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Recent research has investigated the relative success of peacekeeping operations and external interventions in stabilizing post-conflict states, preventing the return to armed hostilities between belligerents, and reducing civilian abuse during civil conflict. This research has shed light on important theoretical and policy relevant issues. However, scholars have largely neglected to evaluate the role of peacekeeping in protecting civilians during the notoriously unstable postconflict period. Even after active conflict between belligerents has ended government forces and rebel factions may persist in abusing civilians in order to reinforce conflict gains, shape the postconflict environment, or exact revenge for wartime grievances. This analysis investigates the effectiveness of peacekeeping missions in protecting civilians during the post-conflict "peace". Using newly collected data on the number and type of United Nations peacekeeping personnel commitments along with civilian victimization data for all African conflicts between 1990 and 2010, we find that greater numbers of UN peacekeeping troops reduce both rebel and government factions' use of violence against civilians. By contrast, the commitment of larger numbers of UN observers is positively correlated with violence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates two closely related aspects of civil conflict. First, it examines the manner in which regime-sponsored violence toward civilians influences the trajectory and outcome of civil conflicts. Second, it addresses the motivations for such violence. With respect to the first issue, I argue that under certain conditions mass violence against civilians is effective in deterring rebellion and achieving regime victory. Specifically, the success of mass killing as a victory strategy depends critically on the extant strength of the insurgency. When insurgents are weak and fail to provide an "exit option" for civilians, government violence can succeed in quashing the rebellion. However, once the rebels have gained traction within the population and military capabilities, the utility of violence quickly diminishes. In the second, I argue that the decision to resort to violence is based on both the threat the insurgents pose to the regime as well as the state's political institutions. While threat general incentivizes regime violence, the perception of threat and the leader's ability to make accommodations varies across regime types. Moreover, the decision to engage is mass killing rather than less violent strategies is partially endogenous to the conflict environment. Stronger insurgencies are less likely to accept negotiated settlements or at least are more likely to demands larger concessions from the regime. As threat and the cost of concession increase, autocratic leaders are more likely to gamble on state violence because diverting resources from the coalition of core constituents raises the likelihood of ouster at a rate similar to the increase in the likelihood that violence against civilians contributes to rebel victory. Consequently, increasing threat leads to higher levels of violence against civilians in more autocratic regimes, but does not produce a similar effect in more liberal regimes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The theoretical relationship between insurgent power (or capabilities) and violence is not clear. On the one hand, more troops may lead to more death; yet on the other, as insurgents' power within the conflict increases their incentive for violence against civilians should decline. Thus, there exists a tension between the ability and the incentive to kill. Aggregate assessments of insurgent capability are largely insufficient for explaining violence against civilians because they cannot speak to this tension. Whether groups choose to indulge in violence or not is more likely related to the manner in which specific components of power affect a groups opportunities to engage in violence and its willingness to do so. Disaggregating insurgent power resources and examining their interplay offers new insights into the motives for civilian killing as well as providing additional empirical evidence for existing theories. I test hypotheses regarding the relationship between these disaggregated strength components and insurgent violence using a new dyadic dataset on insurgent characteristics and recent data on civilian targeting in civil war. The results reveal that groups with high levels of combat capabilities kill larger numbers of civilians. However, strong popular support dampens the effect of high combat capabilities on insurgent violence. Additionally, insurgents that enjoy effective control over territory and a relatively high degree of central control over their forces use comparatively less violence than those that do not. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent analyses demonstrate that inter-group dynamics among rebels have important implications for conflict processes. Fragmentation, factionalism, and competition among independent non-state actor organizations shape the strategies adopted by states and rebel factions as well as conflict outcomes. We expand on this literature by examining the influence of competition among rebel groups on civilian victimization. We argue that volatility within a conflict system contributes to an increase in civilian targeting by rebel groups. More specifically, the likelihood of a given rebel group victimizing civilians is partly a function of threat to the group's access to necessary conflict resources, including civilian support, trade in lucrative commodities, and control of territory. The emergence of rival challengers represents a threat to the existing group's market share within the conflict system. The "shock" created by the entry of new actors as well as the decline in market share the new group produces temporary increases in civilian targeting. We evaluate hypotheses drawn from this argument using monthly conflict events data for a sample of African civil conflicts between 1989 and 2008. The results of the regression analyses support these hypotheses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explains insurgent violence toward civilians by unpacking the endogenous relationship between insurgent capacity and the use of violence against civilians. Violence and security represent selective incentives that insurgents manipulate to encourage civilian support. Weak insurgent groups facing collective action problems have an incentive to target civilians because they lack the capacity to provide sufficient benefits to entice loyalty. Stronger rebels, by contrast, can more easily tap into their resource base and employ a mix of selective incentives and selective repression to compel civilian support. This relationship, however, is conditioned by the counterinsurgency strategies employed by the government, which themselves are often rooted in the capacity of the state. The empirical tests provide support for the theory. