Internal Report Submitted to the Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies

Dissident Irish Republicans have increased their violent activities in recent years. These “spoilers” reject the 1998 Good Friday Agreement power-sharing deal between Unionist and Nationalist traditions in Northern Ireland. Instead dissident IRAs vow to maintain an armed campaign against Britain's sovereign claim to Northern Ireland and have killed British soldiers, police officers, and civilians in recent years. These groups have small political organisations with which they are associated. The assumption across the political spectrum is that, whereas Sinn Fein enjoyed significant electoral backing when linked to the now vanished Provisional IRA, contemporary violent Republican ultras and their political associates are utterly bereft of sympathy. Drawing upon new data from the Economic and Social Research Council 2010 Northern Ireland election survey, the first academic study to ask the electorate its views of dissident Republicans, this article examines whether there are any clusters of sympathy for these irreconcilables and their modus operandi. The piece assesses whether there are any demographic, structural, ideological, religious, or party trends indicating Republican dissident sympathies. It also assesses the extent to which dissidents are seen as a threat and examines whether this perception is shared evenly across Northern Ireland's two main communities.     

The Coercive Weight of the Past: Temporal Dependence and the Conflict-Repression Nexus in the Northern Ireland “Troubles”

After 40 years, we still know very little about how state repression influences political dissent. In fact, to date, every possible relationship, including no influence, has been found. We argue that part of the problem concerns the current practice of treating every repressive event as if it were substantively equivalent, differentiated only by scope (large/small) or type (violent/nonviolent). We advance existing work by arguing that the influence of repression is contingent on when it occurs within the temporal sequences of political conflict. Using new events data on the “Troubles” in Northern Ireland from 1968 to 1974, results show that when dissent has been decreasing in the recent past, repressive action inspires an increase in dissident action. When dissent has been increasing, however, repression has the opposite effect, decreasing challenging activity. These results provide important insights into resolving a recurrent puzzle within the conflict-repression nexus as well as understanding the interaction between government and dissident behavior.     

A Review of: “Fred Schreier. WMD Proliferation: Reforming the Security Sector to Meet the Threat.”

ABSTRACT

Previous research has argued that political inequality between ethnic groups increases the likelihood of both nonviolent and violent protest. In this study, I focus on civil resistance campaigns and argue that the probability that these large-scale, organized movements will take violent over nonviolent forms increases with the share of a country’s population that is excluded from political power on the basis of ethnic affiliation. I expect this to be so because ethnically exclusive regimes are more likely to counter political demands with violent repression, which increases the cost and decreases the anticipated success of nonviolent relative to violent resistance. I test this proposition in a global sample of countries for the period 1950–2006 and find, first, that high levels of ethnic exclusion make civil resistance campaigns more likely to occur violently than nonviolently. Next, to assess the mechanism at play, I conduct a mediation analysis and show that almost half of the effect of ethnic exclusion on violent campaign onset is mediated by the latent level of violent repression in a country. This result suggests that political authorities’ repressive strategies are key to explaining why regime opponents do not always opt for nonviolent forms of civil resistance.     

Civil War Victory and the Onset of Genocide and Politicide

Why do some governments engage in genocide and/or politicide? A common explanation for such government-sponsored mass killing is that civil war provides governments both the incentive and opportunity to eradicate their enemies during the fighting. However, many episodes of genocide and politicide begin once the fighting has ended. I argue that when the civil war ends with a clear victor the winning party is more likely to engage in mass killing than if the conflict ends through negotiated settlement or other inconclusive manners, since the victorious party does not fear armed resistance while they eliminate dissidents throughout the country. Moreover, I posit that the government will be more likely to engage in politicide rather than genocide, as politicide eradicates the leader’s political enemies across cross-cutting segments of the population, whereas genocide only destroys certain communal groups. Statistical examination of all post-civil war periods between 1955 and 2009 supports my argument.     

Analysing Terrorism and Counter-terrorism: A Communication Model

This article analyses terrorism and counter-terrorism within a framework of communication. This analytic framework views violence as a form of communication that interacts with other forms of social and political communication, whether by non-state actors or state actors. By looking at how terrorism and counter-terrorism fit into the wider context of social and political life, both at the national and the international level, the analyst can better understand how terrorism emerges from other social or political activity, how it can evolve into legal or nonviolent action, and how it can be but one tool in a political or social struggle that includes both violent and nonviolent tactics. By including counter-terrorism and the array of control institutions used to battle terrorism and related phenomena, the model forces a degree of self-reflectivity and self-awareness upon the analyst, who must examine societal, state and international institutions and forms of social control alongside strategies and tactics of protest and political agitation. In a post-11 September world, this analytic task is all the more challenging.     

