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ID: 188004

Industrial Organization of the Syrian Civil War / Kapstein, Ethan B; Ribar, David

Kapstein, Ethan B	Journal Article
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The Syrian Civil War represents an extreme outlier in terms of the number of insurgent groups which have been engaged in the fighting. These groups have also been remarkably persistent over time, partly due to the fact that rebel in-fighting has been relatively contained. They have also targeted civilians far less than the Syrian Army. These stylized facts run counter to much of the existing literature on multi-party civil wars, which has emphasized the influence of the balance of power on group dynamics. In this article we instead draw upon balance of threat theory, along with insights from the economics of industrial organization, to understand insurgent behavior in the Syrian Civil War, based on a newly compiled dataset of rebel violence. Our research suggests that conflict scholars need to account for factors beyond the balance of power if they are to adequately explain inter-rebel dynamics.

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Industrial organization ; Syrian Civil War

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ID: 192024

Many Faces of Credibility: Hawks, Doves, and Nuclear Disarmament / Casler, Don; Ribar, David; Yarhi-Milo, Keren

Yarhi-Milo, Keren	Journal Article
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The conventional wisdom in international relations holds that an actor’s past record of keeping her word determines her cooperative credibility, and that mutual perceptions of credibility are essential in sustaining cooperation. Yet competing reputation-skeptic and psychological perspectives dispute this conventional wisdom, suggesting that assessments of cooperative credibility result from observers’ judgments about the other’s capabilities and interests or observers’ foreign policy orientations. How do observers assess others’ cooperative credibility? We field a nationally representative survey experiment asking 2,953 Americans to evaluate a hypothetical coercer’s commitment to lift sanctions on a would-be proliferator in exchange for the latter dismantling its nascent nuclear program. We vary the coercer’s previous behavior plus several other contextual factors. We find that respondents’ hawkishness interacts with the coercer’s past actions to shape respondents’ credibility assessments and their support for the proliferator accepting the proposal, with substantial implications for theories of misperception and bargaining.

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Nuclear Disarmament ; Hawks ; Doves

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