Bargaining,Fear, and Denial: Explaining Violence Against Civilians in Iraq 2004–2007

From mid-2004 to mid-2007, the Iraq war was distinguished from other comparable insurgencies by its high rates of civilian victimization. This has been attributed to a number of different factors, including the role of Islamic fundamentalist groups such as al-Qaeda in Iraq as well as the regional ambitions of Iran and Syria. Using an unpublished dataset of violence in Iraq from 2003–2008 from the Iraq Body Count (IBC), this paper argues that the violence against civilians is best understood as a combination of three interacting logics—bargaining, fear, and denial—that are predominantly local in character. First, armed Iraqi actors bargained through violence both across and within sectarian communities, and were driven by mechanisms of outbidding and outflanking to escalate their attacks on civilians. Second, the pervasive fear about the future of the Iraqi state encouraged the “localization” of violence in Iraq, particularly in the emergence of a security dilemma and the proliferation of criminal and tribal actors. Finally, Islamist groups such as al-Qaeda in Iraq played the spoiler in Iraq, using mass-casualty attacks to generate fear among the population and deny U.S. efforts to build a functioning state. Only by addressing each of these three logics as part of its counter-insurgency strategy can the U.S. put an end to violence against civilians and develop the Iraqi state into a credible competitor for the loyalties of the population.     

Saudi Arabia Walks the Tightrope

Saudi diplomacy seems more active than ever. This has to do with three recent major regional developments: the summer 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah, the violent clashes between Hamas and Fatah in the occupied Palestinian territories, and the Iraqi quagmire. In each of these, the role of Iran is difficult to overlook and this is troubling Riyadh. Yet Saudi Arabia has difficulty in responding to Iran's assertiveness: it wants to contain Tehran's ambitions, but at the same time it cannot allow itself to clash with it. As a result, it is treading a fine line.     

Crises and Crisis Generations: The Long-term Impact of International Crises on Military Political Participation

Why do states facing high levels of international threat sometimes have militaries that are heavily involved in government and at other times relatively apolitical, professional militaries? I argue that the answer to this puzzle lies in a state's history of acute international crises rather than its chronic threat environment. Poor outcomes—defeats or stalemates—in major international crises lead to professionalization and depoliticization of militaries in both the short- and long-term. A poor outcome creates pressure for military professionalization and withdrawal from politics in order to increase military effectiveness. This effect persists years later due to generational shifts. As officers of the “crisis generation” become generals, they bring with them a preference for professionalization and guide the military towards abstention from politics. I test this theory using a new global dataset on military officers in national governing bodies from 1964–2008 and find strong support for it.     

Killing and Voting in the Basque Country: An Exploration of the Electoral Link Between ETA and its Political Branch

We deal in this article with the relationship between ETA attacks and electoral support for Batasuna, its political wing. We show that the relationship is twofold, since the geographical distribution of electoral support for the terrorists affects the location of ETA attacks, but violence also influences electoral support for the terrorist cause. On the one hand, when ETA chooses a location for its attacks, it takes into account the electoral strength of Batasuna. Our results show that the higher the vote for Batasuna in a municipality, the more likely members of the security forces will be killed there. With regard to the targeting of civilians, the relationship is curvilinear. ETA kills civilians in municipalities that are polarized, where support for Batasuna falls short of being hegemonic. On the other hand, our results also show that ETA attacks have an effect on the size of its support community. When ETA kills members of the security forces, voters punish the Batasuna party electorally. In the case of civilians, it depends on the specifics of the various campaigns. We find that when ETA kills informers and drug-dealers, the vote for Batasuna increases. ETA's killing of non-nationalist politicians, however, decreases Batasuna's vote share.     

Democratization and Civilian Control of the Military in Taiwan

Over the last 20 years, Taiwan has witnessed an impressive transition from authoritarian one-party rule to liberal democracy. This included considerable changes in the relations between the civilian political elites and the armed forces. While under the emergency laws of the authoritarian regime the military had been a powerful political force, during democratization the elected civilians have managed to curb military political power and have successively widened their influence over former exclusively military prerogatives. This article argues that the development of Taiwan's civil–military relations can be explained as the result of civilians using increasingly robust strategies to enhance their influence over the military. This was made possible by a highly beneficial combination of historical conditions and factors inside and outside the military that strengthened the political power of the civilian elites and weakened the military's bargaining power. The article finds that even though partisan exploitation of civilian control instruments could potentially arouse civil–military conflict in the future, civil–military relations in general will most likely remain supportive of the further consolidation of Taiwan's democracy.     

