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ID:
117631
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| Publication |
2012.
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| Summary/Abstract |
The impact of ethnicity for the onset of conflicts has often been dismissed in the cross-country empirical literature on civil wars. Recently, however, several studies using disaggregated data have reached different conclusions and highlight the importance of the configuration of ethno-national groups. This article follows the latter approach and investigates a different phenomenon: the impact of ethnic heterogeneity on the severity of violence. Using disaggregated data at municipality level in Bosnia and Herzegovina, we perform a quantitative analysis to assess the impact of various indices of heterogeneity on the number of casualties that occurred in the 1992-95 war in the 109 municipalities composing the country. We argue that in a context where ethnicity plays a key role in shaping rivalry among groups, ethnic polarization, in particular, creates strategic incentives for severe violence as armed groups try to create ethnically homogenous territories in the first phase of the war. By also including the temporal dimension in the analysis, we show that ethnic polarization loses its impact as the war evolves over time; therefore, the geographic location of the municipalities becomes the best predictor of severe clashes because as the war goes on, ethnic groups shift their objective from creating internally homogenous municipalities to consolidating wider areas. As such, municipalities located on politically and militarily relevant frontlines experience the highest levels of violence.
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| 2 |
ID:
174769
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| Summary/Abstract |
What causes civilian victimization in conventional civil wars and in conventional wars that experience insurgencies? The authors argue that a key driver of civilian victimization is the vulnerability of the incumbent forces, specifically when the conflict’s front line is shifting. Vulnerability is a function of informational and logistical challenges: when the front line is moving, incumbents face increased informational uncertainty and unstable supply chains that augment their vulnerability. Thus, incumbents will increase the use of civilian victimization in response to a scarcity of high-quality information on the location and identity of insurgents, to limit possible information leaks, and to contain supply disruption and logistics support to adversaries. The authors support their argument using matched difference-in-differences analyses of original subnational data on Nazi-Fascist violence in World War II Italy (1943–1945) and qualitative evidence.
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