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Although conflict issues – the stated goals of actors engaged in conflict – hold a privileged position in many theoretical explanations of the occurrence, dynamics, and resolution of civil war, global issue data are scarce beyond datasets that focus on specific thematic areas. This article aims to bring issues into the forefront of civil war scholarship by presenting the UCDP Conflict Issue Dataset (CID). This global yearly dataset contains 14 832 conflict issues – divided, at the most disaggregated level, into 120 sub-categories – raised by armed non-state groups involved in intrastate armed conflict in 1989-2017. By bringing issues back in, the UCDP CID provides opportunities to reevaluate several central questions about the onset, duration, intensity, and resolution of civil war.

Civil wars that appear to observers to be the most complex—even using a colloquial understanding of the concept—are also those that seem to register the most intense fighting, the most prolonged spells of war, and the most resistance to durable conflict resolution. But what does it really mean for a civil war to be complex? We currently lack a concept of “civil war complexity” that can help us better understand the most important variations in civil wars across time and space. To address this gap we develop a conceptualization of “civil war complexity” consisting of three dimensions—“actor complexity,” “behavior complexity,” and “issue complexity”—and demonstrate how they manifest empirically. We also highlight this conceptualization’s utility—and the danger of overlooking it—through the case of Darfur. This conceptualization paves the way for a new research agenda that explores how civil wars differ in terms of their complexity, the causes and consequences of civil war complexity, and how to refine conflict resolution techniques and strategies.

What are the effects of internal armed conflict on public perceptions of the police? We explore this research question in the context of Afghanistan and argue that local conflict intensity will have a negative impact on how individuals evaluate the police as a key state institution, as it affects both how effective and how just police conduct is at the local level. We evaluate this proposition by employing a multilevel modeling approach that analyzes the effect of local conflict intensity on perceptions of the police among 31,720 Afghans across a sample of 360 districts (2007-12). Results indicate that the higher the local conflict intensity, the less likely individuals are to perceive the police as being effective in fighting crime, procedurally just, and trustworthy. Our study contributes to both the political science literature on the institutional consequences of violent conflicts and the literature on state-building and institutional legitimacy.

While there is a substantial body of literature on the consequences of terror attacks on public attitudes toward state institutions in Western democracies, little is known about the impact that such events have in the context of armed conflict. We address this gap by exploring the attitudinal effects of a 2012 Taliban attack on civilians in Kabul City, Afghanistan. We test two competing hypotheses: the “rally-effect” hypothesis according to which individuals increase their trust in incumbent institutions in the aftermath of violent attacks and the “accountability” hypothesis according to which individuals punish state institutions for their inability to provide security by withdrawing trust. Leveraging a quasi-experiment that compares individuals interviewed before the attack to individuals interviewed thereafter, we find that the attack—in line with the rally-effect hypothesis—increased trust in several state institutions among residents of Kabul City., Title in thesis list of papers: To Blame or to Support? Large-scale Insurgent Attacks on Civilians and Institutional Trust: Evidence from Kabul City

Notwithstanding the prominence of the so-called Standard Model of Military Group Cohesion (SMMGC), important parts of the model are understudied: both conceptually and empirically. In this article we, first, synthesize previous research to conceptualize and measure the overlooked institutional cohesion dimension. Second, we test the validity of the proposed full four-dimensional SMMGC model using a survey of an Italian Alpini battalion, and more rigorous methods than in previous research. Results are supportive of our proposed measurements and the validity of the four-dimensional model. We thus make a methodological and an empirical contribution to further the ongoing debate on military cohesion.

Does UN peacekeeping reduce the number of people forcibly displaced by violence? While previous research has found that the presence and size of peacekeeping deployments can reduce violence, little is known about how peacekeepers affect other aspects of civilian protection. Using original data on sub-national events of forced displacement and the location and size of UN troop deployments this study systematically evaluates the criticized efforts of UNMISS in South Sudan, while simultaneously testing hypotheses on peacekeepers and forced displacement. It is hypothesized that increasing numbers of troops affect the flight equation among civilians through the promise of and actual deterrence of violence. These deterrence-based hypotheses are also discussed in relation to the South Sudan context, creating scope conditions for their possible application in this case. The statistical analysis provides, however, no robust evidence for peacekeepers reducing the occurrence or levels of forced displacement, and only weak evidence of displaced congregating in larger numbers around peacekeeping locations. The paper ends by arguing that the theoretical argument provided may still be valid, but that an effect was not feasible to identify in South Sudan where the peacekeeping mission ? despite its comparatively large numbers ? lacks credible deterrent capacity.

Previous research on dehumanization has been conducted primarily in Western contexts, and outside ofperiods of ongoing and highly violent conflict. The present study, in contrast, examines grassroots-leveldehumanization between South Sudan’s two largest ethnic groups—Dinka and Nuer—during an episodeof extreme interethnic violence. Using a mixed-methods approach we study levels of dehumanization andhow these attitudes are related to and structured around ongoing and/or very recent extreme violence.Whereas the results demonstrated mechanistic dehumanization by the Dinka participants vis-a`-vis theNuer, no similar dehumanization was found among the Nuer: although there were clear signs ofintergroup bias. Our focus groups demonstrated that dehumanization attitudes in South Sudan are to agreat degree structured around recent event of mass violence. In fact, practically all dehumanizingattitudes were related to these recent events and not to events previous, or to historicized stereotypes. Thecore contribution of this article is threefold. First, we deepen understanding of dehumanization byexamining a non-Western case with ongoing, highly violent, conflict. Second, we further knowledgeabout the psychological effects of events of mass violence. Third, we provide new insights to the situationin South Sudan by our analysis of intergroup perceptions.

