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Post-election violence is a common form of conflict, but its underlying mechanisms are not well understood. Using data from the 2007 Philippine mayoral elections, this paper provides evidence that post-election violence is particularly intense after narrow victories by incumbents. Using a density test, the study shows that incumbents were substantially more likely to win narrow victories than their challengers, a pattern consistent with electoral manipulation. There is no evidence that the increase in post-election violence is related to the incumbents’ political platform or their performance in past elections. These results provide support for the notion that post-election violence is triggered by election fraud or by the failure of democratic ways of removing unpopular incumbents from office.

The literature relating economic activity to political violence posits greedy rebels (Collier, 2000) but not greedy governments. Could capturing tax revenue motivate governments to step up their counter insurgency operations, just as extortion motivates rebel violence? Panel data on political violence in the Philippines distinguish government from rebel attacks, which we link to private investment across 70 provinces. To formally explore these data we expand an established theory of asymmetric substate conflict –the “information-centric” model, adding firms, investment, taxation and predation (i.e., extortionary violence by rebels in response to investment) to the interplay of government, rebels and civilians, generating testable implications. The data show that increases in investment predict increases in both government-initiated attacks and rebel-initiated attacks. In the year following increased investment government attacks decrease. In the context of our expanded model, these empirical results suggest that both rebels and governments contest economic rents.

We develop and test an economic theory of insurgency motivated by the informal literature and by recent military doctrine. We model a three-way contest between violent rebels, a government seeking to minimize violence by mixing service provision and coercion, and civilians deciding whether to share information about insurgents. We test the model using panel data from Iraq on violence against Coalition and Iraqi forces, reconstruction spending, and community characteristics (sectarian status, socio-economic grievances, and natural resource endowments). Our results support the theory's predictions: improved service provision reduces insurgent violence, particularly for smaller projects and since the "surge" began in 2007.

The qualities and structures of a state's internal security forces have a significant impact on reducing the risks and overall casualties from insurgent violence. To test this argument, I introduce a new micro-conflict dataset on counterinsurgency operations in the Philippines between 2001 and 2008 and measure the relationship between conflict deaths and the capacities of small military units tasked with suppressing rebel threats at local levels. My empirical tests isolate qualities of security forces not directly tied to aggregate state resources. I find that small units possessing superior leadership, training, and access to local information are more likely to conduct effective and discriminate counterinsurgency. Deploying locally recruited soldiers with specially trained elite forces is particularly effective at achieving this potent combination of capabilities. These findings demonstrate that variation in the qualities of the military forces tasked with combating insurgent threats affect important conflict outcomes. Significantly, they indicate this variation is not fully determined by factors such as state wealth and level of development and that there is thus a major role for professional training of militaries in reducing the damage from, and possible prospects for, protracted insurgencies and civil wars.