State Building for Future Wars: Neoclassical Realism and the Resource-Extractive State

Neorealist theory holds that the international system compels states to adopt similar adaptive strategies—namely, balancing and emulation—or risk elimination as independent entities. Yet states do not always emulate the successful practices of the system's leading states in a timely and uniform fashion. Explaining this requires a theory that integrates systemic-level and unit-level variables: a “resource-extraction” model of the state in neoclassical realism. External vulnerability provides incentives for states to emulate the practices of the system's leading states or to counter such practices through innovation. Neoclassical realism, however, suggests that state power—the relative ability of the state to extract and mobilize resources from domestic society—shapes the types of internal balancing strategies that countries are likely to pursue. State power, in turn, is a function of the institutions of the state, as well as of nationalism and ideology. The experiences of six rising or declining great powers over the past three hundred years—China, France, Great Britain, Japan, Prussia (later Germany), and the United States—illustrate the plausibility of these hypotheses.     

Military Culture and Restraint toward Civilians in War: Examining the Ugandan Civil Wars

What explains armed-group conduct toward civilians in war? The National Resistance Army (NRA) of Uganda demonstrated notable restraint toward civilians during its wars in northern Uganda in the 1980s, restraint that is puzzling given the overdetermined predictions for mass atrocity under rationalist, identity, and regime-type theories. Instead, the NRA case demonstrates that military culture—the organizational norms underlying combatant socialization—is a primary determinant of armed-group behavior, influencing combatant conduct in ways not conceptualized under existing theories of victimization. This review of the NRA case, based on field interviews with Ugandan military officers and examinations of Ugandan documentary archives, reveals three key points regarding the role of military culture in effecting restraint. First, the NRA case shows that organizational factors like military culture can determine military behavior toward civilians. Second, it reveals that theories of military culture, incorporating both formal and informal mechanisms of combatant socialization, can provide a more complete theoretical account than existing theories of armed-group conduct. Finally, the NRA provides potential hypotheses for mechanisms through which culture influences military behavior. I analyze the effect of culture on the NRA's conduct as a plausibility probe, generating inductive insights drawn from detailed field research to shed light on the organizational drivers of armed-group restraint. The NRA case thus points the way to a reconceptualization of military culture and the role of organizational factors that influence conflict behavior.     

Uneven Ground: Nationalist Frames and the Variable Salience of Homeland

When are domestic publics most sympathetic to nationalist territorial ambitions? Conflict scholars commonly assume support should be greatest when territory is framed as being of intangible value to national identity over tangible importance to national security and economic prosperity. This should be especially true regarding lost homelands, territories wherein a state has previously exercised sovereignty and to which it has enduring ethnic ties. This article presents experimental evidence that directly challenges these assumptions, demonstrating the variability of Serbian popular attachments to three lost territories: Kosovo, Bosnia, and Montenegro. It finds that intangible framings do not necessarily engender stronger assertions that such territories belong to the homeland than tangible framings do. Nor do they necessarily motivate greater support for nationalist territorial agendas. These findings cast doubt on conventional wisdom regarding domestic publics' contributions to territorial conflict and offer refined insights regarding in which instances intangible claims are most conflict-prone.     

Interstate Relations,Perceptions, and Power Balance: Explaining China’s Policies Toward Ethnic Groups, 1949–1965

Why do multi-ethnic states treat various ethnic groups differently? How do ethnic groups respond to these state policies? We argue that interstate relations and ethnic group perceptions about the relative strength of competing states are important—but neglected—factors in accounting for the variation in state-ethnic group relations. In particular, whether an ethnic group is perceived as having an external patron matters a great deal for the host state's treatment of the group. If the external patron of the ethnic group is an enemy of the host state, then repression is likely. If it is an ally, then accommodation ensues. Given the existence of an external patron, an ethnic group's response to a host state's policies depends on the perceptions about the relative strength of the external patron vis-à-vis the host state and whether the support is originating from an enemy or an ally of the host state. We present five configurations and illustrate our theoretical framework on the eighteen largest ethnic groups in China from 1949 to 1965, tracing the Chinese government's policies toward these groups, and examine how each group responded to these various nation-building policies.     

The Italo–Yugoslav Conflict over Albania: A View from Belgrade, 1919–1939

After the Great War, Yugoslavia found her most dangerous enemy in Italy, which made every effort to destabilise its Adriatic neighbour—Albania played an important role in this policy. This analysis examines the Yugoslav stance towards aggressive Italian policy, arguing that Belgrade firmly believed it a matter of utmost importance to prevent the Italians from creating a foothold in the Balkans from which they could stir Albanian irredentism in Kosovo and menace Yugoslavia in its strategically sensitive southern regions in conjunction with Bulgaria. To prevent Italian interference, Yugoslavia championed the independence of Albania with its 1913 frontiers from the Paris Peace Conference onwards: it dropped Serbia’s—Yugoslavia’s pre-war predecessor’s—territorial ambitions centred on the town of Shkodra. Yugoslav policy-makers, however, could not maintain the allegiance of Ahmed-bey Zogu, a major Albanian chieftain, who took power in Tirana with Yugoslav support; but he then turned to Rome, which was more capable of and willing to provide financial means for the maintenance of the Albanian administration than Belgrade. There were also a number of officials who favoured a more forward policy that would put northern Albania under Yugoslavia’s control and thus more efficiently keep Italian aggressive designs in check.     

