Suchergebnisse

Rumors run rife in areas affected by political instability and conflict. Their adoption plays a key role in igniting many forms of violence, including riots, ethnic conflict, genocide, and war. While unverified at the time of transmission, some rumors are widely treated as truth, while others are dismissed as implausible or false. What factors lead individuals to embrace rumors and other forms of unverified information? This article presents a new theoretical framework for understanding individual receptivity to rumors and tests it using original survey data gathered in insurgency-affected areas of Thailand and the Philippines. We find wide variation in rumor adoption, and argue that three factors drive individuals to embrace rumors: worldview, threat perception, and prior exposure. Contrary to conventional wisdom, we find no evidence that commonly cited factors—including education, income, age, and gender—determine individual receptivity to rumors. We also explore the implications of belief in rumors on conflict dynamics. We find that greater receptivity to rumors correlates with the belief that ongoing conflict is intractable. This suggests that rumors can not only help spark political violence, but also impede its resolution. Our findings shed light on the complex interaction between worldview and unverified information in shaping popular beliefs—and through them, political contention and competition—in conflict areas and beyond.

State failure poses one of the greatest threats to international peace and security. The collapse of governing institutions breeds civil wars, generates refugee flows, causes enormous civilian suffering, foments instability in neighboring countries, and provides safe havens for transnational criminal and terrorist organizations. As a result, commentators and policymakers have increasingly called for a remedy to the problem of state failure. One of the most compelling arguments is to draw on an old legal institution: international trusteeship by the United Nations (U.N.). This Article argues that while trusteeship may prove effective in managing state failure, it also carries risks. International interventions typically take limited control of the domestic environment of weak countries without absorbing their sovereignty. Trusteeship, in contrast, vests enormous authority and discretion in temporary international administrators, who in turn tend to centralize their power and decision-making in order to meet challenging mission mandates under difficult conditions. This "authority creep" absorbs sovereignty and in the process risks eroding incentives for leaders of failing states to cooperate with the U.N. Worse, unmitigated authority creep may weaken the political basis for successive international administration and reconstruction efforts. This Article concludes by outlining an alternative system of oversight for U.N. transitional administrators as a means of preserving partial sovereign authority and control for domestic political actors.

What is the relationship between the type of training combatants receive upon recruitment into an armed group and their propensity to abuse civilians in civil war? Does military training or political training prevent or exacerbate the victimization of civilians by armed non-state actors? While the literature on civilian victimization has expanded rapidly, few studies have examined the correlation between abuse of civilians and the modes of training that illegal armed actors receive. Using a simple formal model, we develop hypotheses regarding this connection and argue that while military training should not decrease the probability that a combatant engages in civilian abuse, political training should. We test these hypotheses using a new survey consisting of a representative sample of approximately 1,500 demobilized combatants from the Colombian conflict, which we match with department-level data on civilian casualties. The empirical analysis confirms our hypotheses about the connection between training and civilian abuse and the results are robust to adding a full set of controls both at the department and at the individual level

Anti-insurgent militias and states attempt to erode insurgent groups' capacities and co-opt insurgent fighters by promising and providing benefits. They do so to create a perception that the insurgency is unraveling and to harness inside information to prosecute more effective counterinsurgency campaigns. Why do some insurgents defect to a paramilitary group and others exit the war by demobilizing, while still others remain loyal to their group? This article presents the first empirical analysis of these questions, connecting insurgents' motivations for joining, wartime experiences, and organizational behavior with decisions to defect. A survey of ex-combatants in Colombia shows that individuals who joined for ideological reasons are less likely to defect overall but more likely to side-switch or demobilize when their group deviates from its ideological precepts. Among fighters who joined for economic reasons, political indoctrination works to decrease their chances of demobilization and defection to paramilitaries, while opportunities for looting decrease economically motivated combatants' odds of defection.

Anti-insurgent militias and states attempt to erode insurgent groups' capacities and co-opt insurgent fighters by promising and providing benefits. They do so to create a perception that the insurgency is unraveling and to harness inside information to prosecute more effective counterinsurgency campaigns. Why do some insurgents defect to a paramilitary group and others exit the war by demobilizing, while still others remain loyal to their group? This article presents the first empirical analysis of these questions, connecting insurgents' motivations for joining, wartime experiences, and organizational behavior with decisions to defect. A survey of ex-combatants in Colombia shows that individuals who joined for ideological reasons are less likely to defect overall but more likely to side-switch or demobilize when their group deviates from its ideological precepts. Among fighters who joined for economic reasons, political indoctrination works to decrease their chances of demobilization and defection to paramilitaries, while opportunities for looting decrease economically motivated combatants' odds of defection. © 2015, © The Author(s) 2015.