PUBLICATIONS
(with Justin Conrad and Megan A. Stewart @ 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.
UNDER REVIEW
"Delegitimizing Rebels with Civilian Trials?
Incumbent Justice During Intrastate Conflict"
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 rebels are simultaneously prosecuted in the courtroom. While the venue for combatants is generally a military courtroom, in several cases we observe the prosecution of rebels in civilian courtrooms. This is perplexing considering the fact that military trials offer unique benefits: indictments, prosecutions, and convictions are conducted by the incumbent's own military and according to the military's rules of criminal procedure. This eliminates much of the uncertainty and costs inherent with civilian trials. Given these costs and uncertainties, why would incumbents in the midst of armed conflict use civilian trials to prosecute rebels? Moreover, why prosecute some rebels with civilian trials and not others? We argue that incumbents are more likely to pursue this form of justice when rebels engage in activities like taxation that undermine the legitimacy of the state as the sole governing actor. In these cases, civilian trials become a forum where rebels can be marginalized or demoted from their status of political revolutionaries or enemy combatants to mere criminals. We examine our argument by using new data on rebel contraband and incumbent justice during intrastate conflict. We find that when rebels engage in extragovernmental taxation incumbents are significantly more likely to pursue civilian tribunals than when rebels do not engage in taxation.
WORKING PAPERS
"Rebel and Incumbent Law:
How Compatible Legal Preferences Prolong Peace after Power-Sharing"
How Compatible Legal Preferences Prolong Peace after Power-Sharing"
Civil conflicts are notoriously intractable. Even after adversaries execute a power-sharing agreement, civil wars recur around 50 percent of the time. While the conventional wisdom emphasizes who should govern or control territory as the prominent civil war issue, I argue for greater emphasis on a critical condition for conflict resolution over such pervasive issues: compatible legal preferences. This compatibility occurs when the legal institutions and proscriptions that former belligerents have for serving fundamental functions of government—a formalization and aggregation of their values, beliefs, and expectations for how society should be or is structured—align. When both groups must work within the same governing legal system in the post-conflict environment, compatible legal preferences are necessary for incentivizing actors to perceive legal conflict resolution mechanisms as legitimate. This perception of legitimacy makes it more likely that actors will choose legal alternatives to war when future conflict arises. To examine this argument, I develop a legal system compatibility framework that focuses on rebel and incumbent legal preferences over particular issue domains (e.g., recognition of social diversity, property rights, source of law, and procedural justice). This theoretical framework motivates the first cross-national dyadic dataset of rebel and incumbent law from 1989-2006. Preliminary evidence provides support for my argument.
"Two Sides of the Same Coin?
Explaining Rebel Governance and Terrorism"
Explaining Rebel Governance and Terrorism"
(with Sara M. T. Polo, Megan A. Stewart, and Jessica Maves Braithwaite)
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 and often in the very same territorial spaces. What explains the use of these seemingly orthogonal strategies across time and space? We argue that center-seeking revolutionary rebels are more likely to engage in both strategies of governance and terrorism, than all other rebel groups, in response to external and internal threats to their governance project. 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 it even at the detriment of their military capabilities. This is especially problematic for center-seeking revolutionaries who seek control of the central government. Given their unique requirements for military victory, such groups are more likely to 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. Additionally, these groups are likely to maintain their use of terrorism within areas of territorial control as a governance policing tool in response to civilian non-compliance. We examine our arguments quantitatively with data on rebel social service provision and terrorist tactics in civil conflicts from 1970-2003. Moreover, we examine the implied mechanisms underlying rebels' political and military efforts within the same territorial space using spatial data and a discussion on the Islamic State.
"Incremental or Transformative?
The Effect of Civil War on Constitutional Change"
The Effect of Civil War on Constitutional Change"
(with Maria Aroca, Keith E. Hamm, Nancy Martorano Miller, and Ronald D. Hedlund) - "Winner of SPSA's Neal Tate Award"
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 structuring the polity 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. To examine our theoretical argument, we leverage original data on state constitutions and their amendments before and after the American Civil War (1851-1900). Utilizing a novel methodological approach, we find strong empirical support for our theoretical argument.
"Justice and Militias During Intrastate Conflict"
(with Santiago Sosa and Gladys Zubria)
The literature on pro-government militias (PGMs) posits that states use them to cheaply and quickly bolster their security forces, coup-proof, and even delegate atrocities to avoid accountability. States, however, also make use of the judiciary to put rebels on trial and undermine their legitimacy in the midst of armed conflict, which, based on the conventional wisdom (plausible deniability), would leave leaders (the executive) open to accusations of human rights abuses by their agents (militias). How do we explain the use of these seemingly contradictory strategies? That is, under what conditions are we more likely to observe the use of tribunals in tandem with PGMs? We argue that states choose to combine tools of war based on both feasibility and liability avoidance. If courts are independent and the militias they use are officially linked to the state, governments would prefer to use military tribunals against rebels. However, if courts are not independent, then governments may utilize civilian courts against rebels and militias to abuse human rights with a lower risk of being held accountable for these abuses. We examine our argument utilizing cross-national data on during-conflict justice and PGMs from 1981-2007.
*Please do not hesitate to contact me if you are interested in receiving any of the papers posted above.*