Chains of Command
Dominance-Driven Autocratic Political Orientations Predict Political Violence in Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic (WEIRD) and Non-WEIRD Samples
Henrikas Bartusevičius, Florian van Leeuwen & Michael Bang
Petersen Psychological Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Given the costs of political violence, scholars have long sought to identify its causes. We examined individual differences related to participation in political violence, emphasizing the central role of political orientations. We hypothesized that individuals with dominance-driven autocratic political orientations are prone to political violence. Multilevel analysis of survey data from 34 African countries (N = 51,587) indicated that autocracy-oriented individuals, compared with democracy-oriented individuals, are considerably more likely to participate in political violence. As a predictor of violence (indexed with attitudinal, intentional, and behavioral measures), autocratic orientation outperformed other variables highlighted in existing research, including socioeconomic status and group-based injustice. Additional analyses of original data from South Africa (N = 2,170), Denmark (N = 1,012), and the United States (N = 1,539) indicated that the link between autocratic orientations and political violence reflects individual differences in the use of dominance to achieve status and that the findings generalize to societies extensively socialized to democratic values.
The Fractured-Land Hypothesis
Jesús Fernández-Villaverde et al.
NBER Working Paper, September 2020
Abstract:
Patterns of political unification and fragmentation have crucial implications for comparative economic development. Diamond (1997) famously argued that “fractured land” was responsible for China's tendency toward political unification and Europe's protracted political fragmentation. We build a dynamic model with granular geographical information in terms of topographical features and the location of productive agricultural land to quantitatively gauge the effects of “fractured land” on state formation in Eurasia. We find that either topography or productive land alone is sufficient to account for China's recurring political unification and Europe's persistent political fragmentation. The existence of a core region of high land productivity in Northern China plays a central role in our simulations. We discuss how our results map into observed historical outcomes and assess how robust our findings are.
Infectious Diseases and Government Growth
Nathan Goodman, Christopher Coyne & Abigail Devereaux
George Mason University Working Paper, September 2020
Abstract:
In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, governments around the world adopted a variety of policies expanding the scope of their power. Some of these effects are immediate and observable. Others, however, are not readily observable and only appear over time. We explore these long-run consequences with specific focus on how institutional changes can persist after a public health crisis ends, causing increases in state power. These changes have the potential to undermine the liberties of future persons and disrupt bottom-up, non-state processes of social coordination. We illustrate these dynamics with three historical case studies — (1) The bubonic plague in Cape Town, South Africa in 1901 and its influence on apartheid, (2) The emergence of modern zoning and urban planning in the United States in response to the cholera, typhoid, smallpox, and tuberculosis epidemics, and (3) Compulsory vaccination in response to the smallpox epidemic of 1902.
When a journalist is assassinated, do financial markets care? The market’s reaction to journalist murders
Emre Kuvvet
Applied Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
Using comprehensive data on journalist assassinations around the world, we study the effect of journalist killings on stock returns. Our event study results show an average price drop of −0.46% following the murder of a journalist for companies headquartered in the country where the killing occurs. We find that killing a journalist who is an editor, lives locally, or works in television causes the most negative market reaction. In addition, when journalists are killed by military officials or tortured first, the stock prices of firms headquartered in that country declines by 4.63% and 3.01%, respectively.
Capturing Clicks: How the Chinese Government Uses Clickbait to Compete for Visibility
Yingdan Lu & Jennifer Pan
Political Communication, forthcoming
Abstract:
The proliferation of social media and digital technologies has made it necessary for governments to expand their focus beyond propaganda content in order to disseminate propaganda effectively. We identify a strategy of using clickbait to increase the visibility of political propaganda. We show that such a strategy is used across China by combining ethnography with a computational analysis of a novel dataset of the titles of 197,303 propaganda posts made by 213 Chinese city-level governments on WeChat. We find that Chinese propagandists face intense pressures to demonstrate their effectiveness on social media because their work is heavily quantified – measured, analyzed, and ranked – with metrics such as views and likes. Propagandists use both clickbait and non-propaganda content (e.g., lifestyle tips) to capture clicks, but rely more heavily on clickbait because it does not decrease space available for political propaganda. Government propagandists use clickbait at a rate commensurate with commercial and celebrity social media accounts. The use of clickbait is associated with more views and likes, as well as greater reach of government propaganda outlets and messages. These results reveal how the advertising-based business model and affordances of social media influence political propaganda and how government strategies to control information are moving beyond censorship, propaganda, and disinformation.