Process Matters: Conflict and Cooperation in Sequential Government-Dissident Interactions

Competing hypotheses on the relationship between government and dissident behavior emerge from both formal and empirical models. Yet, the current literature lacks a comprehensive theoretical account of such contradictory effects. This study develops a theory to account for a large number of competing hypotheses within a single framework. The theory explains various government and dissident tactical choices over the course of an internal political struggle by focusing on leaders, their motivations, and the link between their motivations and actions. The theory gives rise to a process model of sequential government-dissident interactions that is used to test several implied hypotheses. Empirical sequential time-series models of government and dissident behavior find support for most of the theory's implied hypotheses in Israel (1979–2002) and Afghanistan (1990–99).     

The Double Logic of Internal Purges: New Evidence from Francoist Spain

Abstract

States often engage in internal purges to eliminate political dissidents within their own ranks. However, partly because of the absence of reliable data, we know little about the logic and dynamics of these purges, particularly of lower-rank members of the state. Why do state authorities persecute these individuals when they do not entail a clear threat to the regime? We focus on the purges of public-school teachers during the early years of Francisco Franco’s regime in Spain. Using detailed historical sources, we explore whether teachers were more likely to be purged following the two main cleavages in 1930s Spain: the left-right divide and the center-periphery (i.e., nationalist) cleavage. Our results suggest that while the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939) was still unfolding Francoist authorities targeted mainly teachers from leftist localities, thus focusing on potential security threats behind the frontlines. After winning the war, Francoists started to target more intensively teachers from national minority groups in order to promote nation-building policies leading to their assimilation. Our findings highlight the double logic of purging as both a preemptive measure against internal threats and as a nation-building tool.     

Means,Motives and Opportunities in Ethno-Nationalist Mobilization

Building on the most important theoretical tools from the literatures on social movements and nationalism, we propose a model of the intensity of nationalist political behavior in which a community's means, motives, and opportunities assume the central roles in the initiation and escalation of nationalist contentious politics. We then test this model using multinomial logit on original data from the seventeen autonomous communities of Spain over a twenty-year period. The results demonstrate that the means, motives, and opportunities assume vital, yet nonlinear, roles in determining a community's level of electoral, violent, and nonviolent contentious activity. The findings also show that there are crucial differences in what accounts for the moves to electoral contention, to protest, and to rebellion. Several of these factors are uniformly escalatory on the intensity of contention—especially repression, social mobilization, and regime change—while others, most importantly democracy, have a moderating effect on the generation of conflict. The results further imply processes of a diffusion of rebellious activities and of an organizational-level substitution effect between violent and nonviolent forms of political behavior. At the aggregate community level, however, escalation in contention involves a “cumulative effect” rather than a classic “substitution effect.”     

Fragmentation,Conflict, and Competition: Islamist Anti-civilian Violence in Sub-Saharan Africa

ABSTRACT

In spite of the shared high profile of recent Islamist attacks on civilians in sub-Saharan Africa, patterns of anti-civilian violence differ across and within violent Islamist groups, and the countries in which they are active. This research seeks to explain this variation by situating Islamist violence within the sub-national spaces in which such groups operate, and the wider conflict environment in which they choose to use, or limit the use of, anti-civilian violence. Drawing on data from the Armed Conflict Location & Event Dataset, the research finds that violent Islamist groups are more likely to target civilians where they are the most active conflict agent, even when other conflict agents are active in the same spaces; but less likely to do so when they are relatively weak and in competition with other non-state armed groups. Anti-civilian violence is thus deployed strategically by violent Islamist groups, while its function as a signalling or retributive policing tool depends on the relative strength of groups in relation to actors in the wider conflict arena.     

