of crime, such as homicide rates, on FDI. However, we know little about how organized crime in particular might affect such investment. This paper examines organized crime and FDI in Mexican states between 2000 and 2018. This case is important because Mexico is one of the top global recipients of FDI. At the same time, criminal violence has killed hundreds of thousands of people in Mexico in recent years, and scholars seek to understand the violence's wider effects. We explain how organized crime competition, as opposed to crime generally, should shape investors' decisions. Analyses using original data on criminal organization territory find that higher numbers of criminal groups are associated with lower levels of new FDI. Other measures of crime, such as homicide rates or crime rates, are not associated with foreign investment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the effects of foreign direct investment (FDI) on domestic terrorism. Using a cross-national, time-series analysis of 114 countries from 1991–2017, and employing structural equation modeling to test a number of mediating factors, we find that the impact of FDI on domestic terrorism depends on the host state's level of economic development. For host countries at higher-income levels, FDI boosts economic development and global integration promoting prosperity, increasing counterterrorism resources, and reducing the economic grievances that foster terrorism. Conversely, for lower-income host countries, increased FDI fuels higher domestic terrorism, as it intensifies clashes between traditional and modern elements within society, raises economic discrimination, heightens perceptions of economic insecurity, and subsequently leads to grievances directed against the state. Our results indicate a curvilinear relationship between FDI inflows and domestic terrorism, suggesting that FDI produces a double-edged sword between promoting economic development and increasing domestic terrorism in host states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Afghanistan, Libya, Liberia and beyond, armed rebellions have begun when armies fell apart. When does this occur? This paper conducts a large-N analysis of these army-splinter rebellions, distinct from both non-military rebellions from below and from coups, using new data. It finds that they follow a logic of state breakdown focusing on regime characteristics (personalist regimes and the loss of superpower support at the end of the Cold War) rather than drivers of mass mobilization from below. In contrast, these regime-level factors matter much less for the non-military rebellions from below that dominate theorizing about civil war origins. This paper also shows that one option for military rebels lies in not attempting a coup but instead heading straight into a rebellion. This paper thus distinguishes highly different paths to armed conflict, validates the state breakdown approach to why armies fall apart, and extends the well-known tradeoff between coups and civil wars. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why do some international rivalries last longer than others? Rivalry literature focuses on the dyadic interactions within rivalries, but most rivalries have been connected to other rivalries. This paper examines a rivalry's overlapping immediate strategic environment focusing on the countries directly connected via rivalries or alliances. Specifically, I consider how rivals are connected to third parties as common enemies, common friends, or mixed. I focus on three mechanisms to explain the third parties' influence on the focal rivalry. First, a rivalry is more likely to end when it has common allies (information flow) or common enemies (prioritization). Second, a rivalry with mixed third parties is more likely to endure (stable blocs). Analyses of rivalry duration show that the duration of minor-minor rivalries is more likely to be influenced by common allies and mixed third parties, while that of major-minor rivalries is more likely to be affected by common enemies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is limited evidence that reliance on foreign aid from Western donors compels repressive governments to embrace democratic reforms and respect citizens' rights. However, donors have another, potentially more powerful source of financial leverage: debt relief. This paper exploits two features of the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) debt relief initiative, launched by the International Monetary Fund and World Bank in 1996, to probe whether Western leverage has constrained repression across Africa. First, the Bretton Woods institutions initiated debt relief negotiations with virtually all African governments. Second, many recipients were in power long before HIPC negotiations began and remained after they concluded. Using a differences-in-differences estimator, I show that the daily rate of repression fell by between 10% and 30% during debt relief negotiations. This effect holds across autocracies and democracies, and during periods of sustained protests. When debt crises were more severe, debt relief negotiations were even more constraining. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigate whether the threat of recruitment by rebel groups spurs domestic and international migration. The existing literature on wartime displacement has largely focused on potential victims of violence. We argue that alongside potential victims, we should expect to see the out-migration of individuals who are attractive to the rebels as potential recruits. To test this hypothesis, we draw on original survey data collected in the context of the MFDC insurgency in southern Senegal. Causal identification stems from instrumenting recruitment threat with the density of the local forest canopy cover. Analyzing data from 3,200 respondents and over 24,000 family members, we show that individuals who fit the recruitment profiles of rebel groups are more likely to leave and be sent away by their families. Our paper contributes micro-evidence for a mechanism linking violent conflict to migration, which so far has received scant attention, and provides a deeper understanding of the composition of refugee flows. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Foreign electoral interventions have attracted greater attention since the Russian intervention in the 2016 U.S. elections. Even though the United States has a long history of intervening in other countries' elections, evidence about what drives public support for U.S. foreign electoral intervention is scarce. This paper uses a new set of surveys and experiments to test hypotheses about what drives the American public's views of U.S. electoral interventions abroad. We find that there is no taboo against such U.S. interference in the American public. However, public support for U.S. election interference is not automatic. Respondents do not support interventions solely to advance U.S. interests or to protect democracy, although they prove more supportive of interventions on behalf of democratic parties that also favor U.S. interests or to protect longstanding democracies. Finally, support for an intervention rises when it is framed as responding to the actions of a great-power rival such as Russia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Organizations that have a clear and unambiguous focus acquire greater legitimacy, which raises their capacity for mobilization. Using data on terrorist organizations, this paper explores two empirical implications of this claim: A terrorist organization's survival and lethality will be threatened to the extent that it has an ambiguous ideological identity. Analyses using panel data from the Extended Data on Terrorist Groups (EDTG) test these arguments for 474 global terrorist organizations observed over 1970–2016. The key empirical predictions are that ambiguity inhibits lethality and curtails survival. This paper finds support for these claims, controlling for competition from rivals and allies, ethno-nationalist or Islamic ideological orientation, and a variety of other measures of organizational capacity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why do some immigrant groups succeed in influencing the U.S. government to impose economic sanctions on their former dictators, while others do not? This paper begins by noting that the president is the pivotal player in sanctions policy and that presidents cater to voters in swing states. Therefore, a diaspora's proportion of the swing-state electorate should determine whether the American government imposes sanctions on their former homeland. Considering dictatorships from 1946 to 2005, this paper finds that a one-percentage-point increase in the diaspora's proportion of the swing-state electorate increases the probability of regime-change sanctions by 11 percentage points. It then calculates causal estimates of the effectiveness of these sanctions on regime change. Using the diaspora's proportion of the swing-state electorate as an instrumental variable for the presence of economic sanctions, it finds that sanctions do not have a positive, statistically-significant impact on regime change while a negative impact is plausible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars of civil wars have long argued that non-state actors can use selective punishment to reduce collaboration with state adversaries. However, there is little systematic evidence confirming this claim, nor investigation into the mechanisms at play. In this paper, we provide such evidence from the drone war in Pakistan. Militants in Pakistan's tribal areas engaged in a brutal counterespionage campaign with the aim of reducing collaboration with the United States. Our analysis combines a novel dataset of collaborator killings with data on drone strike outcomes. We find that strikes killed half as many militant leaders and fighters following collaborator killings and that this suppressive effect likely works by deterring spying in the future. Beyond providing an empirical confirmation of the selective punishment hypothesis, our paper suggests an unacknowledged vulnerability of the drone program to reprisals against local allies and collaborators that limits its effectiveness as a long-term tool of counterterrorism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Exile is often considered a useful political solution that can coax violent or unpopular leaders out of power. But these "golden parachutes" may come with a price. Specifically, do exiled leaders increase instability back in their home countries? In this paper, we outline the mechanisms through which exiled rulers can destabilize their home state's politics and ultimately increase conflict. We present two types of evidence to support the argument. The first is a cross-national analysis that uses our original Leaders in Exile dataset to examine how exiled leaders shape the likelihood of civil conflicts, coups, and protests. The second is a cross-leader analysis designed to minimize inferential concerns by comparing cases where leaders escape into exile with cases where leaders are killed. In both tests, we find that exiled leaders are linked to political instability in their home countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why do lawmakers resort to physical violence in some parliaments but not in others? Brawls not only constitute a stark break with democratic norms and ideals, they also affect voter perceptions and have been seen as a bellwether for conflict and democratic backsliding. Yet, the phenomenon remains poorly understood. This paper introduces a new, original dataset recording reported incidents of physical fights in parliaments across the globe between 1980 and 2018 that includes almost four times more cases of violence than existing data. Theoretically, we argue that levels of democracy and the composition of parliament should drive violence. The analysis shows that fighting is most common in countries that are neither very autocratic nor very democratic, in fragmented parliaments, and in chambers with slim majorities. The findings have implications for the study of (de-)democratization, political instability, and the design of democratic institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Smart weapons represent a key element of military power for countries around the world, and nothing symbolizes them more than smart bombs—the guided aerial bombs that the United States debuted in the Vietnam War. Yet, international relations scholars know little about these weapons and what explains their proliferation. In this paper, we theorize about the key drivers of smart bomb proliferation, including an interaction between the security environment, regime type, and the interest of states in precision to help them follow the law of war. We then introduce a new dataset on smart bombs from 1960-2017. The results show that internal and external security threats make countries more likely to acquire smart bombs. These effects interact with regime type and whether countries are more likely to ratify treaties related to the law of war. GDP per capita and