Rethinking Ripeness Theory: Explaining Progress and Failure in Civil War Negotiations in the Philippines and Colombia

2016 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 75-103 ◽  
Author(s):  
Colin Walch
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
Negotiation Process ◽  
Peace Negotiations ◽  
Rebel Groups ◽  
The Military ◽  
Civil War Negotiations

How can ripeness theory be extended to explain when and why parties remain at the negotiating table until an agreement is reached? Existing ripeness theory is crucial in understanding when conflicting parties consider negotiation as preferable to continued fighting. However, factors which may explain why parties stay at the negotiation table after the start of the negotiation process – that is, how the ripe moment is sustained until an agreement has been reached – are not well elaborated. This study seeks to extend ripeness theory and argues that organizationally fragmented rebel groups are less flexible to make concessions and unlikely to stay at the negotiation table until an agreement is reached, especially when there is a lack of cohesion between the military and political branches. This argument is explored through a structured focused comparison of the peace negotiations in Colombia and in the Philippines with communist rebel groups.

The Kurdish Civil War and Peace Negotiations, 1994–1998

2021 ◽  
pp. 002190962110624
Author(s):  
Dana Ali Salih ◽  
Hawre Hasan Hama
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
The United States ◽  
War And Peace ◽  
Peace Agreement ◽  
Peace Negotiations ◽  
Contingency Model ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Difference ◽  
The Military

The Kurdish Civil War between the military forces of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) began in 1994. Despite frequently occurring peace talks throughout the conflict, negotiations failed to bring about a durable settlement until the United States brokered the Washington Peace Agreement in 1998. This research explores why the earlier negotiations were unsuccessful, and whether it was only the US mediation in 1998 which made the difference. Although the US mediation was clearly an important factor, by employing the contingency model this research argues that both contextual variables and process variables determined the success of negotiations in 1998. Furthermore, they can explain the failure of the previous 4 years of negotiations.

scholarly journals Coup-Proofing and Civil War

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jun Koga Sudduth
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Civil Wars ◽  
Civil Conflict ◽  
The Other ◽  
Civil Military Relations ◽  
Rebel Groups ◽  
The Future ◽  
Face Threats ◽  
Military Relations ◽  
The Military

Political leaders face threats to their power from within and outside the regime. Leaders can be removed via a coup d’état undertaken by militaries that are part of the state apparatus. At the same time, leaders can lose power when they confront excluded opposition groups in civil wars. The difficulty for leaders, though, is that efforts to address one threat might leave them vulnerable to the other threat due to the role of the military as an institution of violence capable of exercising coercive power. On one hand, leaders need to protect their regimes from rebels by maintaining strong militaries. Yet, militaries that are strong enough to prevail against rebel forces are also strong enough to execute a coup successfully. On the other hand, leaders who cope with coup threats by weakening their militaries’ capabilities to organize a coup also diminish the very capabilities that they need to defeat their rebel challengers. This unfortunate trade-off between protection by the military and protection from the military has been the long-standing theme in studies of civil-military relations and coup-proofing. Though most research on this subject has focused primarily on rulers’ maneuvers to balance the threats posed by the military and the threats coming from foreign adversaries, more recent scholarship has begun to explore how leaders’ efforts to cope with coup threats will influence the regime’s abilities to address the domestic threats coming from rebel groups, and vice versa. This new wave of research focuses on two related vectors. First, scholars address whether leaders who pursue coup-proofing strategies that weaken their militaries’ capabilities also increase the regime’s vulnerability to rebel threats and the future probability of civil war. Second, scholars examine how the magnitude of threats posed by rebel groups will determine leaders’ strategies toward the militaries, and how these strategies affect both the militaries’ influence over government policy and the future probability of coup onsets. These lines of research contribute to the conflict literature by examining the causal mechanisms through which civil conflict influences coup propensity and vice versa. The literatures on civil war and coups have developed independently without much consideration of each other, and systematic analyses of the linkage between them have only just began.

scholarly journals Weakened by the storm

2018 ◽  
Vol 55 (3) ◽  
pp. 336-350 ◽  
Author(s):  
Colin Walch
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Organizational Structure ◽  
Natural Disasters ◽  
Opportunity Cost ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
Tropical Storms ◽  
Rebel Groups ◽  
Group Recruitment ◽  
Rebel Group