France,Britain and the intervention in Libya: an integrated analysis

This article seeks to explain the decisions by Nicolas Sarkozy's France and David Cameron's Britain to intervene in the 2011 Libyan crisis. None of the three major theories of international relations—constructivism, defensive realism and liberalism—can explain on its own such intervention decisions as the Libya case. The article's novel analytical model proposes that each theory emphasizes factors and mechanisms that explain part of the decision-making process and that these factors interact with state behaviour in complex ways. Britain and France initially began to consider intervention because they felt that the emergent norm of the ‘responsibility to protect’ applied to the Libyan case and because they believed the massive flows of refugees fleeing the violence were a threat to their border security. Both countries believed military intervention could be successful at relatively low cost and that if they did not intervene the problem would not be solved. At that point, the Sarkozy and Cameron governments engaged in initial action that made them more likely to intervene by jeopardizing their future economic relations with the Gaddafi regime and making him more likely to threaten them with future terrorist attacks. Taking initial action also meant that French and British prestige would ultimately have suffered had they not intervened to achieve a satisfactory solution to the crisis. Paris and London viewed international and regional support as a critical prerequisite for intervention and they sought and attained it. Finally, the Sarkozy and Cameron governments were able to minimize any domestic political risk of intervening because they had public and/or opposition party support.     

Attacks on Civilians in Civil War: Targeting the Achilles Heel of Democratic Governments

Previous research has indicated that democracy decreases the risk of armed conflict, while increasing the likelihood of terrorist attacks, but we know little about the effect of democracy on violence against civilians in ongoing civil conflicts. This study seeks to fill this empirical gap in the research on democracy and political violence, by examining all rebel groups involved in an armed conflict 1989–2004. Using different measures of democracy, the results demonstrate that rebels target more civilians when facing a democratic (or semi-democratic) government. Democracies are perceived as particularly vulnerable to attacks on the population, since civilians can hold the government accountable for failures to provide security, and this provides incentives for rebels to target civilians. At the same time, the openness of democratic societies provides opportunities for carrying out violent attacks. Thus, the strength of democracy—its accountability and openness—can become an Achilles heel during an internal armed conflict.     

Database section - Dimensions of Contemporary Conflict and Human Rights Violations

Scholars have long recognized the importance of Karl Heinzen's Mord und Freiheit in the history of terrorist thought. Yet the translation most scholars have relied on—1881s Murder and Liberty—is incomplete. Our new translation reveals four elements omitted from the 1881 translation. First, Heinzen conceived of terrorism as a transnational phenomenon. Second, he provided a material justification for terrorist tactics. Third, Heinzen viewed terrorism as both a tool to impel human society to progress and as a “progressive” tool of violence. Finally, he argued in favor of the primary modern tactic of terrorism—the indiscriminate bombing of civilians.     

Feminist international relations and women militants: case studies from Sri Lanka and Kashmir

This paper presents women's militant activities outside the binary framework of ‘victimhood’ and ‘agency’ and invokes postmodern feminist international relations analyses to engage with women's material and ideological contribution to militant activities and political violence. Women who support and indulge in both discriminate and indiscriminate violence against institutions of the state and unarmed civilians not only redefine notions of nationalism, gender and religious identity, but also highlight their complex and problematic relationship with feminism. To what extent does participating in militant activities and armed combat provide women with opportunities to transcend conventional gender roles? In other words, do they remain the ‘other’ within ‘the other’? How are militant women influenced by these political movements and how do they influence these movements? What happens when the ‘protected’ and ‘upheld’ become the ‘protectors’ and ‘upholders’? How does/should feminist international relations approach these militant women? I attempt to address these questions through a study of women militants and their constructions as gendered political subjects in Kashmir and Sri Lanka.     

Campaign Advertising and the Stimulation and Activation of the Authoritarian Personality

This research examines whether authoritarianism can be stimulated and activated by politicians. The traditional belief is that psychological traits are basically quasipermanent structures that consistently determine behavior, but newer research suggests that these traits can be stimulated. This research tests whether campaigns can stimulate traits with targeted messages. I do so by exposing subjects in an experiment to political television advertising that was designed to stimulate known correlates of authoritarianism, such as fear. The results show that authoritarianism is stimulated in treatment groups that watched advertising designed to invoke threat and the strong-father metaphor and the treatment effect is greater on conservatives. I also show that watching these commercials leads to an activation of authoritarianism that influences its predictive power over support for torture. This suggests that politicians can use emotional appeals to stimulate advantageous personality traits, and that these ads also influence the public's attitudes through activation.     

