Browsing by Subject "civil war"
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Item Open Access Foreign Sanctuary and Rebel Violence: The Effects of International Borders on Rebel Treatment of Civilians(2017) Allred, Robert PRebel groups frequently rely on support from civilian populations to conduct civil conflicts. Why, then, do rebel groups risk alienating civilian populations by committing atrocities against them? Much of the civil wars literature argues that relative rebel capabilities and the source thereof explain rebel group decisions to use violence against noncombatants. In this paper, I examine how international borders, through rebel use of a foreign sanctuary, increase the violent behavior of rebel groups toward civilian populations. I argue that sanctuary constrains cooperative rebel strategies by reducing the level of possible interaction with local populations, and lowers the cost of violence by protecting rebels from government reprisals. Additionally, since violence can be counterproductive to rebel success in the long-run, rebel groups utilizing sanctuary should moderate their violence as a conflict ages. I test these expectations using a quasi-Poisson count model of civilian deaths caused by rebels, and I find support for both of my hypotheses. My findings suggest foreign sanctuary is more powerful in describing variation in one-sided violence than previously researched phenomena, such as foreign support.
Item Open Access How Do Foreign Alliances Affect Civil War Onset?(2024) Fan, YongTreated as a practical approach to deterrence, foreign alliances are believed to have a tight relationship with the onset of interstate wars. Scholars have paid substantial attention to how foreign alliances affect international security, and how domestic alliances affect domestic security. However, there could be an interaction between elements from interstate and intrastate stages, and we still lack knowledge of the mechanisms and effects. I argue in this paper that, a state can deter the rebel groups within its ally’s territory, thus decreasing the probability of civil war onset of that ally. Like nation-states, rebel groups will also assess the allies’ capability and credibility of the state they fight against to decide whether they will initiate a civil war. However, neither capability nor credibility alone can explain this dynamic. Instead, they amplify each other to prevent the onset of civil war. I find that both capability and credibility have the effect of reducing civil wars, but their effects are strong enough only when the other variable is at its higher value.
Item Open Access Peace through Stadium: Olympic Games, Nationalism, and Civil War(2017) Chen, BidanAlthough the previous literature has extensively debated the role of nationalism in civil conflicts, few studies have addressed how different types of nationalism might affect the occurrence of civil conflicts. In this study, I distinguish two types of nationalism—inclusive and exclusive—and examine their impact on the likelihood of civil war. I argue that both inclusive and exclusive nationalism can have pacifying effects that are produced by distinct mechanisms in each case. In particular, inclusive nationalism will reinforce national identity and national unity, leading to a reduced likelihood of civil conflicts. Meanwhile, exclusive nationalism creates a window in which the likelihood of interstate wars increases by distracting attention away from domestic grievances, which, in turn, decreases the likelihood of civil war. In this study, I use a nationalism-‐‑inducing sporting event—the Summer Olympic Games—as the impetus for creating surges in nationalism, and I test the effects of the Games on the likelihood of civil war in a given country. An analysis of an original dataset on Summer Olympic Games and civil war from 1946 to 2015 confirms my theory that nationalism induced by the Summer Olympic Games reduces the likelihood of civil conflicts.
Item Open Access Re-Thinking Geography and Civil War: Geography and Rebel Identity(2011) Thomas, Matthew EdwardScholarship on ethnic conflict and civil war has often examined the role of geographic factors, such as rough terrain and exploitable natural resources, in either prolonging or even initiating the conflict. However, many of these studies focus upon the material/tactical advantages that geography provides to the rebels. I argue that analysis of geography and civil war must account for the effects of geography upon the insurgency's identity (ethnic, religious, ideological), which is the most decisive factor in the rebels' ability to galvanize popular support. Using regression analysis and case studies, I demonstrate that while the geographic distance between rebel territory and the capital city in a war-afflicted country is of great importance, the presence of identity can compensate for the lack of favorable geography.