DISSERTATION
"Rebel and Incumbent Law:
Incompatible Legal Preferences and Civil War Outcomes"
Incompatible Legal Preferences and Civil War Outcomes"
Civil wars are notoriously difficult to resolve and often times likely to recur. This dissertation examines how legal institutions that serve core functions of governance shape peace negotiations, the termination of civil wars, and the duration of peace. More specifically, this project focuses on the divergence of insurgent and incumbent governance systems over salient issues and how this discrepancy in legal preferences might affect conflict resolution and post-conflict peace. While the conventional wisdom emphasizes who should govern or who should control territory as the main incompatibilities of civil war, this dissertation argues that an underexplored critical component is the incompatibility of the adversaries’ governance systems. This incompatibility occurs when the legal institutions that serve the fundamental functions of government, a formalization of the values, beliefs, and expectations of how society should be/is structured, diverge. Because peace processes are legal frameworks for post-conflict governance, including future dispute resolution among warring parties, the compatibility of the adversaries' governance systems for creating/maintaining social order should have direct implications for the durability of peace. If adversaries have incompatible systems of governance then attempts at conflict resolution without any reconciliation of this incompatibility is likely to be ill-fated. This implies that the conventional wisdom emphasizing a division of wealth, territory, or power among adversaries may be counterproductive and even detrimental to peace. Incorporating a mixed method approach with a qualitative case study of El Salvador using archival data of the warring parties’ legal preferences during the conflict and peace negotiations, as well as quantitative analyses of warring parties dyads across time, this project presents a novel theory of peace and conflict in civil wars while implicating numerous disciplines. It produces an original dataset of incumbent and rebel governance systems disaggregated across several theoretically-driven dimensions: authority, property rights, societal relations, and justice. These data will detail how rebel and incumbent groups serve core functions of governance, but do so in very different ways, and how those differences may impact their relations during and after conflict. Ultimately, this study will inform theoretical, empirical, and public understandings of civil wars across time and space.
*This research is being generously supported by the National Science Foundation (Award #2017173)
and Rice University’s Social Sciences Research Institute. See job market paper abstract below - to be presented at ISA 2021.
*This research is being generously supported by the National Science Foundation (Award #2017173)
and Rice University’s Social Sciences Research Institute. See job market paper abstract below - to be presented at ISA 2021.
PUBLICATIONS
"Revisiting Opportunism in Civil Conflict:
Natural Resource Extraction and Healthcare Provision"
Natural Resource Extraction and Healthcare Provision"
(with Justin Conrad and Megan A. Stewart - Conditional Acceptance at Journal of Conflict Resolution)
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.
(with Sara M. T. Polo and Kaisa Hinkainen @ International Studies Quarterly)
Previous studies have highlighted that United Nations (UN) peacekeeping operations are effective at reducing violence during civil wars. But can these operations also change the incentives of the warring parties and lead them to pursue non-violent alternatives? This article provides the first direct test of UN peacekeeping troops’ effectiveness at inducing non-violent engagements, specifically negotiations during civil wars. Our analysis of disaggregated monthly data on peace operations, negotiations, and violence in African conflicts (1989–2009) reveals that sizable deployments of UN military troops, by themselves, are insufficient to foster negotiations, even when they reduce battlefield violence. Instead, the probability of negotiation instances is conditional on rebel tactics. We posit, when rebels engage in terrorism, peacekeeping troops can inadvertently alter the “power to hurt” of the belligerents in favor of rebel groups and create conditions conducive to negotiations. Our results have important implications for research on the effectiveness of both peacekeeping and terrorism and for policy-making.
WORKING PAPERS
Delegitimizing Rebels in Civilian Courtrooms:
Rebel Governance and Incumbent Justice During Intrastate Conflict
Rebel Governance and Incumbent Justice During Intrastate Conflict
(with Justin Conrad)
Across civil conflicts there is significant variation in how incumbent governments wage counterinsurgency. Besides fighting rebels on the battlefield, some are simultaneously prosecuted in the courtroom. While the de jure venue for enemy combatants during armed conflict is military, in several cases we observe the prosecution of rebels in civilian courtrooms. This is perplexing considering military trials offer unique benefits relative to civilian trials. Why would incumbents utilize civilian trials to prosecute rebels? Moreover, why prosecute some rebels and not others? We argue that incumbents are more likely to pursue this form of justice when rebels engage in governance and undermine the legitimacy of the state as the sole governing actor. Civilian trials become a forum where rebels can potentially be demoted from their status of political revolutionaries to mere criminals. Using new data we find strong empirical evidence to support our argument.
"Two Sides of the Same Coin?