Conflict Dynamics and Feedback: Explaining Change in Violence against Civilians within Conflicts

Conflicts are complex, dynamic processes wherein the frequency and intensity of violence changes throughout the contest. In this article, we explore the temporal dynamics of two long-term civil wars—DR-Congo and Sudan—to identify systematic and random conditions that lead to changes in civilian targeting. Violence committed by rival political actors, territorial exchange, and the number and addition of violent agents strongly shape the likelihood that civilian targeting events and casualties increase or decrease over time. General and country differences emerge from vector autoregression analysis to suggest that (1) three types of violent agents—rebels, militias, and the government—are locked in spirals of violence where violence against civilians by one actor leads to subsequent violence by another actor; (2) rebels and government forces respond to the other side’s acquisition of contested territory by increasing counterattacks on civilians, specifically in DR-Congo; and (3) increasing numbers of active nonstate agents lead to higher violence rates in the following months. Among these, civilian targeting by rival actors triggers the most follow-on violent events against civilians.     

Proliferation Implications of Civil Nuclear Cooperation: Theory and a Case Study of Tito's Yugoslavia

Programs of international civil nuclear cooperation—of “Atoms for Peace”—have come under growing criticism for unintentionally fostering nuclear weapons proliferation in developing countries. However, drawing on the literature on international technology transfer and on Albert Hirschman's theory of exit, voice, and loyalty, this article argues that Atoms for Peace efforts may often seriously hamper developing countries’ nuclear weapons ambitions by empowering their scientific workers and by facilitating the brain drain to the developed world. The article then presents a case study of the historical nuclear program of Yugoslavia, which received very generous help from the Atoms for Peace programs of the United States, Soviet Union, and European states at a time when nonproliferation controls were minimal. The international ties of the Yugoslav nuclear program made its scientific workers much less likely to choose simple loyalty to the Tito regime, and much more likely to choose voice or exit, accelerating the program's ultimate collapse.     

Civilian self-defense militias in civil war

To mitigate the costs associated with suppressing rebellion, states may rely on civilian self-defense militias to protect their territory from rebel groups. However, this decision is also costly, given that these self-defense groups may undermine control of its territory. This raises the question: why do governments cultivate self-defense militias when doing so risks that these militias will undermine their territorial control? Using a game theoretic model, we argue that states take this risk in order to prevent rebels from co-opting local populations, which in turn may shift power away from the government and toward the rebels. Governments strategically use civilian militias to raise the price rebels must pay for civilian cooperation, prevent rebels from harnessing a territory’s resources, and/or to deter rebels from challenging government control in key areas. Empirically, the model suggests states are likely to support the formation of self-defense militias in territory that may moderately improve the power of rebel groups, but not in areas that are either less valuable or areas that are critical to the government’s survival. These hypotheses are tested using data from the Colombian civil war from 1996 to 2008.     

Ministers,Markets and Missiles: The British Government,the European Economic Community and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, 1964–68

Existing accounts of British efforts to achieve a nuclear non-proliferation treaty between 1964 and 1968 largely overlook the later stages of decision making within the Labour government. Scrutiny of previously classified sources reveals that a desire for entry into the European Economic Community had a much larger influence on the content and conduct of British non-proliferation policy than previously suggested. By 1967, Prime Minister Harold Wilson sought a secondary role in treaty negotiations, and left the running to the superpowers. This avoided unnecessary conflict with the countries of the Community, resentful of the Treaty's discriminatory terms, and helped to protect Britain's application to join the EEC. Although this bid was unsuccessful, ambitions for future membership continued to influence non-proliferation policy in 1968. Indeed, a desire for future entry into the EEC helps to explain why Britain became the first nuclear weapon state to ratify the Treaty.     

Different Threats,Different Militaries:Explaining Organizational Practices in Authoritarian Armies

Why do some states generate competent, professional military organizations, while others fail to do so even when they have the required economic, demographic, and technological endowments? Variation in states’ military organizational practices—their core policies related to promotion patterns, training regimens, command arrangements, and information management—holds the key. This article develops a typology of such practices and explains why and how they vary in response to the internal and external threats facing particular regimes. The article then subjects this argument to a carefully designed plausibility probe comparing the threat environments and military organizational practices of two states whose differences are both intuitively and theoretically puzzling: North and South Vietnam during the period 1954–1975. The initial evidence provides support for the theory and casts doubt on existing explanations of military organizational behavior focused on external threats, democracy, or the degree of political intervention in the military. The findings have important implications for foreign policy, as well as for future research on authoritarianism, civil-military relations, and military effectiveness.