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Sexual violence against men in conflict settings is neither a rare nor recent phenomenon, yet its absence in academic scholarship and humanitarian initiatives remains glaring. Despite the advances in our understanding of the determinants of wartime sexual violence against women, surprisingly little empirical research exists on sexual violence against men in conflict. Acts of sexual violence are commonly enacted against men in war, yet because they do not fit more narrow definitions of rape, accounts of these experiences are often misclassified as "torture." Moreover, in many countries experiencing pervasive conflict-related sexual violence, there exist restrictive laws regarding sodomy and homosexuality, reducing the chances that males will report their experiences. Using originally coded data on sexual and gender identity laws and reported incidents of sexual violence in civil conflict, I find that laws that outline the protection of sexual and gender identity expression including the decriminalization of same-sex activity are significantly associated with reports of acts of sexual violence against men. The results speak to the gap in the literature on male sexual violence with tangible consequences for the distribution of humanitarian aid, availability of medical and psychological services for victims, and aims of peacekeeping missions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We know that civil wars have negative and long-term consequences for public trust in state institutions. However, few studies have examined the post-peace challenges of rebuilding trust in state institutions. In this study, we utilise the case of Colombia to explore the impact of civil wars on the institutional trust of the police. We find that perspectives on abuse, punishment, and corruption are significant predictors of trust in the Colombian police. Further, we find that when we test all three phenomena together, perceptions of police abuse and experience with bribery are the key drivers of trust of police in Colombia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We exploit a unique historical experiment to study how changes in political legitimacy affect economic performance. In historical China, solar eclipses were interpreted as Heaven's wrath incurred by wrongdoings of the ruling class, signaling a decline in the incumbent's legitimacy. Using an original dataset covering over 2000 years, we document that when total solar eclipses occurred, climate shocks had a greater negative impact on economic performance. The key mechanism appears to be that total eclipses significantly intensified the effect of climate shocks on civil conflict. Our findings thus highlight the importance of political legitimacy during periods of economic downturn. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines whether non-monotonic patterns exist between forest coverage and conflict processes in Myanmar. Specifically, the paper finds that forest coverage and civil conflict follow an inverted U-shaped relationship: conflict decreases at extremely low and high densities of forest coverage but increases at medium and somewhat high forest densities. Following the logic of the variability of rugged terrain, we argue that this pattern reflects the dual mechanisms of refuge and tactical advantages for rebel groups, who intentionally use such terrain to maximize logistical advantage while minimizing the military advantages enjoyed by better equipped government forces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do rebel organizations capitalize on transit migration? While numerous studies have examined the role of refugees, this article explores a broader yet significant category of mobile populations in civil conflict. Focusing on Mali, I argue that transit migration increases rebel capacity based on three causal mechanisms: Obstacles in transit, camping banditry, and dynamic recruitment. Obstacles are an enabling mechanism by facilitating the intersection between rebels and migrants. As camping bandits, rebels move between violent extortion and systematic exploitation depending on levels of competition. Finally, I argue that rebels recruit transit migrants using dynamic strategies, including coercive incentives and short-term contracts in which social and ideological requirements are relaxed. Combining quantitative analysis with original interview data, I find significant support for the causal argument and preliminary evidence for my conceptual framework. The findings improve our understanding of rebel organizations and the role of mobile populations in civil conflict. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A burgeoning body of research examines how women's inclusion influences civil war peace processes. While scholars note that women's inclusion can positively affect peace, the theoretical mechanisms remain underexamined. This article begins to address this lacuna by examining how female rebels affect the probability of peace talks. We propose that women's inclusion directly affects the likelihood a rebel group participates in negotiations with the state by increasing its propensity to cooperate and compromise. Our analysis of 112 African rebel groups fighting in civil wars between 1989 and 2014 finds that women's participation in rebel groups affects the likelihood of negotiation onset. We analyze the mechanism driving this relationship and find that rebel groups with women members are more likely to issue negotiation requests to the government. These findings offer nuance to the women-and-peace hypothesis and demonstrate that even women with higher propensities toward violence can be a force for peace. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this article is to examine the impact of urbanization and civil conflicts on the severity of food insecurity for a panel of 43 African countries over the period 2000–2020. Subsequently, the heterogeneous choice models approach was used for the estimations. The results show that urbanization and civil conflict increase food insecurity. The parallel line probability hypothesis results specifically show that a one‐unit increase in urban growth rate increases the probability of belonging to a high‐risk food insecurity category by more than.6 times. Furthermore, the results show that the impacts of urbanization on food insecurity are modulated by civil conflicts in Africa leading to the net effect of.692. This corresponds to the policy threshold of 2.315 when the net positive effect is canceled out. Therefore, this study strongly recommends the need for African economies to develop urban agriculture while controlling the pace of urbanization in order to reduce food insecurity and avoid possible civil wars. Related Articles: Asare‐Nuamah, Peter, Anthony Amoah, and Simplice A. Asongu. 2023. "Achieving Food Security in Ghana: Does Governance Matter?" Politics & Policy 51(4): 614–35. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12540. Ayanoore, Ishmael, and Sam Hickey. 2022. "Reframing the Politics of Natural Resource Governance in Africa: Insights from the Local Content Legislation Process in Ghana." Politics & Policy 50(1): 119–36. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12449. Oehmke, James F., Sera L. Young, Godfrey Bahiigwa, Boaz Blackie Keizire, and Lori Ann Post. 2018. "The Behavioral‐Economics Basis of Mutual Accountability to Achieve Food Security." Politics & Policy 46(1): 32–57. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12244. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The civil conflict that occurred in Ambon caused the Indonesian government to send the Indonesian National Armed Forces to assist the police in securing Ambon. The involvement of the military and security guards in the Ambon area proved helpful in providing a sense of security, even though many people criticize the involvement of the Indonesian National Armed Forces in securing the conflict in Ambon. The study methodology is descriptive qualitative. Researchers conducted field research in Ambon. through interviews with the community, religious leaders, community leaders, and military leaders. The author has also conducted archival research. The results of the study show that the Indonesian National Armed Forces played an important role in assisting in securing the Ambon conflict. Although the Ambon conflict has ended, the Indonesian National Armed Forces is still assigned to assist the police in security. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Does child soldiering attract mediation from democracies? While research shows an association between human rights and foreign intervention by democracies, democratic responsiveness to children's human rights violations remains understudied. This study argues that democracies are concerned about the wellbeing of vulnerable populations, including children. We argue that democracies recognize the violations of children's rights in conflicts where rebels recruit child soldiers and are likely to respond by serving as mediators. Our study examines civil conflicts from 1989-2007. Findings show that while conflicts where rebel child soldiering exists are more likely to receive democratic mediation, government child soldiering has no effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACtHR) and European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) have developed divergent approaches to interpreting their temporal case admissibility criteria, despite those criteria being nearly identical on paper. This puzzling variation has important implications for the extent to which Americans and Europeans can pursue international legal recourse for human rights abuses committed during past civil conflicts and dictatorial regimes. The IACtHR has clearly established that states can be held responsible for ongoing human rights violations that originated prior to state accession to the Court. However, when victims of similar rights violations have submitted cases to the ECtHR, the Court has frequently declared their cases inadmissible. This article demonstrates that the divergent geopolitical origins of the ECtHR and IACtHR have driven the ECtHR's narrower interpretation of its temporal jurisdiction relative to the IACtHR. Tracing this process sheds light on the conditions under which international courts can hold governments accountable for past human rights abuses in post-conflict societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Empirical scholarship identifies social cleavages as a predictor of slower economic growth, greater civil conflict, and other socioeconomic ills. Meanwhile, accounts of divide-and-rule politics claim that predatory rulers may benefit politically from exploiting internal schisms. Altogether, then, does internal fractionalization work to the benefit or detriment of a rent-seeking ruler? To answer this question, I model the political economy of predatory governance in a fractionalized society. For rentier states, whose revenues derive from control over natural resources or a similar exogenous source, internal divisions work to the ruler's benefit by depressing collective resistance. The opposite is true for a state financed by endogenous labor output, as the negative effect of social fractionalization on economic production outweighs the decrease in collective action against predatory rule. The analysis thus highlights a new channel by which rentier states are distinctive: they are the sole beneficiaries of divide-and-rule politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prior to the intensified civil and armed conflicts in Ethiopia, remarkable progress was made in the health sector, which has persuaded the Ministry of Health to give special focus on building a responsive and resilient health system in the second five-year health sector transformation plan (HSTP II 2021-2025). However, the years-long civil and armed conflicts have been fueling the COVID-19 crisis and have caused multi-sectoral infrastructure damage, human life loss, and economic crisis. In 2021 alone, the conflict causes more than five million internal displacements of persons (IDP) and thousands civilian deaths. Review of reported government data