Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons™
Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
- Institution
Articles 1 - 10 of 10
Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
Legitimacy In Conflict Contexts: Shifting Rebel Engagement In Sierra Leone And The Presence Of Private Contractors, Anne Lauder
Legitimacy In Conflict Contexts: Shifting Rebel Engagement In Sierra Leone And The Presence Of Private Contractors, Anne Lauder
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
The growth of non-state actors has significantly changed the nature of conflict. Rebel groups increasingly challenge state rule while private military and security companies (PMSCs) increasingly enter conflict spaces on behalf of a variety of actors, including states seeking to suppress insurgencies. This case study of the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) during Sierra Leone’s civil war between 1991-2002 contributes to emerging work on rebel behavior by examining how rebel’s legitimacy-seeking behavior might evolve when PMSCs enter a conflict context. I explore the ways that PMSCs can shift perceived incentive structures surrounding insurgents’ interpretations of and engagements with legitimacy during conflict, …
When Do Ties Bind? Foreign Fighters, Social Embeddedness, And Combatant Repertoires Of Behavior During Civil War, Pauline Luz Moore
When Do Ties Bind? Foreign Fighters, Social Embeddedness, And Combatant Repertoires Of Behavior During Civil War, Pauline Luz Moore
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
How does the extent to which rebel organizations are embedded into local conflict contexts - i.e. the extent to which they "fit in" or "stand out" from local populations - affect their behavior on and off the battlefield during civil war? This dissertation examines why rebel group propensities to engage in governance and violence during war vary at the macro and microlevels of analysis and uses as its point of departure the presence of foreign fighters in the ranks of rebel groups engaged in civil war. I employ a cross-national analysis of insurgencies from 1989-2011, and also conduct a theory-testing …
Securing Whose Peace? The Effects Of Peace-Agreement Provisions On Physical Integrity Rights After Civil War, Melvin R. Korsmo
Securing Whose Peace? The Effects Of Peace-Agreement Provisions On Physical Integrity Rights After Civil War, Melvin R. Korsmo
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
When civil wars are resolved via negotiated settlement, peace-agreement provisions like power-sharing agreements and third-party security guarantees often are advocated for their purported benefits of ensuring a long-lasting and durable peace. Although scholars have explored the effects of peace-agreement provisions on enhancing the security of states, their influence on shaping individual security outcomes is largely unknown. The strong potential exists that these same provisions that improve a government's ability to deter future violence also increase that government's violation of its citizens' physical integrity rights as a means of coercion and governance. Also rare in the power-sharing literature is exploration of …
An Empirical Analysis Of The Association Between Types Of Interventions And Civil War Onset, Melinda Mellott
An Empirical Analysis Of The Association Between Types Of Interventions And Civil War Onset, Melinda Mellott
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Quantitative studies have focused on economics, social structures, and lack of political freedoms as being elemental factors for civil war onset. However, these studies have neglected the possibility of a civil war being an unintended consequence of international military intervention. I conduct an empirical analysis of the association between military intervention and civil war onset by collecting data for twenty countries within the Middle East/North African regions from 1980 to 2000. Using the International Military Intervention data set, I categorized “international intervention” into nine different types, all of which were regressed with intrastate war data derived from the Correlates of …
Reconciling Ex Ante Expectations With The Ex Post Reality: A Look At The Effectiveness Of Third-Party Diplomatic Interventions In Civil Wars, Matthew Benchimol
Reconciling Ex Ante Expectations With The Ex Post Reality: A Look At The Effectiveness Of Third-Party Diplomatic Interventions In Civil Wars, Matthew Benchimol
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Research has begun to focus on the role third-party diplomatic intervention plays in the length of civil conflicts. Diplomatic interventions by a third-party actor are assumed to help resolve or alleviate violence over time. Is this really the case? Hypotheses relating to these aspects of civil wars are proposed to test this long-standing assumption. This thesis uses statistical analysis to observe the relationship between diplomatic interventions and civil war duration and then observe the relationship between duration and civil war violence. The data incorporates approximately 150 civil wars from 1945 to 1999, 101 of which had outside interventions. This thesis …
Rebel Leaders And Conflict Processes: An Individual Level Analysis, Serhan Yalciner
Rebel Leaders And Conflict Processes: An Individual Level Analysis, Serhan Yalciner
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Civil conflict is a complex and ambiguous phenomenon that requires a multi-dimensional investigation. A concentration on rebel leaders in the study of conflict promises a good amount of potential for obtaining interesting findings. This dissertation examines rebel leader survival and rebel leaders’ influence on various conflict processes. It demonstrates that relative rebel strength, external support favoring the government, and oil production of the state have a significant impact on rebel leader tenure. To explain why we observe some considerable increases in the number of civilian killings in the course of conflict, the dissertation develops a theoretical model, putting the emphasis …
The Effects Of State Leader Psychology On Civil War Lethality, Brandon Kelley
The Effects Of State Leader Psychology On Civil War Lethality, Brandon Kelley
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Does a state leader's psychology influence lethality in civil wars? This thesis analyzes the aforementioned question during post-1945 civil wars. This particular subject, paying close attention to individual psychology at the state level, is gaining traction amongst scholars, though limited scholarly attention has addressed whether leader psychology is an indicator of conflict severity in terms of lethality. The psychology of the state leader in this thesis is assessed from leadership traits and operational code indices, specifically direction of strategy (I1) and interpretation of the nature of the political universe (P1). The data and cases used are pulled from datasets by …
Incumbent Violence And Insurgent Tactics: The Effects Of Incumbent Violence On Popular Support For Guerrilla Warfare And Terrorism, Jonathan Williams
Incumbent Violence And Insurgent Tactics: The Effects Of Incumbent Violence On Popular Support For Guerrilla Warfare And Terrorism, Jonathan Williams
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Insurgency has two main strategies, guerrilla warfare and terrorism, which should be treated as linked, but distinct, strategies. This thesis examines the role of incumbent violence in leading insurgents to select one, or both, of these strategies. It argues that incumbent violence can create support for insurgency by causing fear and a desire for revenge and reshaping the social structures of a community. It also argues that incumbent violence increases popular support for terrorism in particular by creating outbidding incentives and desires to respond in kind to civilian deaths and as a way of punishing norm violations against attacking civilians …
Sub-Saharan Africa: Searching For A Social Contract, David D. Mayen
Sub-Saharan Africa: Searching For A Social Contract, David D. Mayen
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
This thesis examines the phenomenon of civil war and state failure in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) from a social contract perspective. Its main hypothesis is that authoritarianism will lead to state failure in the context of SSA. In this regard, SSA states are political communities that have not done enough to promote and develop a social contract that is compatible with the region's sociopolitical and structural peculiarities. Since civil war and state failure have hampered different dimensions of human progress in SSA, analyzing the main patterns of conflict will inevitably lead to an underlying incompatibility between existing governing political structures and …
Transformation Of Rebel Movements Into Political Parties In Transitions From Civil Conflict: A Study Of Rebels' Decision-Making Amid Violence In El Salvador And Zimbabwe, Devin M. Finn
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Efforts to understand modern intrastate conflict require examination of the varied interactions between states and non–state entities battling for control of government. A growing number of civil wars and separatist conflicts, particularly following the end of the Cold War, have been resolved peacefully through negotiated settlements in which rebels abandoned their arms and entered the political arena. While many scholars have studied revolution and democratization in depth, few have focused on explaining the transformation of rebel movements into political parties. Under what conditions do rebel movements engaged in armed conflict with states decide to negotiate, disarm and participate in electoral …