Journal of Conflict Resolution

Strange, Austin M.; Dreher, Axel; Fuchs, Andreas; Parks, Bradley; Tierney, Michael J.

doi: 10.1177/0022002715604363pmid: N/A

China’s provision of development finance to other countries is sizable but reliable information is scarce. We introduce a new open-source methodology for collecting project-level development finance information and create a database of Chinese official finance (OF) to Africa from 2000 to 2011. We find that China’s commitments amounted to approximately US$73 billion, of which US$15 billion are comparable to Official Development Assistance following Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development definitions. We provide details on 1,511 projects to fifty African countries. We use this database to extend previous research on aid and conflict, which suffers from omitted-variable bias due to the exclusion of Chinese development finance. Our results show that sudden withdrawals of “traditional” aid no longer induce conflict in the presence of sufficient alternative funding from China. Our findings highlight the importance of gathering more complete data on the development activities of “nontraditional donors” to better understand the link between aid and conflict.

Casper, Brett A.

doi: 10.1177/0022002715600759pmid: N/A

Leaders use the distribution of economic rents to maintain the political support of regime elites. When countries join International Monetary Fund (IMF) programs, they are often required to implement a variety of free market-inspired reforms—such as privatization, reductions in government spending, and the restructuring of financial institutions—as a condition for receiving program funds. These types of reforms can diminish a leader’s capacity to redistribute wealth, which ultimately increases the risk of a coup. More specifically, when a leader begins the implementation of an IMF arrangement, the leader’s action provides public information about the leader’s weakened ability to redistribute wealth in the future. Thus, the act of implementing an IMF program provides each individual elite with information about his or her expected value of rents in the future, and this information gives elites who stand to be harmed by a reform an incentive to launch a coup.

Flores-Macías, Gustavo A.; Kreps, Sarah E.

doi: 10.1177/0022002715600762pmid: N/A

How does the way states finance wars affect public support for conflict? Most existing research has focused on costs as casualties rather than financial burdens, and arguments that do speak to the cost in treasure either minimize potential differences between the two main forms of war finance—debt and taxes—or imply that war taxes do not dent support for war among a populace rallying around the fiscal flag. Using original experiments conducted in the United States and the United Kingdom, we evaluate the relationship between war finance and support for war. We find that how states finance wars has an important effect on support for war and that the gap in support resulting from different modes of war finance holds across the main democracies engaging in conflict, regardless of the type of war or individuals’ party identification. The findings have important implications for theories of democratic accountability in wartime and the conduct of conflict, since borrowing shields the public from the direct costs of war and in turn reduces opposition to it, giving leaders greater latitude in how they carry out war.

Keels, Eric

doi: 10.1177/0022002715595702pmid: N/A

New research has emerged that suggests there is a troubling relationship between elections and civil wars; primarily, elections increase the risk of civil war recurrence. I investigate this relationship further by examining the economic factors associated with the connection between postwar elections and peace failure. Specifically, how does the presence of oil wealth impact the risk posed by postwar elections. Drawing on previous findings in the democratization literature, I suggest the immobility of oil wealth dramatically increases the stakes associated with postwar elections. As postwar elites use irregular electioneering to consolidate their control of oil revenue, it increases the incentives for postwar opposition to use violence as a means to achieve their objectives. Using post-civil war data from 1945 to 2005, I demonstrate that postwar elections that occur in oil-rich economies dramatically decrease the durability of postwar peace. Once controlling for petro elections, though, I demonstrate that subsequent postwar elections actually increase the durability of postwar peace.

Petersohn, Ulrich

doi: 10.1177/0022002715600758pmid: N/A

For more than two decades, private military and security companies (PMSCs) have become increasingly involved in armed conflicts. A common view is that PMSCs are menaces who simply take economic advantage of—and thereby aggravate—already bad situations. Yet, empirical research has rarely investigated these claims or the impact of commercial actors’ selling force-related services. This article investigates how PMSCs impact the severity of armed conflict in weak states and advances the argument that PMSC services increase the client’s military effectiveness. In turn, increased military effectiveness translates into increased conflict severity, the extent of which depends on type of service provided by the PMSC, the level of competition on the market, and oversight.

Pond, Amy

doi: 10.1177/0022002715596777pmid: N/A

How do the distributional consequences of economic sanctions impact future trade policy? Regardless of whether sanctions are effective in achieving concessions, sanctions restrict international trade flows, creating rents for import-competing producers, who are protected from international competition. These rents can then be used to pressure the government to implement protectionist policies. Thus, while the lifting of sanctions directly facilitates some international transactions, sanctions also have an indirect effect. They create powerful domestic interest groups in the sanctioned country who seek market protection. I use multiple estimators to evaluate the effect of trade sanctions on tariff rates. The evidence is consistent with the argument that sanctions increase market protection in both the short and long run.

Holland, Bradley E.; Rios, Viridiana

doi: 10.1177/0022002715600756pmid: N/A

A well-functioning press is crucial for sustaining a healthy democracy. While attacks on journalists occur regularly in many developing countries, previous work has largely ignored where and why journalists are attacked. Focusing on violence by criminal organizations (COs) in Mexico, we offer the first systematic, micro-level analysis of the conditions under which journalists are more likely to be violently targeted. Contrary to popular belief, our evidence reveals that the presence of large, profitable COs does not necessarily lead to fatal attacks against the press. Rather, the likelihood of journalists being killed only increases when rival criminal groups inhabit territories. Rivalry inhibits COs’ ability to control information leaks to the press, instead creating incentives for such leaks to be used as weapons to intensify official enforcement operations against rivals. Without the capacity to informally govern press content, rival criminals affected by such press coverage are more likely to target journalists.

Gleditsch, Kristian S.; Rivera, Mauricio

doi: 10.1177/0022002715603101pmid: N/A

Existing research has uncovered strong geographical clustering in civil war and a variety of diffusion mechanisms through which violence in one country can increase the risk of outbreaks in other countries. Popular coverage of nonviolent protest often emphasizes regional waves like the 1989 revolutions in Eastern Europe and the Arab Spring. However, most research on nonviolence focuses only on features within countries affecting motivation and opportunities, and we know little about the possible role of diffusion and transnational factors. We detail how nonviolent campaigns in other states can increase nonviolent mobilization and direct action, highlighting important differences in the likely actors for violent and nonviolent direct action and the relevant diffusion mechanisms. We find strong empirical evidence for diffusion in nonviolent campaigns. The effects are largely confined to campaigns in neighboring countries, and there is little evidence of global diffusion. The potential diffusion effects are also specific to whether dissent is violent and nonviolent rather than general political instability. Moreover, we find that the effects of neighboring campaigns on nonviolent direct action apply only in cases with plausible motivation for contesting the government, and the effects are stronger when the regional environment can help expand opportunities for organizing dissent.