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Two prominent features in current world affairs are the unprecedented level of global economic integration and the growing incidence of intrastate violence. We develop and test a novel argument linking global integration through foreign investment to intrastate armed conflict. The presence of multinational corporations in developing countries can cause market concentration, resulting in high rents. Disputes between governments and would-be challengers over the appropriation of these rents are likely to turn violent, increasing the incidence of armed conflict. State capacity mitigates this positive association between foreign investment and intrastate war. Strong states have the capacity to deter rebellions, address citizens’ demands through institutionalized mechanisms, and credibly commit to the peaceful resolution of conflicts. Using data from developing countries for over four decades and addressing potential endogeneity and selection biases, we find strong support for our hypotheses. Our findings have important implications for understanding the link between economic interdependence and conflict.

Research on the dangers of democratization has long warned of the potential for elections to spark civil conflict. Yet, this work has remained surprisingly isolated from the burgeoning body of rese...

Why do governments choose to fund pro-government militias (PGMs) if doing so could extend costly civil conflict? While PGMs are active in a majority of civil wars, their impact on conflict termination remains poorly understood. We argue that the choice to fund PGMs is a strategic one for states and part of their efforts to influence wartime dynamics and conflict termination. We hypothesize that PGMs’ impact on conflict termination is conditional on whether they are government funded. Government-funded PGMs help states to ward off costly negotiations and encourage the rebellion's gradual dissolution. Using competing risks analyses on civil wars ending between 1981 and 2007, we find robust evidence that PGM funding affects conflict outcomes.

There is a long-running disagreement about how regime type affects a country’s ability to project resolve. Specifically, there is an open question about whether being a democracy helps or hurts a country’s reputation for resolve. I consider this question by directly estimating a state’s reputation for resolve using a unified theoretical and statistical approach. To be precise, I derive an empirical model from a dynamic game of continuous-time bargaining where each side fights in order to build a reputation for resolve. I then fit this model using data on the duration and termination of civil conflicts between 1946 and 2009. I find that while governments tend to have stronger reputations for resolve than the rebels they face, democracies are seen as much less likely to be resolved both prior to and during conflict than their autocratic counterparts. Likewise, democracies are more likely to end a conflict by making a policy change in favor of the rebels than autocracies. Despite these differences, both democracies and autocracies experience a discrete increase in their reputations for resolve once conflict begins, with democracies receiving a much larger boost. As such, these findings contrast with a large literature on democratic credibility theory, while simultaneously providing evidence consistent with some of the logic behind democratic credibility theory.

This paper explores the nature of conflict-related sexual violence committed by the State Armed Forces (FARDC) in the Democratic Republic of Congo, through the application of the general strain theory. Findings show that sexual violence committed by the FARDC is commonly used as a form of personal catharsis and emotional release from perceived strains, as opposed to resulting from sexual desires or external institutional pressures. Further, the most influential contextual elements present in the local context of the FARDC, and which particularly encourage the propagation of sexual violence, include female FARDC soldiers receiving desired military positions, the centrality of strains to personal notions of masculinity and aspirations, the dismantling of social cohesion through patronage networks, and a lack of behavioural coping options. In turn, these factors reduce the efficiency of non-criminal coping strategies. Hence, interventions aimed at reducing the propagation of conflict-related sexual violence may benefit from more bottom-up and inductive approaches improving the individual circumstances of soldiers as opposed to solely focusing upon organisational change and military reform.

The study of civil war recurrence is situated at the intersection of conflict and peacebuilding. These literatures focus on disparate definitions of peace. These literatures provide different explanations for variation in peace stability, and cover a large number of causal factors. We argue that these causal mechanisms are connected and conditioned by public policy. Specifically, we argue that the production and distribution of public goods post-conflict contribute to the maintenance of negative peace by acting as a credible commitment mechanism. In addition, public goods contribute to the building of positive peace when there is shared access to goods and services. We investigate the impact of public goods provision ‒ measured as health funding and distribution ‒ on causal mechanisms including opportunity, grievance, greed, and credible commitments. Using a duration model, we find that health spending, as a measure of public goods provision, is a strong predictor of the durability of peace after civil conflict.

