Doctoral Dissertation Research in Political Science: Ending Conflict Early

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This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5).Why do internal armed conflicts spark, and what causes them to endure, dragging countries into years of disorder and anguish? These questions have animated extensive research in the past two decades, significantly advancing knowledge on this topic. However, this existing research has focused overwhelmingly on the world?s most protracted and destructive conflicts. Yet a thorough understanding of civil war and how it might be prevented must be informed by analyses not only of rebel groups that achieved an ability to incur large-scale violence, resisting government counterinsurgency efforts for long periods, but also those that were defeated before they achieved this capacity for violence. This project fills that gap by studying the early stages of 18 insurgencies and their counterinsurgency responses in Uganda from 1986 to 2006. Some of these conflicts ended quickly, while others raged on for decades. This study will include conduct extensive interviews of former rebel leaders, military leaders, and community leaders in Uganda. These interviews will provide critical information about the events of conflict that are omitted from the historical record, as well as the beliefs and strategies of key actors in these conflicts that simply could not otherwise be captured. The method of studying the microfoundations of multiple conflicts in a single country over a brief period offers a rare opportunity for controlled comparisons. One broader impact of this research will be to develop theory and offer new evidence about early-stage conflict onset and prevention, potentially suggesting avenues for forestalling conflict in these critical, nascent stages. Additionally, this research offers an opportunity to learn about the strategy and behavior of "weak" states that wage counterinsurgencies, a topic that is arguably understudied today. A better understanding of the logic of conflict in weakly-governed territories promises to deepen our conceptualization of state capacity and internal security.