scholarly journals Why Are Some Civil Wars More Lethal Than Others? The Effect of Pro-Regime Proxies on Conflict Lethality

2019 ◽  
Vol 68 (3) ◽  
pp. 749-767
Author(s):  
Huseyn Aliyev
Keyword(s):  
Civil Wars ◽  
Significant Influence ◽  
Structural Factors ◽  
Large N ◽  
Battle Deaths ◽  
State Actors ◽  
Extra State

Previous large-N studies on conflict lethality have focused in large part either on structural factors or on the properties of key conflict protagonists – governments and rebels. This article challenges the dyadic two-actor approach to studying conflict lethality that examines exclusively the key actors of the dyad, and – on the example of pro-regime militias – hypothesises that participation of extra-state actors in civil wars can exert significant influence on battlefield lethality. It is proposed here that pro-regime militias can swell the number of combat deaths through, first of all, acting as ‘extra boots’ on the ground, providing governments with auxiliary forces and local intelligence, and enabling incumbents to launch more effective and often more deadly attacks on insurgents. Militias also affect the number of battle deaths by forcing rebels to protect their civilian support bases, which exposes insurgents to lethal government attacks. This assumption is empirically tested on 88 civil wars from 1981 to 2015 with militia presence. The findings show that the presence of pro-regime militias in civil wars is highly conducive to the incidence of high-casualty conflicts.

scholarly journals ‘No peace, no war’ proponents? How pro-regime militias affect civil war termination and outcomes

2018 ◽  
Vol 54 (1) ◽  
pp. 64-82 ◽  
Author(s):  
Huseyn Aliyev
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Civil Wars ◽  
War Termination ◽  
Intrastate Conflicts ◽  
State Actors ◽  
War Outcomes ◽  
Conflict Termination ◽  
Extra State ◽  
Conflict Outcomes

Previous research on non-state actors involved in civil wars has tended to disregard the role of extra-dyad agents in influencing conflict outcomes. Little is known as to whether the presence of such extra-dyadic actors as pro-regime militias affects conflict termination and outcomes. This article develops and tests a number of hypotheses on the pro-government militias’ effect upon civil war outcomes. It proposes that pro-regime militias involved in intrastate conflicts tend to act as proponents of ‘no peace, no war’, favouring low-activity violence and ceasefires over other conflict outcomes. These hypotheses are examined using an expanded dataset on pro-government militias and armed conflict in a statistical analysis of 229 civil war episodes from 1991 to 2015. These findings shed new light on the role of extra-state actors in civil wars.

Does Insurgent Selective Punishment Deter Collaboration? Evidence from the Drone War in Pakistan

2021 ◽  
pp. 002200272110411
Author(s):  
Vincent Bauer ◽  
Michael Reese ◽  
Keven Ruby
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Civil Wars ◽  
The United States ◽  
Suppressive Effect ◽  
The Future ◽  
State Actors ◽  
Tribal Areas

Scholars of civil wars have long argued that non-state actors can use selective punishment to reduce collaboration with state adversaries. However, there is little systematic evidence confirming this claim, nor investigation into the mechanisms at play. In this paper, we provide such evidence from the drone war in Pakistan. Militants in Pakistan’s tribal areas engaged in a brutal counterespionage campaign with the aim of reducing collaboration with the United States. Our analysis combines a novel dataset of collaborator killings with data on drone strike outcomes. We find that strikes killed half as many militant leaders and fighters following collaborator killings and that this suppressive effect likely works by deterring spying in the future. Beyond providing an empirical confirmation of the selective punishment hypothesis, our paper suggests an unacknowledged vulnerability of the drone program to reprisals against local allies and collaborators that limits its effectiveness as a long-term tool of counterterrorism.

scholarly journals Lisa Hultman, Jacob D. Kathman and Megan Shannon: Peacekeeping in the Midst of War

2021 ◽  
Vol 56 (1) ◽  
pp. 109-115
Author(s):  
Barbora Valíková
Keyword(s):  
Civil Wars ◽  
Democratic Republic Of Congo ◽  
Violence Reduction ◽  
Civil Conflicts ◽  
Un Peacekeeping ◽  
Large N ◽  
Police Personnel ◽  
Significant Research ◽  
Research Gap ◽  
Peacekeeping Missions

