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While studies of the motives for intentional insurgent violence against civilians are now common, relatively little academic research has focused on the impact of victimization on conflict processes or war outcomes. This article addresses this gap in the literature. Specifically, the authors examine the influence of civilian victimization on bargaining between the regime and insurgents during a civil war. A curvilinear relationship between the level of civilian victimization used by insurgents and the likelihood that conflict ends in negotiated settlement is posited. The probability of settlement is highest for groups that engage in a moderate level of civilian killing but declines at particularly high levels. A competing risk analysis using monthly conflict data on African civil wars between 1989 and 2010 supports this argument.

How do third-party interventions affect the severity of mass killings? The authors theorize that episodes of mass killing are the consequence of two factors: (1) the threat perceptions of the perpetrators and (2) the cost of implementing genocidal policies relative to other alternatives. To reduce genocidal hostilities, interveners must address these factors. Doing so requires that interveners alter the genocidaire's expectation of a successful extermination policy, which in turn requires a demonstration of the third party's resolve. This cannot be achieved immediately upon intervention, and, given the perpetrator's strategic response to third-party involvement, the authors expect intervention to increase hostilities in the short term. With time, however, the authors contend that the characteristics of impartial interventions offer the greatest opportunity for reducing the violence in the long term. A statistical analysis of the 1955–2005 period supports the theoretical expectations.

With few exceptions, prior research on leadership survival focuses largely on state institutional characteristics or economic context. We shift this orientation by explicitly considering the important role contentious interactions between the incumbent regime and dissident actors play in determining the duration of leader tenure as well as the manner in which a leader is removed. Specifically, we focus on the severity of the incumbent leader's response to dissident challenges. We contend that the severity of this response represents a critical signal which informs the decisions of specific audiences that ultimately determine the incumbent's survival. To evaluate our argument, we employ detailed information on dissent–repression dynamics and leader survival for a leader-month sample of 69 African and Latin American states between 1990 and 2006. Our results suggest that incumbents are vulnerable to coup d' état when government repression is perceived as weaker than would normally be expected for a given challenge. By contrast, removal via revolution becomes increasingly likely when repression dramatically exceeds the levels that would normally be warranted given the extant challenge.

With few exceptions, prior research on leadership survival focuses largely on state institutional characteristics or economic context. We shift this orientation by explicitly considering the important role contentious interactions between the incumbent regime and dissident actors play in determining the duration of leader tenure as well as the manner in which a leader is removed. Specifically, we focus on the severity of the incumbent leader's response to dissident challenges. We contend that the severity of this response represents a critical signal which informs the decisions of specific audiences that ultimately determine the incumbent's survival. To evaluate our argument, we employ detailed information on dissent–repression dynamics and leader survival for a leader-month sample of 69 African and Latin American states between 1990 and 2006. Our results suggest that incumbents are vulnerable to coup d' état when government repression is perceived as weaker than would normally be expected for a given challenge. By contrast, removal via revolution becomes increasingly likely when repression dramatically exceeds the levels that would normally be warranted given the extant challenge.

AbstractWith few exceptions, prior research on leadership survival focuses largely on state institutional characteristics or economic context. We shift this orientation by explicitly considering the important role contentious interactions between the incumbent regime and dissident actors play in determining the duration of leader tenure as well as the manner in which a leader is removed. Specifically, we focus on the severity of the incumbent leader's response to dissident challenges. We contend that the severity of this response represents a critical signal which informs the decisions of specific audiences that ultimately determine the incumbent's survival. To evaluate our argument, we employ detailed information on dissent–repression dynamics and leader survival for a leader-month sample of 69 African and Latin American states between 1990 and 2006. Our results suggest that incumbents are vulnerable to coup d' état when government repression is perceived as weaker than would normally be expected for a given challenge. By contrast, removal via revolution becomes increasingly likely when repression dramatically exceeds the levels that would normally be warranted given the extant challenge.

AbstractAlthough some rebel groups work hard to foster collaborative ties with civilians, others engage in egregious abuses and war crimes. We argue that foreign state funding for rebel organizations greatly reduces incentives to "win the hearts and minds" of civilians because it diminishes the need to collect resources from the population. However, unlike other lucrative resources, foreign funding of rebel groups must be understood in principal-agent terms. Some external principals—namely, democracies and states with strong human rights lobbies—are more concerned with atrocities in the conflict zone than others. Multiple state principals also lead to abuse because no single state can effectively restrain the organization. We test these conjectures with new data on foreign support for rebel groups and data on one-sided violence against civilians. Most notably, we find strong evidence that principal characteristics help influence agent actions.

Abstract
We identify a set of potential theoretical mechanisms that link the outbreak and spread of communicable diseases to temporal and spatial patterns of social unrest. Despite the proliferation of research since 2020 analyzing the social impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, we examine the broader relationship between less severe epidemic outbreaks and their social consequences. Epidemics, as well as the policies that governments implement to tackle them, often generate acute grievances among the public and create new opportunities for collective dissent, the combination of which promotes unrest. Nonetheless, perceived opportunities for unrest are influenced by the scale and scope of the disease outbreak, and particularly lethal disease outbreaks may therefore offset the incentives for collective mobilization. We examine these relationships using sub-national data on communicable disease outbreaks and geo-located social unrest events data in 60 African and Latin American countries from 1990 to 2017 and find support for our argument. However, we observe a curvilinear relationships between the severity of the epidemic and the incidence of unrest.

Responding to the COVID-19 pandemic has created unprecedented social and political challenges. Mitigation strategies often disrupt the daily lives of citizens and constrain rights and privileges. Policies intended to contain disease spread have provoked resentment, resistance, and backlash. We examine the extent to which specific COVID-19 policy responses influence the frequency of civil unrest. Combining insights from both grievance and opportunity models of dissent, we contend that pandemic response policies are most likely to lead to unrest when the grievances and opportunities created by disease mitigation strategies reinforce each other. We test our arguments with nuanced information on specific pandemic mitigation policies, combined with geo-located events data on COVID-19-related social unrest activities. We find that policies such as workplace and school closures, which induce intense grievances and reduce the opportunity cost of engaging in collective mobilization, are associated with increases in dissent activities. Policies that restrict opportunities for mobilization, such as restrictions on public transportation, reduce the number of dissent activities. Notably, economic support policies attenuate the effects of workplace closures on dissent. Our results illustrate the varying effects of pandemic mitigation policies on unrest depending on how the grievances they inspire relate to the opportunity they create.