Human rights treaties and mobilized dissent against the state

How does state obligation to international human rights treaties (HRTs) affect mobilized dissent? We argue that obligations to protect human rights affect not only state behavior but also the behavior of dissidents. We present a theory in which the effect of HRTs on dissent is conditional on expectations of when it will constrain government behavior. We assume that HRT obligation increases the likelihood that government agents face litigation costs for repression but argue that leaders are only constrained when they would be most likely to repress. The expectation of constraint creates opportunity: citizens are more likely to dissent in HRT-obligated states with secure leaders and weak domestic courts. We find empirical support for the implications of our theory using country-month data on HRT obligation and dissent events from 1990 to 2004.     

Response to Cilluffo and Gergely

Research on the motives of those who engage in small group political violence typically takes a qualitative or quantitative form. I argue that researchers should seek to understand why people engage in small group political violence, and that the best way to achieve such understanding is to employ both. The advantages of this approach are discussed in this paper, as is the importance of recognizing that the activities of all actors in any given violent location, including state actors, should be accounted for in research.     

Civil War Diffusion and the Emergence of Militant Groups, 1960–2001

In this research note, I argue that scholars of the international diffusion of civil conflict would benefit from directly measuring rebel mobilization prior to the onset of civil war. To better understand the way in which international processes facilitate dissidents overcoming the collective action problem inherent in rebellion, I focus on militant organizations and model the timing of their emergence. I use several data sets on militant groups and violent nonstate actors and rely on Buhaug and Gleditsch’s (2008) causal framework to examine how international conditions predict militant group emergence. While Buhaug and Gleditsch conclude that civil war diffusion is primarily a function of internal conflict in neighboring states, once militant group emergence is substituted in the dependent variable, I observe that global conditions affect rebel collective action. A final selection model links militant groups with civil conflict onset and demonstrates the variable performance of diffusion effects. The results indicate that many rebels mobilize in response to more global events and then escalate their behavior in response to local conditions.     

Repression and Terrorism: A Cross-National Empirical Analysis of Types of Repression and Domestic Terrorism

While some scholars have theorized that repression reduces terrorism because it raises the costs of participating in terrorist activity by dissidents, others argue that repression stimulates terrorism by either closing off nonviolent avenues for expressing dissent or by provoking or sharpening grievances within a population. This study investigates these contradictory sets of expectations by considering whether or not different specific types of repression yield different effects on patterns of terrorism in 149 countries for the period 1981 to 2006. By assessing the impact of nine specific types of repression on domestic terrorism, the study produces some interesting findings: while, as expected, forms of repression that close off nonviolent avenues of dissent and boost group grievances increase the amount of domestic terrorism a country faces, types of repression that raise the costs of terrorist activity have no discernible suppressing effect on terrorism.     

George Michael. The Enemy of My Enemy. The Alarming Convergence of Militant Islam and the Extreme Right

This article presents an empirical analysis of a unique dataset of 1240 former members of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA). We highlight the shifting sociological and operational profile of PIRA's cadre, and highlight these dynamics in conjunction with primary PIRA documents and secondary interview sources. The effect of these changes in terms of the scale and intensity of PIRA violence is also considered. Although this is primarily a study of a disbanded violent organization, it contains broad policy implications beyond the contemporary violence of dissident movements in both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. We conclude with a consideration of how a shifting sociological profile impacts upon group effectiveness, resilience, homogeneity, and the turn toward peaceful means of contention.     

The impact of orthodox terrorism discourses on the liberal peace: internalisation,resistance, or hybridisation?

This article examines the relationship between orthodox terrorism discourses and liberal peacebuilding, particularly where states are being reconstituted after a conflict. Drawing upon fieldwork in Sri Lanka, Palestine, Kashmir, Nepal, and Northern Ireland, our findings suggest that conflicts in which orthodox terrorism theory is deployed to explain violence are those in which there is little interest (by all parties) in dealing with root causes or achieving mutual compromise. This is so even though the liberal peace is commonly a claimed aspiration for most parties, apart from the most radical of non-state actors or authoritarian of states. They effectively reify both terrorism and state securitisation. The aspired to internalisation of the liberal peace framework has instead been supplanted by the politics of state securitisation and violent resistance. Liberal peacebuilding has become a nominal exercise in constructing virtually liberal states in which the security and integrity of core groups are partially maintained by orthodox terrorism praxis. To counter these dynamics, critical positions need to engage with agendas beyond liberal or cosmopolitan frameworks.     