Are United Nations peacekeeping missions effective at reducing violence in civil wars? Although UN peacekeeping is a notable intervention tool, the international community lacks systematic knowledge of how well it mitigates civil war violence. Given that UN peacekeeping is increasingly used in the midst of war, this is a significant research gap with direct policy relevance. This book systematically explores if and how the capacity and constitution of UN peacekeeping missions affect the amount of violence in civil conflicts. It argues that peacekeeping effectiveness needs to be assessed in relative terms, theorizing that more robust missions are increasingly capable of addressing combatant incentives for employing violence. The authors conduct large-n analyses of the number of combatants and civilians killed during each month for all civil wars globally from 1992 to 2014, measuring the capacity and constitution of UN missions with unique data on the number and type of peacekeeping personnel deployed. The analyses reveal that increasing UN military troop and police personnel deployed to a conflict significantly reduces violence against civilians, and increasing UN military troop personnel significantly mitigates battle-related violence. By contrast, smaller missions and missions composed of observers are not associated with reduced violence. The book complements the large-n analyses with qualitative explorations of peacekeeping mechanisms on violence in Côte d’Ivoire and the Democratic Republic of Congo. The authors conclude that while peacekeeping is not without detriments, it is an effective tool of violence reduction.

Conclusion

2018 ◽  
pp. 302-308
Author(s):  
Jesse Cromwell
Keyword(s):  
Economic Development ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Atlantic World ◽  
Collaborative Process ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Empire Building ◽  
History Of ◽  
State Actors ◽  
Extra State

The conclusion examines smuggling’s consequences for the larger history of colonialism in the Atlantic world. It reiterates that smuggling is the story of empire building and that, despite the desires of coastal inhabitants and imperial policy makers, this was a collaborative process. Extra-state actors powered the economic development of empires. This process produced common cosmopolitanism as subjects of different empires and cultures interacted over trade and mobility. The conclusion also emphasizes the tension between fluid Atlantic histories and the early modern borders and regulations of empire that enabled and ensnared subjects in this period.

New Immigration, Civic Activism and Identity in Japan

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Chiavacci
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Human Trafficking ◽  
Significant Influence ◽  
Immigration Policy ◽  
External Pressure ◽  
Advocacy Groups ◽  
Civic Activism ◽  
Strong State ◽  
State Actors ◽  
Institutional Fragmentation

This chapter discusses immigrant advocacy groups’ influence in Japan’s immigration policy. For three decades Japan has been a new immigration country. However, immigration policy has been marked by ideational and institutional fragmentation, resulting in a deadlock lacking bold reforms and immunizing state actors to external pressure. Against this backdrop, civil advocacy has been surprisingly influential. While civic groups have generally not been included in decision-making bodies, they have altered the perception of immigration. By analysing reforms combating human trafficking, this chapter identifies factors that resulted in indirect influence of civic advocacy in this case, allowing us to gain a differentiated understanding of the limited but still significant influence of civic activism on Japan’s ‘strong’ state in immigration policy.

The stakeholder model paradox: How the globalisation of politics fuels domestic advocacy

2017 ◽  
Vol 44 (2) ◽  
pp. 367-391 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marcel Hanegraaff ◽  
Arlo Poletti
Keyword(s):  
International Institutions ◽  
Stakeholder Involvement ◽  
Political Activity ◽  
Structural Factors ◽  
International Organisations ◽  
Apparent Paradox ◽  
Stakeholder Model ◽  
State Actors ◽  
Effective Representation ◽  
Global Stakeholders

AbstractOne of the central assumptions underlying the stakeholder model is that strengthened opportunities for involvement of non-state actors in political procedures hold significant promise for making those procedures more democratically legitimate. However, recent studies show that more open international organisations (IOs) are not perceived as more legitimate by non-state actors. In this article we explore one potential reason to explain this apparent paradox, investigating whether, and under what conditions, strengthened opportunities of stakeholder involvement enable the effective representation of global constituencies. The article shows that globalisation and politicisation of IOs go hand in hand with greater political activity by non-state actors defending domestic, rather than global, interests. Globalisation and politicisation may thus contribute to the exponential growth of the community of non-state actors active at IOs, but they do not make such community more globalised in nature. The article also illustrates that granting greater access to stakeholders in international institutions can somehow mitigate the effects of this underlying structural factors, and that institutional openness disproportionally fosters political activity by civic, rather than business, global stakeholders. We advance these arguments relying on a novel dataset including over eight thousand organisations active at the UN climate conferences and the WTO Ministerial Conferences.