has shown that 3,508 health posts, 750 health centers, and 76 hospitals were partially or completely damaged in four regions. Looting of medical equipment and facilities for amenities was devastating. More than 19 million people were affected by the armed and civil conflicts between 2020 and 2021. Unless peace is ensured across the nation the sooner possible, it is foreseen that the devastation may further worsen, and recovery may be a far-fetched possibility. Therefore, in addition to restoration of the disrupted health services, it is the right time for the Ministry of Health to incorporate the humanitariandevelopment nexus as a joint strategy with the Disaster Prevention and Preparedness Commission (DPPC) to ensure a resilient health system for similar multifaceted conflict-related health crisis, disasters, and infectious outbreaks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Civil conflict increases incumbents' vulnerability, expands their coercive capacity, enervates public good provision, and stifles public opposition. Consequently, we expect that elections held during civil conflict will feature more incumbent-perpetrated election violence. We test our argument with disaggregated data on election violence, generating two principal findings. First, elections held during civil conflict are more likely to feature violent coercion by incumbents. Second, this effect does not depend on the conflict's intensity or political salience, but is endemic to conflict-affected societies as a class. This raises questions about the nature of elections in conflict-affected societies and the relationship between forms of political violence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study analyzes whether climate disasters and climate-induced food scarcities influence individuals' willingness to fight for the state in a pro-government militia in the Philippines. We find that experiencing a disaster or subsistence loss corresponds to an increased willingness to join, even when accounting for other prominent explanations in the literature. This outcome, we argue, reflects the impact of climate change on the opportunity costs of conflict participation, especially in regions dependent on agriculture for income and food production, as diminished livelihood opportunities and subsistence resource access increase the viability of conflict participation as a strategy for livelihood diversification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ceasefires are arrangements through which conflict parties commit to stop fighting. They are a common part of intra-state conflict. Existing research on intra-state ceasefires is largely limited to case studies and guidance notes for the policy and practice community. What has to date been lacking is a complementing body of comparative quantitative analysis to identify broader ceasefire trends and test the wider applicability of theory. Recent advancements in ceasefire data offer new opportunities to broaden the research agenda on ceasefires. This special section sets out the current state of the art in ceasefire research and provides the intellectual foundations to advance a new sub-field of quantitative ceasefire research. We discuss the conceptual challenges facing the study of ceasefires, offer a brief overview of ceasefire research focusing on the functions, timing, and sustainability of arrangements, and discuss the collective contributions of the articles included within this special section, and the implications for research and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For more than a decade, civil conflicts intensity has been high in the Middle East and North Africa, yet the monetary and financial impacts of such episodes have received relatively little attention. Using macroeconomic and conflict panel data for Arab League members, Iran and Turkey during the period 1970–2018, this paper constructs a country-specific real exchange rate misalignment index and adopts an instrumental variable approach to show that civil conflicts lead to real exchange rate overvaluations in the region: a 1 unit increase in civil conflict intensity leads to a 0.24 unit increase in the RER misalignment index. The results suggest that upward pressures on the real exchange rate, such as inflation resulting from physical capital and output loss, dominate. Economic policy during post-conflict transitions should mitigate this effect by incorporating a strategy to realign the currency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An emerging field of scholarship in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and computing posits that AI has the potential to significantly alter political and economic landscapes within states by reconfiguring labor markets, economies, and political alliances, leading to possible societal disruptions. Thus, this study examines the potential destabilizing economic and political effects AI technology can have on societies and the resulting implications for domestic conflict based on research within the fields of political science, sociology, economics, and artificial intelligence. In addition, we conduct interviews with 10 international AI experts from think tanks, academia, multinational technology companies, the military, and cyber to assess the possible disruptive effects of AI and how they can affect domestic conflict. Lastly, the study offers steps governments can take to mitigate the potentially destabilizing effects of AI technology to reduce the likelihood of civil conflict and domestic terrorism within states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Why do individuals engage in violence against the state? This research investigates the biological and environmental determinants of individual-level participation in political violence through the use of a Candidate Gene Association, gene-environment interaction, study. Existing research has demonstrated that variation in a specific gene (called MAO-A) is associated with aggression. However, relatively little scholarly attention has been paid to the interaction with the environment; specifically, the ways in which