Explaining Rebel Governance and Terrorism"
Explaining Rebel Governance and Terrorism"
(with Sara M. T. Polo and Megan A. Stewart - Presented at ISA 2021)
Existing research suggests that rebels who govern should be more interested in legitimacy, a factor negatively associated with the use of terrorism. Yet, nearly 55% of rebels who engage in governance also engage in terrorism within the same conflict year. What explains the use of these seemingly orthogonal strategies? We argue that revolutionary rebels are more likely to simultaneously engage in strategies of governance and terrorism than non-revolutionary rebels. Because governance by revolutionary rebels is a political project intended to transform political and social orders, rebels are willing to expend the necessary resources to sustain their political project even at the detriment of their military capabilities. As a result, we should be more likely to observe such groups use the ``weapon of the weak'' to pressure states into concessions, while preserving important political changes they may have achieved throughout their areas of governance. Moreover, we expect this effect to be largely driven by center-seeking revolutionary rebels -- that is, revolutionaries who seek control of the central government -- because of their unique requirements for military victory. We examine our argument quantitatively with data on rebel social service provision and terrorist tactics in civil conflicts from 1970-2003. Additionally, we examine the implied mechanisms underlying rebels' political and military efforts using spatial data and a discussion on the Islamic State.
"Rebel and Incumbent Law:
Legal System Incompatibility and its Implications for Power-Sharing"
Legal System Incompatibility and its Implications for Power-Sharing"
(Presented at ISA and MPSA 2021)
Civil conflicts are notoriously intractable. While power-sharing has been emphasized as a mechanism for maintaining post-conflict peace, civil wars recur around 50 percent of the time. Moreover, scholars and policy-makers increasingly lack consensus on whether this mechanism is beneficial, harmful, or immaterial to peace. I argue that an underexplored critical component of power-sharing success/failure is conditional on the compatibility of the adversaries’ legal systems. Because of the disparate status among adversaries in civil conflict settings (government versus rebel) and the necessity that each group have a set of rules to resolve disputes among them (formal and informal, respectively), engagement between the adversaries inevitably results in the overlap of their legal systems. When these legal institutions that each actor utilizes to serve fundamental functions of governance diverge, then their overlap may lead to the delegitimization of the governing system for resolving future conflict between them. Put differently, if each actor formalizes their values, beliefs, and expectations of how society should be/is structured in divergent ways, this may condition the success or failure of power-sharing, especially if such divergence is not reconciled. To examine this argument, we are collecting data on rebel and incumbent legal systems. This data collection effort will result in a large-N cross-national dataset from 1989-2006.
"Incremental or Transformative?
The Effect of Civil War on Constitutional Change"
The Effect of Civil War on Constitutional Change"
(with Keith E. Hamm, Maria Aroca, Nancy Martorano Miller, and Ronald D. Hedlund - Presented at SPSA 2021)
Does civil war have an effect on institutional change? Some scholars posit that we should expect to see transformative, as opposed to incremental, changes following such a large event. Because civil war by definition occurs between two or more actors attempting to disrupt the status quo, we examine the effect of civil war on constitutional change - the institution responsible for structuring a nation state's status quo. We expect to observe transformative constitutional changes if the civil war terminates with a victor whose legal preferences for governance are not embodied by the remaining constitution. Moreover, we expect continuity of these changes to be dependent on whether the victor maintains law-making powers. If the victor and loser have divergent legal preferences, but the loser gains law-making powers in the post-civil war period, then we expect to observe an endogenous rupture to the remaining constitution. To examine our theoretical argument we leverage original data on state constitutions before and after the American Civil War (1776-1901). Preliminary evidence supports our theoretical argument.
"Getting the Law on Your Side:
State Legal Frameworks and the Enforcement of Economic Change"
State Legal Frameworks and the Enforcement of Economic Change"
(with T. Clifton Morgan - In Preparation)
Over the past decade, we have seen a significant shift in sanctions enforcement and design, especially by the United States.Surprisingly, little scholarly research has been devoted to improving our understanding of why these changes have occurred, let alone the implications of these changes. In this paper, we argue that variations in the legal frameworks under which sanctions are imposed significantly affect the enforcement of sanctions and ultimately their design and effectiveness. Applying our theoretical argument to the U.S., we examine this argument in more detail and show that laws imposed for reasons unrelated to economic sanctions triggered changes in three key variables: jurisdictional reach, evidentiary burden, and burden of proof. These changes mitigated the costs of enforcing sanctions against financial institutions, which has resulted in increased fines, penalties, and settlements against those institutions and a shift in policy preference toward financial sanction designs and away from trade sanctions and more comprehensive designs. We contend that our argument provides a more nuanced explanation of the mechanisms underlying these changes and suggests that a key to understanding sanctions lies in understanding the mechanisms of sanction law enforcement. Our paper concludes with a discussion on future research.
*All abstracts above are works in progress. Please contact me directly if you are interested in receiving one of the drafts.*