Turning off the Taps: The Termination of State Sponsorship

ABSTRACT

Why do some states terminate their sponsorship of rebel movements while others are persistent in their provision of support? In the past, most research on external support to insurgents has focused on why states choose to sponsor rebel groups and particularly how this affects conflict duration. However, we know little about the termination of such support. This is surprising given that support has been shown to make armed conflicts more intractable and tremendous efforts are made in condemning and sanctioning such behavior. This study constitutes the first large-N analysis of support termination, employing survival analysis on global data of state support to rebel movements between 1975–2009. Surprisingly, the findings indicate that only some of the factors that explain support provision can offer insights into its termination. In particular, support is more likely to be terminated when no ethnic kinship bonds exist between the rebel movement and the government of the supporting state. Many decisions to withdraw support also seem to coincide with the transition from the Cold War. Threats and sanctions from other states appear largely ineffective. The study contributes to our understanding of the international dimensions of civil war and the role and motives of third parties.     

China's Kashmir Policies

The article examines why some ethnic groups seeking ethno-political autonomy engage in violence while others respond with relative quiescence. It compares and contrasts the ethno-political movements of the Bodos and Misings in northeast India and adopts an integrated approach in which the mobilizing structure and state responses assume equal and important roles that determine the correlation between the mobilizing process and levels of contention. A fundamental claim is that popular support and participation are crucial to shape the trajectories and strategies of ethnic movements. What determines the level of popular following is long-term commitment, legitimacy, and effective communicative strategies adopted by activist organizations. This in turn, generates collective mobilization and produces mechanisms for violence. The absence thereof leads to less disruptive contention. Further, the level of ethnic contention is determined by consistency and extent of ethnic accommodation and the nature of state repression. Consistent accommodation can have a countervailing effect on the activists to launch violent rebellion. Accommodation may range from implementing particular ethno-linguistic policies to selective incentives or cooptation of core political activists by the government. Contrarily, inconsistent accommodation and widespread state repression leads to high levels of violence.     

Delegating Terror: Principal–Agent Based Decision Making in State Sponsorship of Terrorism

State sponsorship of terrorism, where a government deliberately provides resources and material support to a terrorist organization, is common in the international system. Sponsorship can provide significant strategic and political benefits for a state, but there are inherent international and domestic risks associated with delegating foreign policy to these actors. Using principal–agent analysis, I develop a model that evaluates the impact of potential costs and benefits on a state’s decision to sponsor terrorism. I test my model by using a novel dataset on sponsorship behaviors that ranges from 1970 to 2008. The results of my analysis support the validity of the principal–agent model in explaining sponsorship, as states will be more likely to engage in sponsorship when the strategic benefits of weakening the targeted state are high and the risks of international reputation loss and domestic dissatisfaction are low.     

Negotiation and Nonviolent Action: Interacting in the World of Conflict

Negotiation and nonviolent action are arguably the two best methods humanity has developed for engaging constructively with conflict. Both have played central roles in helping manage or resolve seemingly intractable conflicts, sometimes sequentially and sometimes in tandem. But experts and practitioners in both fields often underestimate the relevance and effectiveness of the other. This article explores the interface between the fields of negotiation and nonviolent action, their mutual commitment to engage constructively with conflict, and the concern both methods share for leverage, power, and strategic preparation and action. After examining the shared linkages, this article highlights how the two fields have synergistic qualities when utilized together in the same conflict. Using examples from a diverse set of conflicts, the overlap explored in this article lays an important foundation for the future convergence of the two fields.     

Simulating terrorism and insurgency: video games in the war of ideas

This article analyses several video games created by Hezbollah and Afkar Media which simulate recent conflicts in Israel and Lebanon. These games are representative of an important new means of waging ideological warfare which is increasingly a part of the media strategies that states, violent non-state actors and media corporations employ in their efforts to persuade audiences. I argue that video games allow their developers to address players as though they were participants in ongoing conflicts, rather than passive observers, and that this style of presentation is extremely useful to efforts to create an attractive image of people who are frequently described as ‘terrorists’. Video games also enable their developers to carefully construct media narratives that appear to be realistic depictions of contemporary conflicts even when those narratives show signs of bias. Through these mechanisms, video games provide violent non-state actors and organizations sympathetic to them with a means of presenting their grievances and displaying their fighting prowess in ways that advance the organizations' strategic goals.