Civil conflicts inevitably have negative consequences with regards to respect for human rights within affected states. Unfortunately, the violation of human rights often does not end with the conflict. What factors explain variation in state repression in post-civil conflict societies? Can international interventions, both civilian and military, improve human rights in states with a history of conflict? Does the size of the intervention matter? We argue that international interventions, including peacekeeping missions and officially directed foreign aid, can reduce physical integrity abuses. This process occurs by simultaneously increasing protections for civilians while also raising the costs of repression to both government leaders and their agents. Human rights abuses will also decrease when there are legal remedies available to vulnerable populations which are bolstered by a strong judicial system. A robust civil society can also discourage human rights abuses by shedding light on these events and providing human rights education. In line with our theoretical argument, we focus on UN peacekeeping missions, especially those with human rights teams, and officially directed foreign aid for legal and security sector reform and NGOs. Using both a treatment effects approach and a continuous dose–response model, we find much support for the implications of our argument.

The issue of human trafficking has received considerable attention in recent years. Despite strong cooperation among countries on the global fight against this gross violation of human rights, differences in national anti-trafficking policy and practices undermine the efficacy of international cooperation on trafficking in persons. This paper seeks to understand determinants of national efforts devoted to the eradication of human trafficking. It argues that civil conflicts impede anti-trafficking efforts of states for their adverse effects on national governments’ abilities and resources to fight against trafficking in persons. Analyses based on data coming from 173 countries over the 2003–2015 period demonstrate that civil conflicts deteriorate anti-trafficking efforts of countries. © 2021 Taylor & Francis.

The objective of this paper is to use an ecological model to consider the association of individual, household and village level factors with the happiness or subjective well-being of working age Muslim adults living in the southernmost provinces of Thailand. A civil conflict has been ongoing in this area with a documented incidence of violence and an associated increase in migration. Data were drawn from two rounds of a probability sample of adult women and men living in 1102 Muslim households. Mixed models were used in the analysis. Positive individual factors related to happiness were secular education, strictness of religious practice, and health. Positive household factors included relative household wealth and family support. Positive village factors included the village migration level and community support. Violence was associated with reduced happiness, especially for women. However, the adult residents of the southernmost provinces maintain a positive sense of well being.

We investigate the potential relationship between female combatants and conflict duration. We contend that recruiting female combatants extends war duration via its influence on state–rebel bargaining. The recruitment and deployment of female combatants contribute to divergent perspectives between the rebels and the incumbent regarding the rebel group’s capabilities and the depth of its resolve, which impedes successful bargaining and extends the duration of the conflict. Results from duration analyses using data on the estimated prevalence of female combatants in rebel groups active between 1964 and 2011 support our central hypothesis and suggest that the use of female fighters is associated with longer conflicts.

O presente artigo tem por objetivo demonstrar como o conceito de Origem – Ursprung – conforme preconizado por Walter Benjamin foi utilizado no romance Se o passado não tivesse asas, do escritor angolano Pepetela, como forma para superar a guerra como catástrofe. Pepetela é o mais importante escritor angolano e ganhador do Prêmio Camões em 1997. Angola foi colonizada por Portugal. Tornou-se independente, após 14 anos de conflito. A independência lançou o país na guerra civil, entre MPLA, UNITA e FNLA, que durou até 1990. No entanto, a guerra foi retomada em 1992 e só se extinguiu em 2002. No romance, Himba é a menina que sobrevive à explosão do caminhão que levava sua família para Luanda. Mantém-se viva, graças aos restos de comida dos restaurantes locais jogados num contentor de lixo. Em 2002, ela constata a morte de toda a sua família, após visitar o seu antigo município natal. Resolve alterar sua identidade, passando a se chamar Sofia Moreira. Neste ato, entendo estar-se realizando o Ursprung. Ela começa a trabalhar em um restaurante. Torna-se sócia e depois proprietária do estabelecimento. Para tanto, subtrai os direitos de Ezequiel, o filho deficiente da antiga dona do restaurante. Ao se tornar Sofia, ela deixa para trás a vítima e se torna a predadora, sobrevivendo à guerra e podendo superar finalmente o conflito civil. Usamos a contribuição teórica de Walter Benjamin, Kwane Anthony Appiah, Stuart Hall, Michael Löwy, Jeanne Marie Gagnebin, Georges Didi-Huberman e Renata Flávia da Silva. Palavras-chave: Se o passado não tivesse asas. Pepetela. Origem. Guerra. Catástrofe.