repressive political environments differentially incite acts of violence. Using original genetic, survey and experimental data collected on participants and non-participants of political violence, I find that under conditions of political repression, individuals with the low MAO-A genetic variant are significantly more likely to engage in acts of political violence. By examining both the genetic and environmental factors influencing political violence, the results make a significant contribution to our understanding of how genetic variation may lead to violence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do United Nations (UN) peacekeeping missions influence the use of conflict related sexual violence (CRSV) by armed non-state actors? This study argues efficacy is influenced by conditions that precede deployment and the composition of UN forces. Poor intragroup cohesion within rebel ranks incentivizes CRSV, putting peacekeepers in a precarious position upon deployment. UN police improve law enforcement capabilities, build relationships with local communities, and promote information diffusion mechanisms. As a result, UN police are associated with a decrease in CRSV, even in the most difficult environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Quantitative methods have been used to: (1) better predict civil conflict onset; and (2) understand causal mechanisms to inform policy intervention and theory. However, an exploration of individual conflict onset cases illustrates great variation in the characteristics describing the outbreak of civil war, suggesting that there is not one single set of factors that lead to intrastate war. In this article, we use descriptive statistics to explore persistent clusters in the drivers of civil war onset, finding evidence that some arrangements of structural drivers cluster robustly across multiple model specifications (such as young, poorly developed states with anocratic regimes). Additionally, we find that approximately one-fifth of onset cases cannot be neatly clustered across models, suggesting that these cases are difficult to predict and multiple methods for understanding civil conflict onset (and state failure more generally) may be necessary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Building on recent developments in the literature, this article addresses a prominent research question in the study of civil conflict: what explains violence against civilians? We use a novel computational model to investigate the strategic incentives for victimization in a network setting; one that incorporates civilians' strategic behavior. We argue that conflicts with high network competition—where conflict between any two actors is more likely—lead to higher rates of civilian victimization, irrespective of the conflict's overall intensity or total number of actors. We test our theory in a cross-national setting using event data to generate measures of both conflict intensity and network density. Empirical analysis supports our model's finding that conflict systems with high levels of network competition are associated with a higher level of violence against the civilian population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Women and children in many countries are forced to migrate due to prolonged civil wars and conflicts. The factors and conditions that affect the well-being of immigrant and refugee populations residing in host countries are not widely known. This study aims to identify and explore the personal experiences and migration processes that affect the well-being of immigrant women in Indonesia. A qualitative method and case study design were implemented. Eight refugee women from three different countries were interviewed: Somalia, Palestine, and Afghanistan. It was found that the contexts of identification, personal experiences, the migration process, and the motives or triggers for migration were important factors in influencing the women’s present and future well-being. The study provides implications for the theory of the model used. The application of the theory assisted the researchers to construct a conceptual framework of the subjective well-being of immigrant women.

Although diasporas often leave their homelands due to violence or political upheaval, these groups may engage in homeland politics by providing financial, material, or diplomatic assistance to militants engaged in civil conflicts. Conversely, diasporas may ignore homeland civil conflicts and exclusively focus on opportunities available in their host states. This study argues that variation in diasporas' degree of integration into their host states influences whether diasporas support militants opposing homeland governments. Diaspora members may be dissimilated, which undermines their ability to consolidate resources in support of homeland militants, or incorporated, which limits their will to engage in homeland civil conflicts. Moderately integrated diasporas, which maintain identity ties with the homeland and have access to beneficial resources, are most likely to aid militants fighting homeland civil conflicts. Using original data, I test and find support for this integration-based theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Postwar countries often experience high levels of crime. A frequent explanation is that these countries exhibit inefficient and illegitimate state security apparatuses that cannot enforce law and order, and that contribute to an environment conducive to crime. Theoretical arguments outlining how an environment conducive to crime comes about as consequences of armed conflict have remained generic and empirical evidence is scant. Building on theoretical insights from the micro dynamics of civil wars, counterinsurgency policing and environmental criminology, this study makes a contribution by theoretically developing and empirically exploring how local conflict dynamics in insurgent strongholds shape police-community relations in a way that undermines the extent to which the police can handle crime in a postwar context. The suggested causal process is explored in the context of