How do natural disasters affect rebel group recruitment? Some influential research to date suggests that natural disasters – by lowering the opportunity cost of joining an armed movement – are likely to facilitate rebel group recruitment. In contrast, this study argues that natural disasters can negatively affect rebel organization and their recruitment efforts. It posits that natural disasters may weaken rebel groups in two main interrelated ways: (1) by leading to acute scarcity for rebel combatants and supporters, weakening the rebel group’s organizational structure and supply lines, and (2) by increasing government and international presence in areas where the insurgents operate. Empirically, this article explores these suggested mechanisms in two cases of natural disasters in the Philippines (typhoons Bopha in 2012 and Haiyan in 2013), which affected regions partially controlled by the communist rebel group, the New People’s Army (NPA). Based on data from extensive fieldwork, there is no evidence suggesting a boom in rebel recruitment in the wake of the typhoons. Rather, the NPA was temporarily weakened following the tropical storms, significantly impacting the civil war dynamics in the Philippines.

The Philippines in 2004: New Mandate, Daunting Problems

Asian Survey ◽  
2005 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 127-133 ◽  
Author(s):  
Temario C. Rivera
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Budget Deficit ◽  
Debt Crisis ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
National Elections ◽  
Peace Negotiations ◽  
And Control ◽  
The Military

National elections in the Philippines took place on May 10, 2004, providing incumbent President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo with a six-year electoral mandate and control of both houses of Congress and most of the local governmental positions. However, the Arroyo administration faced a worsening budget deficit and debt crisis, increased incidence of hunger and poverty, pervasive corruption scandals in the military, inconclusive peace negotiations with communist guerrillas and Muslim separatists, and an unexpected twist in the country's relations with the United States, provoked by a crisis in the Philippines' involvement in Iraq.

scholarly journals The Causes and Outcomes of Coup during Civil War

2015 ◽  
Vol 61 (7) ◽  
pp. 1432-1455 ◽  
Author(s):  
Curtis Bell ◽  
Jun Koga Sudduth
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Empirical Analysis ◽  
The State ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Survival ◽  
Rebel Groups ◽  
State Potential ◽  
The Military ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Coup Attempt

Though approximately one in four coup attempts takes place during an ongoing civil war, scholars have not yet analyzed how the incidence of civil war affects coup attempts and outcomes. We conduct the first empirical analysis of the relationship between ongoing civil war and coup activity, finding (1) war increases the risk of a coup attempt, though (2) war-time coup attempts are significantly less likely to be successful, and (3) the risk of war-time coup is much higher when states face stronger rebel groups that pose greater threats to the political survival of the incumbent government. We attribute these findings to the pernicious effect of ongoing war on the welfare of the military elites and soldiers who have the greatest capacity to execute a coup attempt. As war diminishes their welfare and creates uncertainty about the future of the state, potential plotters become more willing to accept riskier coup attempts than they might plot during peace-time. Coup motivations are greatest when incumbents are more likely to lose their wars, and this causes coup plotters to attempt more and riskier coups when rebels are relatively strong.

Security Consolidation in the Aftermath of Civil War: Explaining the Fates of Victorious Militias

2021 ◽  
pp. 002200272199552
Author(s):  
Brandon Bolte ◽  
Minnie M. Joo ◽  
Bumba Mukherjee
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Management Strategy ◽  
Ethnic Difference ◽  
Ruling Elite ◽  
Civil Conflicts ◽  
Rebel Groups ◽  
Organizational Constraints ◽  
Post War ◽  
The Military ◽  
State Militias

Policymakers and peacebuilding research often focus on rebel groups when studying demobilization and integration processes, but post-war governments must also manage the non-state militias that helped them gain or maintain power. Why do some post-war governments disintegrate their militia allies, while others integrate them into the military? We argue that when a salient ethnic difference exists between the (new) ruling elite and an allied militia, a process of mutual uncertainty in the post-war period will incentivize governments to disintegrate the group. However, governments will be most likely to integrate their militias when the military has sufficient coercive capabilities but few organizational hindrances to re-organizing. Using new data on the post-war fates of victorious militias across all civil conflicts from 1989 to 2014, we find robust support for these claims. The results suggest that a government’s optimal militia management strategy is shaped by both social and organizational constraints during the post-war period.

scholarly journals Stifling stateness: The Assad regime’s campaign against rebel governance

2018 ◽  
Vol 49 (4) ◽  
pp. 235-253 ◽  
Author(s):  
José Ciro Martínez ◽  
Brent Eng
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
The State ◽  
Military Strategy ◽  
Healthcare Provision ◽  
Welfare Services ◽  
Rebel Governance ◽  
Rebel Groups ◽  
Governance Practices ◽  
The Military ◽  
The Impact