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that extant theories explaining violence perpetrated against civilians are insufficient when taken independently; however, they are compatible and highly explanatory when viewed as part of a strategic process. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The literature on political violence and repression unsurprisingly shows that civil conflict is a primary predictor of state-sponsored political terror against its citizens. There is, however, notable variation in the levels of violence employed by states in response to such conflicts. While some states respond with extensive violence such as summary executions, scorched earth policies, widespread torture, or mass disappearances, others conduct counterinsurgency operations with significantly greater discretion, limiting both the scope and the severity of violence and generally respecting the rule of law. This paper investigates this variation. In addition to identifying the institutional and ideological factors that condition state responses, it argues that mass violence is a strategic defensive position adopted by the state. Specifically, the perception of rebel threat to the extant regime is the most important predictor of mass state-sponsored violence in the context of civil conflict. As fears of regime collapse or the fragmentation of the state increase, leaders employ increasingly indiscriminate violence, not only in insurgent areas, but against citizens throughout the country. States respond to conflict in close proximity to major cities, high levels of combat deaths, and rising economic instability with increasingly indiscriminate violence. By contrast, separatist conflicts, insurgencies on the periphery, low intensity conflicts, or those that do not destabilize the economy result in comparatively more selective ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Because guerrilla movements typically require at least nominal support from local populations, civilian victimization would seem to be a suboptimal strategy for rebel groups. This paper builds on the recent "logic of violence" research agenda to explain the strategic motivations for rebel violence against civilians. It does so by addressing the endogenous relationship between insurgent capacity and the use of violence against civilians as a war strategy. Weak insurgent groups facing collective action problems have an incentive to target civilians for violence. Stronger groups, by contrast, can more easily tap into their resource base and rely on the provision of selective incentives and the use of selective violence to compel civilian support. The relationship between strength and strategy, however, is conditioned by the counterinsurgency strategies employed by the government, which themselves are often rooted in the capacity of the state. Weak insurgent groups have a strategic incentive to rely on indiscriminate violence in order to demonstrate state weakness and provoke a violent reaction from the state. This strategy is most effective when the regime "takes the bait," thereby driving civilians into the arms of rebels. State-sponsored violence drives down the relative costs of the incentives insurgents must offer to civilian in exchange for their support, and, by extension, diminishes the returns to insurgents for using violence as a means of recruitment and control. Thus, stronger insurgent groups are less likely to rely on violence against civilians as a strategy of recruitment, but this relationship intensifies in the context of violent counterinsurgency strategies. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based in the theoretical and empirical work conducted on the correlates of human rights as well as policy-oriented research on the relationship between foreign aid and democratization, this paper assesses the impact of OECD official development assistance (ODA) on the promotion of labor rights in developing countries between 1985 and 2001. The findings here indicate that bilateral and multilateral OECD development assistance to these states is positively associated with government respect for core labor rights. However, disaggregating respect for workers' rights into "legal" protections and "practices" reveals some variation in the manner in which ODA impacts state respect for core labor rights. In general, the results of the disaggregated model show that ODA positively influences state labor practices but may not affect the laws on the books. This result is sensitive to model specification, however, and alternative specifications suggest that ODA may positively affect both laws and practices. In either case, the results presented herein reveal that foreign assistance can improve the rights of workers in the developing world. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While some groups work hard to foster collaborative ties with civilians, others engage in egregious abuses and war crimes. We argue that foreign state funding for rebel organizations greatly reduces the incentives of militant groups to the 'win the hearts and minds' of civilians because it diminishes the need to collect resources from the population. However, unlike other lucrative resources, foreign funding of rebel groups must be understood in principal-agent terms. Some external principals--namely, democracies and states with strong human rights lobbies-- are more concerned with atrocities in the conflict zone than others. Multiple state principals also lead to abuse as no single state can effectively restrain the organization. We test these conjectures with new data on foreign support for rebel groups and data on one-sided violence against civilians. Our results provide support for these hypotheses. Most notably, we find strong evidence that principal characteristics help influence agent actions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we examine how the past alliance behavior of nations affects the likelihood that these states will be involved in alliance formation. We contend that nations evaluate the reputations of potential allies when searching for alliance partners. Reputation information is processed by governments along with other immediate concerns. By introducing a model and developing subsequent measures of reputational alliance histories we improve upon our current understanding of the factors that drive alliance formation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]