economic capacity also appears fundamental to explaining smart bomb adoption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The coronavirus pandemic has fundamentally shifted the way human beings interact, both as individuals and groups, in the face of such a widespread outbreak. This paper seeks to investigate the effects of COVID-19 on intergroup emotions and attitudes within an intractable intergroup conflict, specifically, through the lens of the Korean conflict. Using a two-wave, cross-sectional design, this study was able to track the profound psychological changes in intergroup emotions and attitudes both prior to the pandemic and during its onslaught. Results of these two wave representative samples show that South Korean citizens demonstrated higher levels of fear of their neighbors in North Korea after the outbreak of COVID-19 than before. In turn, this led to increased societal support of hostile government policies towards North Koreans. Conversely, the same participants exhibited higher levels of empathy towards North Koreans during the pandemic, which led to a higher willingness to collaborate with their outgroup. This dual effect on intergroup emotions within intractable conflicts brings forth new avenues from which societies may be able to restrain the destructive influence of the COVID-19 threat on intergroup relations — as well as harvesting its constructive potential for reconciling warring intergroup relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper puts forth a theory explaining domestic backlash against international investment law by connecting media coverage—specifically the bias in the news media's selection of international disputes—to public opinion formation towards international agreements. To test our theory, we examine both the content and effects of the media's reporting on international disputes, focusing on the increasingly controversial form known as investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS). We find that newspaper outlets in both the United States and Canada have a bias in favor of covering disputes filed against their home country as opposed to those filed by home country firms. Using two national survey experiments fielded in the United States and Canada, we further find that the bias in news story selection has a strong negative effect on attitudes towards ISDS and related agreements, especially among highly nationalistic individuals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Civilian control of the military is central to the making of security policy, ensuring that civilian officials and the elected leaders that appoint them oversee and decide military affairs. This paper exposes a challenge to civilian control in the United States that originates in the disparaging attitudes military personnel hold toward civilian society. We argue that when military personnel view military culture as superior, they are more likely to view civilian political leaders as illegitimate and in turn to favor actions that undermine civilian control. We develop a typology of civilian control in which military officers can constrain, contest and limit civilian authority. Our empirical analysis provides strong and consistent evidence of the corrosive effects of military superiority on civilian control across three surveys of U.S. military personnel: the 1998-99 TISS survey of 2901 military officers, a 2014 YouGov of 275 veterans, and an original 2020 survey of 770 West Point cadets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite a surge in research on post-conflict reconciliation, the specific factors which promote reconciliation remain a subject of debate. In particular, the possible role of shared language in fostering reconciliation has received little scholarly attention. This paper examines two possible channels through which shared language may facilitate reconciliation, and tests these using a new survey dataset of 446 individuals from Serbia. As expected, the results indicated that shared language reduces the negative effect of conflict on intergroup trust and friendship, two crucial components of reconciliation. Furthermore, the results suggest that in the former Yugoslavia this effect is generated by the communication-enabling aspects of a shared language, rather than its other properties such as acting as a marker of ethnic or cultural identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we analyze the relationship between ISIS propaganda content and ISIS-inspired attacks by those outside of the group's control. We examine the content of ISIS' English language magazines, as well as speeches by two of its top leaders. We find that statements made about enemy countries in most contexts are not associated with a higher likelihood of violence in those countries. However, when a country is mentioned in ISIS propaganda in the context of its participation in the air campaign, this corresponds to an increased likelihood that the country will experience a violent attack. This suggests that propaganda highlighting key military adversaries may play a role in directing attackers that are outside the control of the organization's hierarchy to the group's preferred targets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Instead of attacking their adversaries directly, states often do so indirectly by supporting rebel groups. While these support relationships vary considerably, existing research lacks a comprehensive account thereof. To explain states' choice of support, we suggest differentiating between two modes of support relationships according to the control opportunities they offer states over rebels: while delegation enables "hands-on" control, "hands-off" orchestration allows for plausible deniability and does not harm rebels' local legitimacy. We argue that sponsors prefer orchestration when "hands-on" control can be substituted by goal alignment or competition; and they prefer delegation when the conflict is highly salient. Tests using global data for the period 1975-2009 support the first two expectations. Surprisingly, states' capabilities also render "hands-off" orchestration more likely. The paper advances the understanding of external rebel support by transferring insights from indirect governance theory to the study of indirect wars and putting it to statistical test. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Surveying civil war in the world today is striking in terms of how often religious cleavages and grievances have become central to armed conflict. How are the causes and outcomes of religious civil wars different than other civil wars, if at all? Is Islam implicated for the contemporary surge in religious civil war? The first section reviews the literature and addresses the importance of religion for civil war. I then introduce a dataset and describe key trends in religious civil war in the third section, while in the fourth section I present tests of whether Muslim or Arab Muslim societies in particular are more prone to religious strife. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications of the main findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why do some militant organizations participate in human trafficking? We investigate this question by introducing a new dataset that records insurgent organizations' involvement in four types of human trafficking: sexual exploitation, forced recruitment, slavery, and kidnapping. Marrying our data to the BAAD2I population of insurgent organizations, we uncover the organizational attributes related to human trafficking. We find that groups with wide alliance networks and territorial control are more likely to commit human trafficking. Organizations that are losing command of the territory and suffering rank-and-file losses are also more likely to turn to human trafficking. Our study sheds theoretical light on insurgent groups' involvement in crime. It also contributes to the empirical scholarship on sexual violence by violent groups by studying different forms of human trafficking in both conflict and non-conflict environments. Our paper presents an original dataset and empirical analysis of insurgent groups' human trafficking patterns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on rebel behavior during conflicts has traditionally focused on the use of violent tactics. However, evidence from several intrastate wars suggests that armed groups also occasionally employ general strikes—a method of civil resistance that has typically been associated with nonviolent groups. But when do rebels resort to general strikes? I argue that these tactics have a particular function which can offset potential risks for rebels after they have suffered losses in previous battles: Through general strikes, rebels signal sustained authority to the local population. The argument is tested for districts in Eastern India using newly compiled, disaggregated data on contentious action during the Maoist conflict. The paper contributes to a burgeoning literature on wartime civilian activism in two ways: First, it shows that armed groups themselves rely situationally on civilian mobilization. Second, it investigates the effect of conditions endogenous to the conflict on these tactical choices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates how violence in self-determination conflicts influences bilateral foreign policy. I argue that a general preference for international stability causes third parties to support self-determination groups when violence reaches high levels, when they gain territorial control, and when major powers officially recognize. In these conditions, third parties perceive a stable new status quo to be nigh: unrecognized statehood. Ongoing instability encourages foreign policy that encourages the development of the de facto state, even when third parties have no intention of recognizing them as states. Importantly, I also show that targeting civilians erodes third-party support of the perpetrating side. I demonstrate these relationships using a latent variable model of international sovereignty of aspiring states, built on bilateral military, diplomatic, and economic exchange data. My model and tests provide new insight into how aspiring state actors become increasingly eligible for recognition through the tacit support of third-party states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To meet the rising demand for minerals, mining companies have ventured into fragile areas, often at the expense of artisanal miners. This has led to grievances, and at times violence. Who among the aggrieved intend to use violence? How can peace be maintained? This paper uses individual-level data to address these questions. Among a sample of 469 about-to-be-evicted artisanal miners in Eastern Congo, we inquire about the intention to engage in several forms of violence. We identify how this intention varies with miners' past exposure to violence and attitudes towards policies that seek social peace. A large proportion of miners intends to destroy the company's property, attack its employees, use fire arms, or join an armed group. These would-be-fighters are motivated by grievances, as well as material and social incentives. Our results contribute to understanding the micro-motivations underpinning the local resource curse and entail concrete lessons for mining policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A number of proposals for reducing tensions with North Korea have discussed alterations to the program of joint military exercises (JMEs) that South Korea holds. North Korea has also repeatedly called for a reduction or secession of JMEs. Would limiting or halting JMEs be a useful concession for securing a reduction of tensions on the peninsula? We argue that JMEs do not deter North Korea but, instead, provoke provocative rhetoric and actions, demonstrating that North Korea views JMEs as a serious threat to its security. In this paper, we establish a relationship between JMEs and North Korea's actions. In response to a JME, North Korea can issue warnings or threats as well as take costly signals such as conducting missile or nuclear tests. Using new data on JMEs and North Korean behavior, we find that North Korea systematically responds with aggression to South Korean JMEs. Moreover, we find that the intensity of North Korea's responses to JMEs is driven by the severity of the threat particular exercises pose, indicating that North Korea responds to JMEs as serious security threats. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article introduces the special feature “Leaders, Crisis Behavior, and International Conflict.” Individual leaders play a central role in world politics. Yet, for the last several decades, international relations scholarship has downplayed or ignored leaders, focusing instead on system-wide variables and domestic political institutions. A new wave of research, however, has helped to reintroduce the leader-level back into models of international politics. The papers that constitute this special feature represent some of the cutting-edge work in this area. This introductory paper traces the evolution of research on leaders in international relations and provides a conceptual framework that highlights different approaches to the study of leaders. It also distills several key themes that emerge from the papers, in addition to offering directions for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Do human rights organizations (HROs) aid the consolidation of democracy in post-authoritarian states? It is often argued that these groups contribute to accountability for past repression. Yet HROs can have unintended consequences if they threaten the interests of powerful domestic institutions. This paper develops a simple model of human rights activism in post-authoritarian states. Civilian governments in these states trade off support from the military and human rights activists which seek to punish the military. Counterintuitively, the model predicts human rights activists make amnesty for the military more likely, as activists tempt the government to punish the military and the military becomes more likely to intervene in politics. The model's implications are tested using a sample of post-authoritarian states from 1970-2010. Results show that more HRO influence increases the likelihood of amnesty laws and military involvement in government, though HROs may achieve justice through pathways such as truth commissions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social scientists have proposed myriad solutions for mitigating intergroup conflicts. While the literature, such as studies on intergroup contact theory, focuses on intergroup relations, we argue that it is important not to ignore intragroup relations that may benefit or undermine the improvement of intergroup relations at the same time. In this paper, we investigate a typology of eight mechanisms for the behavior of intergroup and intragroup relations. Specifically, we focused on interactions in a triad consisting of an actor paired up with two alters—one ingroup and one outgroup. The triadic network enabled us to theorize and test how intergroup and intragroup relations coevolve. We conducted a vignette experiment to test the intergroup relationship between mainland Chinese and Taiwanese. We found strong evidence for one mechanism for improving intergroup hostility: indirect reciprocity—people rewarded the outgroup for behaving friendly to their ingroup peers. Using agent-based simulation, we predicted that the triadic effect found in the one-shot experiment can continuously improve and stabilize intergroup relations over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper introduces transnational terrorist hostage event (TTHE) data set from 1978 to 2018. TTHE includes up to 50 variables for each of its 1,974 incidents, based on information in media sources. Four types of hostage incidents—kidnappings, barricade missions, skyjackings, and non-aerial hijackings—are recorded for a global sample. Select key variables include the number of hostages, targets of abductors' demands, terrorist behavior in negotiations, amount of money ransom demands, other kinds of demands, duration of incident, and the outcome of negotiations. Our hostage data set also indicates location start and end, attack force size, victim numbers, casualties, weapons used, and logistical outcome. TTHE is tied to the International Terrorism: Attributes of Terrorist Events (ITERATE). We display interesting features of hostage incidents over time and an application of TTHE to identify the determinants of logistical and negotiation successes for hostage missions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The US engages in extensive training and education of foreign militaries, often through exchange programs carried out at the different military services' staff and war colleges. Researchers have recently explored the way in which military training can affect civil-military relations in the host country, but not much work has studied whether military training actually leads to increased US influence in these states. This paper proposes a soft-power theoretical framework to argue that foreign military training can create affinity for the U.S. that can in turn result in more pro-U.S. voting behavior in the UN General Assembly. It further expands on the military training literature by distinguishing between different military training programs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political scientists and policy-makers have long argued that state weakness leads to civil conflict while enhancing state power helps prevent violence. Why, then, has increased state capacity worldwide recently coincided with more civil conflicts? This study argues that enhanced state presence at the sub-national level—a symptom of growing state capacity—may induce violent resistance from the established non-state powers such as local leaders and communities in the short term. Empirically, I conduct two analyses, one at the province level and the other at the ethnic group level. To measure state presence, I use accuracy of census data in the first analysis and global ground transportation data in the second analysis. Results demonstrate that increased state presence triggers civil conflict, particularly in the first five years of such increasing state presence, and this effect is stronger in remote and ethnically heterogeneous regions. Evidence also suggests that ethnic groups settled in peripheral regions are prominent resisters to state penetration. This paper thus expands prior understanding of the role of state power in civil conflicts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to the resource curse theory, persistent violence in developing areas results from rebels' ability to finance warfare with natural resource revenues. Surprisingly, this overlooks the complexities of raising revenue from a mobile mining population that values security as well as income. The literature thus neglects a fundamental question: what are the incentives of rebel groups to prevent or perpetuate conflict in mining areas? This paper delineates a rational to both increase and decrease violence. Protecting a mine should allow rebels to extract taxes in return. Simultaneously, to maintain this demand for security, rebels may need to destabilize the wider area. The hypotheses are tested with novel data on rebel taxation at over 3'000 artisanal mines in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo. Supporting the hypotheses, the results show that rebel-taxed mines appear exempt from violence nearby but imperiled at the perimeter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]