We examine the research protocols in Blair and Sambanis’ recent article on forecasting civil wars, where they argue that their theory-based model can predict civil war onsets better than several atheoretical alternatives or a model with country-structural factors. We find that there are several important mistakes and that their key finding is entirely conditional on the use of parametrically smoothed ROC curves when calculating accuracy, rather than the standard empirical ROC curves that dominate the literature. Fixing these mistakes results in a reversal of their claim that theory-based models of escalation are better at predicting onsets of civil war than other kinds of models. Their model is outperformed by several of the ad hoc, putatively non-theoretical models they devise and examine. More importantly, we argue that rather than trying to contrast the roles of theory and “atheoretical” machine learning in predictive modeling, it would be more productive to focus on ways in which predictive modeling and machine learning could be used to strengthen extant predictive work. Instead, we argue that predictive modeling and machine learning are effective tools for theory testing.

What is the relationship between natural resources and rebel governance? Previous studies have argued that resource rich groups have fewer incentives to provide social services. We argue, however, that even well-funded rebels may have incentives to provide some social services to civilians. Specifically, rebel groups profiting from the extraction of natural resources should be more likely to offer health care services as a means of ensuring a dependable civilian workforce than groups who do not profit from natural resources. Using data on both the extraction of natural resources and social service provision by rebel groups, we find strong empirical evidence to support our argument. We conclude with implications for scholars and policymakers.

This dissertation contains three essays, each addressing a different question in political economy and comparative politics. The first essay speaks to the large literature arguing that dictatorships can achieve high levels of economic growth if dictators can commit to not expropriate elites. Extant research has focused on the role of formal institutions – legislatures and parties – in helping elites constrain dictators’ predation. I complement this literature by documenting the role of an informal institution, elite financial networks, in constraining the dictator. I argue that dense financial ties among elites diffuse private information on the state of the economy, hence facilitating elites’ monitoring – if the dictator reneges on his commitments to elites, informed elites are able to infer and punish his defection. Accordingly, I hypothesize that dictatorships with denser elite financial networks enjoy stronger property rights. To test my argument, I uncover networks of elites’ co-ownership of offshore companies – a strong type of financial tie – using a large, untapped leak of private financial information, the Panama Papers. A thorough regression analysis of almost all dictatorships in the period 2002−2013 supports my theory: a one-standard deviation increase in financial network density predicts a half-standard deviation decrease in expropriation risk.The second essay asks: why have some countries counted hundreds of their citizens fleeing to fight in Syria, while other countries’ citizens have remained bystanders? There are three methodological challenges to answering this question. First, there may be two groups of countries: one at no risk of "supplying" foreign fighters and another supplying some positive amount. Second, there is no theory that specifies a functional form linking countries’ features to foreign fighter supply. Third, existing models for predicting foreign fighter supply perform poorly out of sample or yield output that is not amenable to social-scientific interpretations. To solve these challenges, I augment a count regression model, the hurdle negative binomial, with two machine learning tools. Namely, I allow features to affect the response non-parametrically, by using kernel functions that represent expansions of the data. Furthermore, I add regularization terms that penalize complexity to mitigate overfitting. My approach combines the strengths of predictive and confirmatory models: it performs similarly to state-of-the-art machine learning algorithms in prediction while providing substantively interpretable output. Applying the model to data on 163 countries, I find that populous, developed countries, with a large Sunni population and proximity to Syria supply more fighters. These results lend themselves to viewing foreign fighter supply as largely driven by structural forces.The third essay contributes to the literature on civil war, which has recently shifted its attention from state-rebel violence to rebel-rebel violence. I build on this work by applying tools from social network analysis to visualize, summarize, and model conflict among 22 rebel groups in Lebanon’s Civil War, specifically in the period 1980−1991. Using a network graph and node-, dyad-, and network-level statistics, I find a conflict structure in line with historical accounts: a dense pattern of hostilities, high reciprocity in hostilities (i attacks j ⇔ j attacks i), low transitivity in hostilities (the enemy of my enemy is my friend), infighting within religious sects, and the existence of 3 central groups. Furthermore, using regression models tailored to network data, I find that groups that command support from the ethno-religious sect they belong to, control valuable natural resources and territory, and use terrorist tactics are more likely to attack other rebels, while groups that are able to reach an agreement with the state are less likely to attack other rebels. Finally, using a clustering model, I detect 2 sub-conflicts: a narrow cluster that includes the infighting among Palestinian groups and their Sunni allies and a broader cluster that includes the hostilities between rival Shi’ite groups. My approach is relevant to policy-makers deciding which rebel groups to support, particularly in conflicts where opposition to the state is fragmented.