West Belfast (Northern Ireland) from 1969–2008. The analysis indicates overall support for it, though with important nuances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars of state classification practices have long interrogated how official legal categories are constructed. This paper analyzes the construction of "victimhood" in Colombia as a feat that required negotiation among international human rights organizations, local civil society actors, and politicians across the partisan spectrum. The Victims' Law of 2011, which sought to provide widespread reparations to victims of the civil conflict, originated from the concerns of the human rights community, yet the deliberation process leading up to the law's passage reveals the extent to which elite historical narratives of the conflict unduly narrowed the universe of eligible victims. Using archival evidence from congressional debates from 2007 to 2011, this paper argues that the broad conception of victimhood originally inherited from United Nations guidelines came to be constrained by disproportionate influence from politicians' personal understandings of conflict history, shaped by anecdote and the selective use of historical evidence. These rationales interacted with budgetary constraints to ultimately restrict the victim category according to negotiated temporal boundaries of the conflict. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Syria’s domestic dissent created the foundation for the country’s civil conflict, where foreign actors have favored the different sides since the 2011 Arab Spring. Iran was invited to play an active role in the conflict owing to the declining fortunes of the Syrian government. Iran welcomed the opportunity and understood that it suited its foreign policy priority to endorse the counter-hegemony approach in the MENA region in addition to maintaining the country’s political stability. It is essential to analyze how international media outlets covered Iran’s role in Syria. This study addressed the news coverage provided by Great Britain’s BBC and Russia’s Sputnik—two news agencies from two distinct geopolitical sides—both of which have Persian news outlets covering Iran’s role in the Syrian conflict. The foreign policy goals pursued by Iran aim at two different approaches: revisionism and multilateral partnership. Conducting a critical discourse analysis review of the news sources this study sought to demonstrate that the mass media attempt to engineer public consent in armed conflicts. According to the findings, the news agencies attempted to influence the policy preferences to adopt a peaceful architecture or try to induce a consent-driven perception in line with the foreign policy priorities set by their countries of origin.

Historical states, be they sprawling empires or nominal vassal states, can make lasting impressions on the territories they once governed. We argue that more historical states located within the borders of modern states increase the chance of civil conflict because they (1) created networks useful for insurgency, (2) were symbols of past sovereignty, (3) generated modern ethnic groups that activated dynamics of ethnic inclusion and exclusion, and (4) resisted western colonialism. Using new global data on historical statehood, we find a robust positive association between more historical states inside a modern state and the rate of civil conflict onset between 1946 and 2019. This relationship is not driven by common explanations of state formation that also drive conflict such as the number of ethnic groups, population density, colonialism, levels of historical warfare, or other region-specific factors. We also find that historical states are more likely to be conflict inducing when they are located far from the capital and in poorer countries. Our study points to unexplored channels linking past statehood to modern-day conflict that are independent of ethno-nationalist conflict and open possibilities for a new research agenda linking past statehood to modern-day conflict outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we introduce an updated version of the Nonviolent and Violent Campaigns and Outcomes dataset (NAVCO 2.1), which compiles annual data on 389 nonviolent and violent mass movements for regime change, anti-occupation, and secession from 1945 to 2013. This version of the dataset corrects known coding errors in NAVCO 2.0, adds news cases (including the Arab uprisings), and codes attributes for each campaign year (such as participation size and diversity, the behavior of regime elites, repression and its effects, support from external actors, and campaign outcomes). In addition, NAVCO 2.1 adds several new attributes to each campaign-year, including more precise participation figures, more nuanced data about the scope, intensity, and degree of violent flank behavior and state repression, and further information about the parallel or alternative institutions developed by the campaign. The data reveal four key findings: (1) that the success rate of nonviolent resistance campaigns has declined since 2001; (2) that far more people have participated in nonviolent than violent campaigns in the postwar period; (3) that nonviolent campaigns suffer far fewer per-capita fatalities than armed campaigns; and (4) that incidental violence by dissidents has become a more common feature of contemporary nonviolent campaigns compared with earlier cases. The article concludes with suggestions for further research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is an emerging consensus that international intervention can secure peace by helping combatants resolve commitment problems following civil wars. But how do interveners accomplish this? Some suggest that intervention primarily works through military coercion, while others propose non-military instruments. We build on the existing literature to theorize that interveners commonly condition political, economic, and legal incentives on compliance with peace processes. Despite a rich literature on intervention, scholars have only started to test the underlying instruments. This