Steps toward Peace in Civil Wars in the Asia-Pacific Region: A Disaggregate Approach to Civil War Settlements

2011 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 39-68 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frederic S. Pearson
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Civil Wars ◽  
Civil Conflict ◽  
Asia Pacific ◽  
Pacific Region ◽  
Asia Pacific Region ◽  
Large N ◽  
Conflict Termination ◽  
Multi Phase

AbstractRegardless of the types of civil conflict settlements, all parties generally enter into some sorts of tacit or direct bargaining in the course of civil conflict, namely, in steps toward peace. In contrast to a basically static framework employed in much of existing literature on civil war settlements and mediation, this article proposes a disaggregate approach to dynamic and multi-phase processes in civil conflict termination via negotiations. We illustrate a conceptual and theoretical framework to examine four steps in civil conflict settlements in a large-N research program. In so doing, we present an initial effort to construct a dyadic dataset isolating processes that allow civil conflict settlements to progress or regress between low and higher levels of agreement in the Asia-Pacific region from 1990 to 2005. We discuss a set of preliminary simple statistical results for the four distinct settlement phases in the context of conflict and rebel characteristics. Among the findings of note, third parties provide important assistance in nurturing successful negotiations especially in the context of waning insurgent strength. Peace proposals originate most frequently from governments, and seem to hinge especially on opponents’ battlefield advantages. Evidence of mutually hurting stalemates is also found. In the article’s conclusion we elaborate a long-term research agenda.

scholarly journals Societal Inclusion in Expert Venues: Participation of Interest Groups and Business in the European Commission Expert Groups

2015 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 151-165 ◽  
Author(s):  
Åse Gornitzka ◽  
Ulf Sverdrup
Keyword(s):  
European Commission ◽  
Structural Factors ◽  
Expert Group ◽  
Group System ◽  
Large N ◽  
Social Partners ◽  
Societal Actors ◽  
Consumer Organisations ◽  
Administrative Units ◽  
Organisational Factors

The elaborate system of expert groups that the European Commission organises is a key feature of EU everyday governance and also a potential channel of societal involvement in EU policy making. This article examines the patterns of participation in the expert group system of a broad set of societal actors—NGOs, social partners/unions, consumer organisations, and business/enterprise. The analysis is based on a large-N study of Commission expert groups. Taking on an “executive politics” perspective, we identify main patterns of participation and analyse organisational factors that affect the inclusion of societal actors in the expert group system. We find that such actors are strongly involved in this system. Yet, there is a striking heterogeneity in the extent to which the Commission’s administrative units include societal groups as experts in the policy process. The logics that underpin the inclusion of business organisations are not identical to the logics of inclusion applied to social partners and NGOs. The Commission as the core supranational executive is thus selectively open for societal involvement in its expert groups system, and this bureaucratic openness is patterned, clustered, and conditioned by structural factors that affect how the Commission as a multi-organisation operates.

Normative Underpinnings

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kubo Mačák
Keyword(s):  
Civil Wars ◽  
Armed Conflicts ◽  
International Humanitarian Law ◽  
Humanitarian Law ◽  
State Actors ◽  
The Law

This chapter considers the normative underpinnings of the present-day regulation of combatancy. It argues that a wholesale denial of combatant status to fighters in internationalized armed conflicts would be incongruous with the principles of distinction and equal application of the law. The chapter then considers specific objections against the extension of combatant status to non-state actors from the perspective of internationalized armed conflicts. It argues that although some of the objections carry certain weight in the context of traditional civil wars, their effect in internationalized armed conflicts is significantly weaker. The chapter thus shows that in principle, the availability of combatant status to fighters in internationalized armed conflicts is in accordance with the normative underpinnings of International Humanitarian Law.

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