Good Times and Bad Apples: Rebel Recruitment in Crackdown and Truce
Kolby Hanson
American Journal of Political Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Even in long‐running civil conflicts, governments may permit rebels to recruit and gather resources freely during years‐long truce periods. Scholars and policy makers assume that these periods of forbearance allow rebel organizations to gather strength unchecked. Instead, with innovative evidence from five conflict zones in Northeast India, I show how leniency can actually undermine rebel organizations in the long run. Despite rebel leaders' best efforts, safety and comfort attract selfish opportunists who may later desert in battle, defect to the enemy, or abuse civilians. First, I show experimentally that the benefits of leniency disproportionately attract low‐commitment recruits. By sampling in local recruitment hot spots, I gathered nearly 400 likely rebel recruits, testing their motivations with attitudinal questions and a conjoint survey experiment. Second, I conducted dozens of qualitative interviews with rebel leaders, rebel soldiers, and civilian observers, tracking how truce periods altered rebel recruitment and behavioral patterns over time.
Disease, Disaster, and Disengagement: Ebola and Political Participation in Sierra Leone
Benjamin Crisman
Studies in Comparative International Development, September 2020, Pages 328–353
Abstract:
How do widespread public health crises affect political behavior? This article examines the impact of the 2014 West African Ebola outbreak on political participation in Sierra Leone. In addition to the effects observed following conflict and natural disasters, I present evidence that hardship brought on by the outbreak of Ebola virus disease (EVD) substantially decreased participation in civic affairs, measured in self-reported political activity using data from an Afrobarometer survey conducted near the end of the outbreak. To account for selection and endogeneity concerns, I undertake falsification and coefficient stability approaches in addition to controlling for levels of political activity in the 2012 national election. The negative effect seems driven in part by a reduction in trust and perceived performance of traditional institutions and not from an increase in economic insecurity, highlighting the role of external efficacy rather than resource-based mechanisms in mediating the relationship between exposure to the disease and participation.
Economic Opportunities, Emigration and Exit Prisoners
Carlo Horz & Moritz Marbach
British Journal of Political Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
How do economic opportunities abroad affect citizens’ ability to exit an authoritarian regime? This article theorizes the conditions under which authoritarian leaders will perceive emigration as a threat and use imprisonment instead of other types of anti-emigration measures to prevent mass emigration. Using data from communist East Germany's secret prisoner database that we reassembled based on archival material, the authors show that as economic opportunities in West Germany increased, the number of East German exit prisoners – political prisoners arrested for attempting to cross the border illegally – also rose. The study's causal identification strategy exploits occupation-specific differences in the changing economic opportunities between East and West Germany. Using differential access to West German television, it also sheds light on the informational mechanism underlying the main finding; cross-national data are leveraged to present evidence of the external validity of the estimates. The results highlight how global economic disparities affect politics within authoritarian regimes.
Preparing for genocide: Quasi-experimental evidence from Rwanda
Evelina Bonnier et al.