A Swedish contingent to the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF; N = approx. 320) was studied before and after deployment to Afghanistan to assess if the mission and experiences on it affected attitudes toward violence. Attitudes toward war violence and penal violence were assessed across t = 1 and t = 2, as were the effects of combat exposure on change and stability in attitudes. It was hypothesized that the attitudes would remain stable across the deployment due to their importance to the soldierly identity, but that experiences of combat exposure would cause an increase in the propensity toward change. Results demonstrate that attitudes did not change between the pre- and postdeployment stages. Unexpectedly, increasing levels of combat exposure did not predict higher rates of change, but rather increased stability in attitudes toward violence. The results demonstrate that in terms of the willingness to use force, peacekeeping deployments do not have detrimental effects on soldiers. The study tracked the attitudes toward violence of approximately 300 Swedish soldiers deployed to northern Afghanistan as part of ISAF, conducting surveys before and after deployment. Results demonstrated that, overall, very few soldiers changed their attitudes toward war or violence in the penal system as a result of the deployment: irrespective of the levels of combat they were exposed to. The results show that, contrary to what is often believed, military deployments do not necessarily harden the attitudes of soldiers.

Is popular antagonism towards Muslim veils in Europe rooted in an exclusionary ‘enlightenment liberalism’? By examining different conceptions of liberalism and readings of veiling in a Dutch survey from 2014, we present the first study that investigates this question empirically. We thus bring together two hitherto largely unconnected literatures. The first is the work on immigration and ethnicity, which has shown the centrality of enlightenment liberalism in anti-Muslim media and policy discourses. The second is the literature on anti-Muslim attitudes in public opinion, which explains support for veil bans as the result of perceiving veils as threatening the respondent's own, supposedly liberal, values – but has failed to distinguish between different conceptions of liberalism and thus reached inconclusive results. This, we show, can be remedied by distinguishing between ‘enlightenment liberals’, who hold negative attitudes, and ‘reformation liberals’, who hold positive attitudes towards Muslim veils.

Studying an International Security Assistance Force contingent on tour in Afghanistan, the aim of the present study was to test assertions of the relative stability of personal values in a challenging environment. Three hundred twenty Swedish soldiers answered questionnaires on their values before and after a 6-month tour of Afghanistan. Value change and stability were studied via mean-level change, rank-order stability, and individual-level change methods. Regression analysis was used to study the impact of combat exposure and personality traits on change. The analysis concluded that even when experiencing such a different social context as a military mission to Afghanistan, the soldiers' values remained stable. Some minor changes occurred, in a pattern similar to a regression toward the mean. It was also shown that combat exposureto a minor extentpredicted changes in values, whereas Big Five scores yielded stronger effects. The present findings suggest that the assertion of the stability of values is a well-founded proposition, even after radical changes in environment. However, the findings on the effects of combat exposure point to the possibility of severe life events having the power to exert change in values. Personality traits were, however, more important factors in the present context.

Opposition to Muslim headscarves remains high in otherwise typically tolerant countries, like Sweden and the Netherlands. One suggested explanation is a mounting concern among liberal Europeans that Muslims threaten liberal values. Yet, the nature of these threatened values remains obscure. Empirical research on anti-Muslim attitudes in general, and their relation to liberal values in particular is limited.What understanding of liberalism characterizes those who oppose Muslim veiling? By studying attitudes towards the veil in a Swedish and a Dutch sample, we test a number of hypotheses informed by political theory, and the burgeoning field of immigration studies, which have rarely been used in political psychology. We include measures of different conceptions of liberalism and value orientations and resistance to Muslim veils.Our analyses suggest that post-materialism values are too crude measures for parsing out intolerance against the Muslim veil in a liberal sample. Positive attitudes to veiling are best predicted by a Reformation Liberalism, a commitment to a diversity-oriented understanding of liberalism. Both Enlightenment Liberalism (emphasizing autonomy) and Romantic Liberalism (stressing authenticity and individuality), on the other hand, seem to induce more negative attitudes towards the headscarf, yet providing mixed results in the two studies. Possible explanations for these mixed results are discussed., The Impact of Religion

Konflikten i Sydsudan är ett farligt maktspel där politiker hänsynslöst spelar ut ”det etniska kortet”. Stark diplomatisk press måste nu sättas på de olika aktörerna. Sverige kan spela en viktig roll, skriver freds- och konfliktforskarna Johan Brosché och Ralph Sundberg.

Bloggpost i Frivärld Magasin.

Islamistgerillan al-Shabaab lämnade i dagarna sitt sista starka fäste, hamnstaden Kismayo. Innebär detta en seger för regeringen, och hur ser förutsättningarna ut för fred i Somalia? Marcus Nilsson och Ralph Sundberg analyserar det politiska dagsläget på Afrikas horn., Bloggpost i Frivärld Magasin.