This article assesses the impact of the Assad regime’s aerial bombardment campaign on a frequently neglected component of Syria’s ongoing civil war: rebel governance. While analysis of the military and humanitarian ramifications of such attacks has been extensive, these perspectives fail to consider how the Assad regime’s counter insurgency efforts subvert governance practices by Syria’s diverse rebel groups. Drawing on performative approaches to the ‘state’, we argue that opposition groups’ daily enactments of ‘stateness’ via two key welfare services – bread and healthcare provision – constitute a historically inflected and locally grounded critique of the incumbent. When executed successfully, such enactments can stabilize relations between rulers and ruled while offering a vision of an alternative polity. They can also attract the attention of rivals. The Assad regime’s aerial bombing campaign of rebel-held areas is thus neither a haphazard military strategy nor simply the product of long-standing sectarian hatreds, but a deliberate tactic through which it seeks to destroy a key threat to its authority.

Stick Then Carrot: When Do Governments Give Amnesty during Civil War?

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lesley-Ann Daniels
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Civil Wars ◽  
Policy Choice ◽  
Strategic Choices ◽  
Rebel Groups ◽  
The Government

Abstract Governments grant amnesties to rebel groups during civil wars and this is a puzzle. Why would the government offer an amnesty, which can be interpreted as a signal of weakness? In certain circumstances, offering amnesty is a rational policy choice. Governments should give amnesties when they are winning: the risk of misinterpreted signals is lessened, costs are low, rebel groups are weakened, and so amnesty can be used instrumentally to encourage defection or division among foot soldiers or as an incentive to leaders. Therefore, the government capitalizes on its military advantage and offers amnesty in a “stick then carrot” tactic. Using a database of amnesties during conflicts from 1990 to 2011, the article shows that governments are more likely to give amnesties following high rebel deaths. The use of amnesty during conflict is nuanced and context is important when understanding strategic choices.

A Motion of No Confidence: Leadership and Rebel Fragmentation

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 598-616 ◽  
Author(s):  
Austin C Doctor
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Proportional Hazards ◽  
Original Data ◽  
Cox Proportional Hazards ◽  
Stage I ◽  
Logistic Regression Models ◽  
Structure And Agency ◽  
Rebel Groups ◽  
Cox Proportional Hazards Models ◽  
War Experiences

Abstract Why do rebel organizations splinter into competing factions during civil war? To explain this outcome, I leverage variation in rebel leadership. I argue that rebel leaders draw on their pre-war experiences—i.e., their military and political experiences—to manage their organizations during conflict. These experiences bear unique patterns of rebel management and, thus, corresponding risks of fragmentation. Empirical evidence comes from a two-stage research design and original data featuring over 200 rebel leaders from 1989 to 2014. In the first stage, I estimate the probability of group fragmentation with a series of logistic regression models. In the second stage, I use Cox proportional-hazards models to estimate leadership effects on the rate of group fragmentation. Results indicate that variation in rebel leadership corresponds with unique risks of fragmentation. In particular, the results suggest that leaders with real military experience are best equipped to maintain group cohesion. This study offers insight into the processes by which rebel groups splinter into armed factions. In addition, it makes an important contribution to the broader discussion on the roles of structure and agency in shaping the dynamics of civil war.

The War Beat, Pacific

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven Casey
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York Times ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
Primary Sources ◽  
Chicago Tribune ◽  
Pacific War ◽  
Daily News ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
The Media ◽  
The Military

From Pearl Harbor to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, a group of highly courageous correspondents covered America’s war against Japan. Based on a wealth of previously untapped primary sources, War Beat, Pacific provides the first comprehensive account of what these reporters witnessed, what they were allowed to publish, and how their reports shaped the home front’s perception of some of the most pivotal battles in American history. In a dramatic and fast-paced narrative, the book takes us from MacArthur’s doomed defense on the Philippines and the navy’s overly strict censorship policy at the time of Midway through the bloody battles on Guadalcanal, New Guinea, Tarawa, Saipan, Leyte and Luzon, Iwo Jima and Okinawa, detailing the cooperation, as well as conflict, between the media and the military as they grappled with the enduring problem of limiting a free press during a period of extreme crisis. At the heart of this book are the brave, sometimes tragic stories of reporters like Clark Lee and Vern Haugland of the Associated Press, Byron Darnton and Tillman Durdin of the New York Times, Stanley Johnston and Al Noderer of the Chicago Tribune, George Weller of the Chicago Daily News, Keith Wheeler of the Chicago Times, and Robert Sherrod of Time magazine. Twenty-three correspondents died while reporting on the Pacific War. Many more sustained serious wounds. War Beat, Pacific shows how both the casualties and the survivors deserve to be remembered as America’s golden generation of journalists.

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