Doctoral Dissertation Research in Political Science: Ending Conflict Early

该奖项是根据2009年美国复苏和再投资法案（公法111-5）资助的。为什么内部武装冲突会爆发，又是什么原因导致它们持续存在，将国家拖入多年的混乱和痛苦之中？在过去的二十年里，这些问题激发了广泛的研究，显著地推进了这一主题的知识。然而，现有的研究绝大多数集中在世界上？最持久和最具破坏性的冲突。然而，要彻底理解内战以及如何预防内战，不仅要分析那些有能力发动大规模暴力、长期抵抗政府平叛努力的反叛组织，还要分析那些在有能力发动暴力之前就被击败的组织。本项目通过研究1986年至2006年乌干达18次叛乱的早期阶段及其反叛乱反应填补了这一空白。其中一些冲突很快就结束了，而另一些则持续了几十年。这项研究将包括对乌干达前叛军领导人、军事领导人和社区领导人进行广泛的采访。这些访谈将提供历史记录中遗漏的关于冲突事件的关键信息，以及这些冲突中关键角色的信仰和策略，否则这些信息将无法被捕捉到。研究一个国家短期内多重冲突的微观基础的方法为对照比较提供了难得的机会。这项研究的一个更广泛的影响将是发展理论并提供关于早期冲突发生和预防的新证据，可能为在这些关键的初期阶段预防冲突提供途径。此外，这项研究提供了一个机会来了解“弱”国家的策略和行为，这些国家发动了反叛乱，这是一个今天被认为研究不足的话题。更好地理解治理薄弱地区的冲突逻辑，有望加深我们对国家能力和内部安全的概念。

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.