article takes a critical step toward this end, examining peacekeeping missions led by the United Nations from 1989 to 2012. Contrary to conventional wisdom, we show military coercion is neither commonly used nor necessary to ensure peace. Missions that employ conditional incentives—on which we collect original data—are consistently correlated with a reduced risk of conflict recurrence, even when controlling for observed selection effects, and regardless of whether they are also authorized to use military coercion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since independence in Africa south of the Sahara, deadly internal conflicts have wracked the region more than any other in the world. Some of these conflicts transcended national boundaries because external states became involved in supporting rebel movements. The purpose of this paper is to contribute to an understanding of this international dimension of civil conflict. It develops a framework—unholy alignment, referring to the cooperative relationship between states and rebels—to examine how external support leads to the onset and intensification of civil conflict. I argue that external state support augments rebels' capabilities to intensify violent demands that threaten the target government. I use data from secondary sources through historical process tracing and observation of congruence, and the case studies method, to explore three instances of Rwanda's cooperative relations with rebels between 1994 and 1999, to show how they shaped civil wars in the DRC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a recent contribution to this journal, Richard McAlexander seeks to reanalyze Wucherpfennig, Hunziker, and Cederman's "Who Inherits the State?" which instruments the effect of ethnic group inclusion on civil conflict by exploiting differences in colonial governance between the French and British empires. McAlexander proposes a research design that replaces the between-colony dimension of Wucherpfennig et al.'s comparison with a continuous measure of indirect rule that varies between British colonies. We show that McAlexander's study hardly poses a viable reanalysis because his approach is compromised by problems of ecological inference and posttreatment confounding, leading to biased inference by design. We propose a more informative reanalysis, indicating that British colonialism built on suitable customary institutions, unlike the French empire. Although tentative, our analytical extension lends support to Wucherpfennig et al.'s original findings, most importantly that inclusion reduces the risk of postcolonial civil conflict. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose – This study aims to empirically examine how the Khmer Rouge regime (1975–1979) in Cambodia continues to affect the health of the second generation. Design/methodology/approach – The 2000 and 2005 Cambodia Demographic and Health Surveys were used in the analysis. The study sample were women with a child/children in 2000/2005. The sample population was identified according to whether the person was in utero “91 months or earlier before the Khmer Rouge regime,” “46–90 months before the Khmer Rouge regime” and “1–45 months before the Khmer Rouge regime” and during the Khmer Rouge regime. The authors then regressed the size of babies of the targeted population on the timing of the mothers being in utero. Findings – Mothers who were in utero during the regime had a higher likelihood of giving birth to smaller-than-average babies. Additionally, mothers born in the areas that had a higher probability of death of children aged five or under during the regime were at risk of giving birth to smaller-than-average babies if they were in utero during that time. Originality/value – This is the first paper to assess the impact of the Khmer Rouge regime on the health of the second generation.

When do settlements to civil conflict bring former combatants into normal politics as political parties? Prior work shows that electoral-participation provisions in settlements correlate with enduring peace; such provisions help end some of the longest and deadliest civil conflicts. But they are not always included in negotiated settlements. This article presents original data showing that no settlements included electoral-participation provisions until the end of the Cold War. Since then, they appear in almost half of all settlements. What explains this pattern? I argue that combatants include electoral-participation provisions to engage international actors; through these provisions, international actors can often enforce negotiated deals by monitoring and providing incentives conditioned on combatant compliance. This helps to overcome commitment problems that often prevent peaceful settlements of civil conflicts. An analysis of data on civil conflicts and settlements since 1975, as well as illustrative case evidence, provides support this argument.

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Because existing issue classification schemes omit prominent issues (e.g., domestic armed conflict) or contain significant within-category heterogeneity, theorizing about the role of issues in international conflict processes has stagnated. Our project jump-starts it again, by independently—and systematically—reconceptualizing and gathering data on five issues connected to dyadic militarized interstate disputes (MIDs) during the period 1900–2010: land (borders), maritime (borders), islands, civil conflict, and coups. After conceptually introducing these issues and embedding them within a larger framework, we describe and apply our MID-Issue data. These efforts show that (i) the MID dataset's issue classification scheme does not systematically capture our issues, (ii) events in 37.58% of dyadic MIDs connect to domestic armed conflict—a prevalence not on the field's radar, (iii) some factors promote issue-based international conflict, but only via indirect channels, and (iv) significant value even derives from a further conceptualization of "territorial issues" (broadly defined). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]