Browsing by Subject "International security"
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Item Open Access Civilian Autonomy and Resilience in the Midst of Armed Conflict(2015) Dorff, CassyIn situations of armed violence and insecurity, how do civilians influence the political environment around them? In this dissertation, I present three different studies that broadly engage this question. In concert, the papers presented herein offer new insights on civilians' relationship to armed conflict through a focus on victimization, participation, attitudes on resistance, and the effects of civilian resistance on aggregate levels of violence.
The first study explores the effects of victimization on political participation. I argue that previous answers to this question have overlooked a key variable for predicting civilian behavior: individual level social context. As a step forward in connecting social support networks to behavioral outcomes, I present the kinship network as a novel measure that captures an individual's valuable and private social interactions. I find that survivors of criminal violence with strong ties to kinship networks are most likely to attend political meetings. By highlighting variation in behavior across victims, I challenge previous work which only examines differences in participation between victims and non-victims.
Motivated by the assumption that attitudes are a precursor to action, my second study examines civilian attitudes on the efficacy of resistance in regions of protracted violence. Using an original survey fielded in Mexico, I explore the conditions under which civilians are likely to view nonviolent or violent methods as useful tools for change. I first test whether several demographic factors--age, gender, income, knowledge about civil resistance, and media consumption--influence attitudes toward resistance. Moving beyond these variables, I then test whether perceptions about government responsibility affect these attitudes. Specifically, I argue that civilian attitudes towards resistance methods are informed by which political actor civilians view as responsible for their security problems. I find that the predicted probability of viewing nonviolent action as more effective than violent action increases by 20.8% for those who attribute security responsibility to local authorities, compared to other actors. Using an embedded survey experiment, I then address the empirically relevant question of whether these attitudes about resistance correlate with action. I find that compared to those who do not view resistance as useful, respondents who view nonviolence as effective are "supportive types'' who are more willing than others to support local resistance groups, regardless of the methods these groups employ. Together, these analyses provide important information for civilian organizers seeking to mobilize latent support for resistance. Moreover, they enrich our understanding of the ways in which communities can reduce violence in order to reclaim political control during armed conflicts.
Last, I present an aggregated analysis on the evolution of armed conflict in Mexico. The criminal war in Mexico is extremely complex: Drug Trafficking Organizations, citizens, government agents, amongst others, are all relevant actors within the dynamic evolution of the conflict. Existing research, however, typically ignores the interdependencies inherent to these networks. Using a new collection of machine-coded event data, I generate conflict networks for each year from 2004 to 2010. In doing so, I make three major contributions. First, I offer insights into the potential promise and pitfalls of using machine-coded data for country-level analysis. Next, after cleaning and improving upon the original data, I generate yearly networks, which capture a wide range of violent-related actors. Importantly, I demonstrate how these networks illustrate the interdependent nature of the Mexican conflict and present new insights, such as how government coordination changes in response to cartel violence over time. Finally, I use a latent space approach to identify previously unobservable violence between government actors, criminal groups, and civilians. This research design serves as a platform for future research to investigate the effects of major civilian-led events--such as mass protests--on the evolution of armed conflict.
Item Open Access Corrupted Data and the Illicit Arms Trade(2020-04) Graves, RoseWith the ever-increasing advancements in weapons technology, the illicit arms trade has steadily become a greater threat to international security. The small arms trade, consisting of portable weapons and their parts, is not only a profitable good, but also a method of gaining power through violent and threatening means. Being able to identify when and what countries are engaging in illicit arms trade is essential in order to make informed policy decisions. The driving question behind this project is: how do we recognize corrupted network data and how does corrupted network data impact our statistical analyses? The arms trade takes the form of network data consisting of actors (nodes) and the relationship between them (edges). This analysis of methods initially looks at simulated data. We show that if data is sampled from a pre-specified model then increasing the amount of corrupt data present impacts posterior statistics such as the intercept and row and column coefficients, as well as posterior predictive descriptive statistics such as degree distributions, triangle counts, betweenness, and Eigen vector centrality. This analysis demonstrates if data is corrupt, then by replacing the corrupted values with NAs these missing values will be imputed from the true pre-specified model and thus will not impact inference. These methods are then applied to actual small arms trade data, to see what nations may be engaging in illicit arms trading.Item Open Access Evaluating the Motivation and Feasibility Theory in Predicting the Onset and Severity of Civil Conflict(2013-04-30) Chordia, IshitaThis paper looks at 187 countries from 1960-2004 and explores the economic indicators of the onset and the severity of civil conflicts, where civil conflicts are described as small clashes that result in 25 or more battle deaths per conflict. For conflict onset, I test a model that uses the Motivation Theory to predict when a conflict will begin while for conflict severity, I test a model that uses the Feasibility Theory to predict how severe a conflict will become. In the final section, I reverse the models and test the ability of the Motivation Theory to predict conflict severity and the ability of the Feasibility Theory to predict conflict onset. I find that the Motivation Theory performs better at predicting both conflict onset and severity.Item Open Access Leaders, Perceptions, and Reputations for Resolve(2014) Lupton, DanielleFor scholars of international relations, reputation for resolve - the belief that an actor will stand firm in future disputes - has served as a seminal explanation for the outcome of interstate crises. Scholars studying state reputation remain divided as to which characteristics of the state determine reputation for resolve. Recent scholarship questions this traditional state-centric view of international relations, indicating leaders can be as influential as states in international affairs. My dissertation investigates whether individual leaders can develop reputations for resolve independently from the states they serve. In doing so, my dissertation bridges the state-centric and leader-centric literatures, contributing to our understanding of both reputations for resolve and the impact of individual leaders on international politics. My theory focuses on reputation development as I examine which information decision-makers use to make assessments of resolve. As leaders are the primary arbiters of foreign policy and interact substantially with each other during international crises and negotiations, I conclude that leaders should be able to develop independent reputations for resolve based on their behavior while in office. I further theorize that, due to the ways in which individuals access and process information, a leader's early actions while in office will matter more in assessments of his/her resolve, making initial reputations difficult to change.
To test my theory against alternative hypotheses, I employ a multi-methods research design using experimental surveys, statistical duration analysis, and a historical case study. The experiments focus on the internal causal mechanisms by which individuals process information to make predictions of a leader's resolve. To test the external validity of my theory, I employ a duration analysis to examine how the resoluteness of a leader's response to a crisis helps prevent that leader from being a target of future crises. Finally, the case study uses process tracing methods to investigate the extent to which individual leaders develop reputations for resolve over time. Through these multiple methods, I find robust evidence that leaders do develop reputations for resolve independently from their state's reputation. The experiments indicate that leader behavior is influential on perceptions of resolve even when accounting for state-based characteristics. Furthermore, I find that participants are more likely to seek out and prioritize leader-based information. I also find that early perceptions of resolve have a significant impact on later perceptions. The duration analysis indicates that the resoluteness of a leader's behavior can affect his/her risk of future crisis onset. Finally, the case study shows that potential challenger leaders do take leader-based information into account when making assessments of resolve and that a leader's early behavior is particularly influential to the development of his/her reputation for resolve. Based on this evidence I conclude that leaders can develop reputations for resolve. These reputations are primarily based on a leader's statements and behavior, even when controlling for state-based variables, and are resistant to change once formed.