Journal of Development Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
This paper shows how state-controlled community meetings can facilitate large-scale mobilization of civilians into violence. We analyze a Rwandan community program that required citizens to participate in community work and political meetings every Saturday in the years before the 1994 genocide. We exploit cross-sectional variation in meeting intensity induced by exogenous weather fluctuations, and find that a one standard-deviation increase in the number of rainy Saturdays before the genocide decreased civilian violence by 17 percent. We find evidence that the meetings provided an arena for local elites to spread propaganda and bring people together. In research and policy, community meetings are often treated as positive, community building forces. Our results indicate that they can also lead to negative outcomes. This should, however, not suggest that such meetings are inherently destructive. Instead, community meetings should be understood as powerful tools and their effects depend on the political intention of the leaders.
From Shame to New Name: How Naming and Shaming Creates Pro-Government Militias
Lora DiBlasi
International Studies Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
Researchers have identified naming and shaming as a strategy used by the international community to reprimand state leaders for their repressive actions. Previous research indicates that there is variation in the success of this tactic. One reason for the heterogeneity in success is that leaders with an interest in repressing opposition but avoiding international condemnation have adapted their behavior, at least partially, to avoid naming and shaming. For instance, some states choose to create and utilize alternative security apparatuses, such as pro-government militias (PGMs), to carry out these repressive acts. Creating or aligning with PGMs allows leaders to distance themselves from the execution of violence while reaping the rewards of repression. This analysis explores this dynamic. In particular, I examine how naming and shaming by Amnesty International and the United Nations Commission on Human Rights influences the creation of PGMs to skirt future international condemnation by the offending state for all states from 1986 to 2000. I find that countries are more likely to create PGMs, especially informal PGMs, after their human rights abuses have been put in the spotlight by the international community.
Kompromat: A theory of blackmail as a system of governance
James Choy
Journal of Development Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
Kompromat - widespread criminality combined with systematic blackmail - plays an important role in the governance of many non-democratic states. I model this phenomenon. Citizens have a preference for retribution, that is, for inflicting costly punishments on criminals. The state can manipulate this preference for its own benefit by tolerating crime while collecting evidence of crimes to use for blackmail. High levels of crime coexist with large expenditures on police. The rich but not the poor are allowed to commit crimes, increasing inequality. Kompromat regimes appear in states with low fiscal capacity and either very low or very high police capacity. When police capacity is high, investments in fiscal capacity and police capacity can be substitutes. States with initially similar capacities can diverge over time, and states that enter the kompromat regime can become stuck there. The possibility of kompromat qualifies previous claims that evolved retributive preferences increase material welfare.
Autocratic Stability in the Shadow of Foreign Threats
Livio Di Lonardo, Jessica Sun & Scott Tyson
American Political Science Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
Autocrats confront a number of threats to their power, some from within the regime and others from foreign actors. To understand how these threats interact and affect autocratic survival, we build a model where an autocratic leader can be ousted by a domestic opposition and a foreign actor. We concentrate on the impact that foreign threats have on the stability of autocratic leadership and show that the presence of foreign threats increases the probability an autocrat retains power. Focusing on two cases, one where a foreign actor and the domestic opposition have aligned interests and one where their interests are misaligned, we elucidate two distinct mechanisms. First, when interests are aligned, autocrats are compelled to increase domestic security to alleviate international pressure. Second, when interests are misaligned, autocrats exploit the downstream threat of foreign intervention to deter domestic threats. We also show that autocrats have incentives to cultivate ideological views hostile to broader interests among politically influential domestic actors.
The tradeoffs of using female suicide bombers
Michael Soules
Conflict Management and Peace Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Why are there so few female suicide bombers despite their tactical effectiveness? To explain the rarity of this phenomenon, I examine the tradeoffs that armed groups face when using female suicide bombers. While rigid gender norms make female bombers more effective because security personnel are less suspicious of them, gender inequality also drives down the demand for female suicide bombers. I posit that the tradeoffs of using female bombers induce a curvilinear relationship between women’s status and the prevalence of female suicide bombers. Specifically, I argue that female bombers will be more common in countries with middling levels of gender equality than in highly equal or unequal societies. Using data on over 5,500 suicide attacks, from 1974 to 2016, I find support for this hypothesis.