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| 1 |
ID:
146151
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| Summary/Abstract |
This article examines the impact of military unit composition on desertion in civil wars. I argue that military units face an increased risk of desertion if they cannot develop norms of cooperation. This is a challenging task in the context of divided and ambiguous individual loyalties found in civil wars. Norms of cooperation emerge, above all, from soldiers sending each other costly signals of their commitment. Social and factional ties also shape these norms, albeit in a more limited fashion. Hence, unit composition can serve as an intervening variable explaining how collective aims can sometimes induce individual soldiers to keep fighting. Analyzing original data from the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939), I demonstrate that three characteristics of a military unit's composition—the presence of conscripts rather than volunteers, social heterogeneity (whose effect is found to be limited to volunteer units), and polarization among factions—increase the individual soldier's propensity to desert. Unit composition proves at least as important as individual characteristics when explaining desertion. This analysis indicates the usefulness of moving beyond commonly used atomistic understandings of combatant behavior. Instead, it suggests the importance of theoretical microfoundations that emphasize norms of cooperation among groups of combatants.
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| 2 |
ID:
134943
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| Summary/Abstract |
This article examines desertion in civil wars, focusing on the role of combatants’ hometowns in facilitating desertion. Analyzing data from the Spanish Civil War, the article demonstrates that combatants who come from hill country are considerably more likely to desert than combatants whose hometowns are on flat ground. This is because evasion is easier in rough terrain. The finding implies that the cohesion of armed groups depends on control, not just positive incentives, and that control of territory in civil wars goes beyond rebel–government contestation, and consists also of control behind the lines. The article bridges micro and macro approaches to civil wars by indicating the multiple uses to which individuals can put structural conditions like rough terrain. This helps to clarify the macro-level link between rough terrain and civil war. It also shows that micro-level research can profitably examine structural variables alongside individual characteristics and endogenous conflict dynamics.
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| 3 |
ID:
160238
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| Summary/Abstract |
This article examines the impact of the ethnic exclusiveness of regimes on commitment problems and hence on civil conflict duration. It argues that members of privileged in-groups in highly exclusive regimes can be trapped into compliance with the regime. Ethnic exclusion helps to construct privileged-group members as regime loyalists. They therefore fear rebel reprisals even if they surrender or defect and consequently persist in fighting. The article finds in particular that, in ethnically exclusive regimes, privileged-group members mistrust even rebels who mobilize on a nonethnic agenda and regard rebel reassurances, including nonethnic aims, as suspect. Exclusion therefore induces privileged-group cohesion, an effect more resistant to rebel reassurances than previously recognized. A case study of the Syrian civil war shows this dynamic at a micro level, and a cross-national statistical analysis gives partial evidence that it lengthens civil conflicts on a larg`e scale.
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| 4 |
ID:
112856
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| Publication |
2012.
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| Summary/Abstract |
Does repression increase or decrease unity within ethnic or nationalist movements? Conventional wisdom lends itself to two contradictory predictions. On one hand, it is said that conflict with an out-group is the surest path to unity in an in-group. On the other hand, repression exaggerates the gap between radicals and moderates in a movement. Challenging both views, this article argues that repression amplifies trends in cooperation or conflict existent in a movement before the onset of repression. All movements have some institutional arrangement, meaning a set of procedures and relationships that structure decision making and behavior. These "rules of the game" distribute power within the movement, and thus favor some actors over others. Repression disrupts the equilibrium of these institutions, after which the members might engage in either more cooperation or more conflict, depending on the level of satisfaction with preexisting institutional arrangements. The authors illustrate these propositions through comparative analysis of four repression shocks from two nationalist movements: the Kurdish movement in Iraq and the Palestinian national movement.
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| 5 |
ID:
188919
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| Summary/Abstract |
In Afghanistan, Libya, Liberia and beyond, armed rebellions have begun when armies fell apart. When does this occur? This paper conducts a large-N analysis of these army-splinter rebellions, distinct from both non-military rebellions from below and from coups, using new data. It finds that they follow a logic of state breakdown focusing on regime characteristics (personalist regimes and the loss of superpower support at the end of the Cold War) rather than drivers of mass mobilization from below. In contrast, these regime-level factors matter much less for the non-military rebellions from below that dominate theorizing about civil war origins. This paper also shows that one option for military rebels lies in not attempting a coup but instead heading straight into a rebellion. This paper thus distinguishes highly different paths to armed conflict, validates the state breakdown approach to why armies fall apart, and extends the well-known tradeoff between coups and civil wars.
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| 6 |
ID:
184206
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| Summary/Abstract |
Training other countries’ armed forces is a go-to foreign policy tool for the United States and other states. A growing literature explores the effects of military training, but researchers lack detailed data on training activities. To assess the origins and consequences of military training, as well as changing patterns over time, this project provides a new, global dataset of US foreign military training. This article describes the scope of the data along with the variables collected, coding procedures, and spatial and temporal patterns. We demonstrate the added value of the data in their much greater coverage of training activities, showing differences from both existing datasets and aggregate foreign military aid data. Reanalyzing prior research findings linking US foreign military training to the risk of coups d’état in recipient states, we find that this effect is limited to a single US program representing a small fraction of overall US training activities. The data show comprehensively how the United States attempts to influence partner military forces in a wide variety of ways and suggest new avenues of research.
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