Doctoral Dissertation Research: Capabilities and Constraints: Untangling State and Rebel Strategies of Violence during Civil Conflict

博士论文研究：能力和限制：理清国家和叛乱国内冲突期间的暴力策略

• 批准号: 0921702
• 负责人: Mark Crescenzi
• 金额: $ 1.2万
• 依托单位: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2009
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2009-09-15 至 2010-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0921702&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Research; Capabilities; Constraints

During the 20th century civilians constituted upwards of 80% of the casualties in civil wars. While many of these are unintended, the brutal nature of many conflicts illustrates that governments and insurgent groups often employ strategies of explicit and gross violence against civilians. Rape, torture, disappearances, and indiscriminate killings against non-combatants by both government forces and insurgent organizations appear to be common characteristics of many modern civil wars. Yet the scale and scope of civilian targeting varies tremendously both across and within armed conflicts.Insurgents and incumbent governments depend on civilian loyalty and support to achieve their war objectives. Yet, during civil conflicts both sides at times engage in mass abuses against non-combatants. Targeting civilians, however, may prove counterproductive, driving civilians into the adversary's arms. This raises an important empirical question: what motivates political actors to target civilians when doing so often appears to be a suboptimal strategy? This project examines violence against non-combatants during civil conflict by investigating the evolution of strategies adopted by states, rebels, and civilians. It is argued that changes in the frequency and severity of insurgent- and state-sponsored violence are a function of the strategic interactions between state and rebel forces and the balance of relative capabilities between these actors. In brief, an actor's strategy of violence is related to its ability to entice civilian support, which is in turn contingent upon its ability to provide benefits to these supporters. Weak (or weakening) actors are unlikely to possess the capacity to provide benefits sufficient to elicit support. As a result, they are more likely to adopt violence as a means to temporarily coerce support and enforce loyalty. This relationship, however, is conditioned by the opponent's adopted strategies. High levels of violence employed by adversaries may reduce the level of capabilities necessary for an actor to entice support. This project adds to recent research explaining civil war violence by exploring both how rebel and state strategies of violence are constructed and how these strategies evolve and change as conflict unfolds over time. It also contributes to an understanding of the microfoundations of these strategies by unpacking the linkages between civilian support for rebels and government, actor capacities, and the level of violence chosen by each side. Furthermore, this project will produce the most detailed dataset to date on civil war violence. The dataset used herein captures the level, frequency, and type of violence committed annually by both insurgent and state forces.Determining what factors are responsible for variations in violence and unpacking the manner in which the complex interactions among actors influence strategy choice is a necessary first step to designing policies that can mitigate civilian victimization. The theoretical and empirical contributions of this project will assist policy makers and academics in devising strategies that diminish the civilian cost of civil wars. Furthermore, the dataset constructed to test the hypotheses outlined above will be useful to both policymakers and academics who require longitudinal and cross sectional data on violence committed by civil war actors

在20世纪，平民占内战伤亡人数的80%以上。 虽然其中许多是无意的，但许多冲突的残酷性质表明，政府和叛乱团体经常采用对平民实施明确和严重暴力的战略。 政府军和叛乱组织对非战斗人员的强奸、酷刑、失踪和滥杀似乎是许多现代内战的共同特征。 然而，在武装冲突之间和冲突内部，以平民为目标的规模和范围都有很大的不同，独立政府和现任政府依靠平民的忠诚和支持来实现其战争目标。 然而，在国内冲突期间，双方有时会大规模虐待非战斗人员。 然而，以平民为目标可能适得其反，迫使平民投入敌人的怀抱。 这就提出了一个重要的经验问题：是什么促使政治行为体以平民为目标，而这样做往往似乎是一种次优战略？ 该项目通过调查国家，叛乱分子和平民所采取的战略的演变来研究国内冲突期间对非战斗人员的暴力行为。 有人认为，叛乱和国家支持的暴力的频率和严重程度的变化是国家和叛乱部队之间的战略互动和这些行为体之间的相对能力的平衡的功能。 简言之，行为体的暴力战略与其吸引平民支持的能力有关，而这又取决于其向这些支持者提供利益的能力。 弱势（或正在削弱的）行为体不太可能有能力提供足以获得支持的好处。 因此，他们更有可能采用暴力作为暂时胁迫支持和强制忠诚的手段。 然而，这种关系取决于对手采取的策略。 对手使用的高水平暴力可能会降低行为体吸引支持所需的能力水平。 这个项目增加了最近的研究解释内战暴力，探索如何构建反叛和国家的暴力战略，以及这些战略如何演变和随着冲突的发展而变化。 它还有助于了解这些战略的微观基础，因为它揭示了平民对反叛分子和政府的支持、行为体能力以及每一方选择的暴力程度之间的联系。 此外，该项目将产生迄今为止关于内战暴力的最详细的数据集。 这里使用的数据集捕捉的水平，频率，和每年由叛乱分子和国家forces.Determining造成的暴力行为的类型是什么因素的变化负责的暴力行为和拆包的行为者之间的复杂的相互作用影响战略选择的方式是必要的第一步，设计政策，可以减轻平民受害。 该项目的理论和经验贡献将有助于政策制定者和学者制定减少内战平民成本的战略。 此外，为检验上述假设而建立的数据集将对需要关于内战行为者所犯暴力行为的纵向和横向数据的决策者和学术界有用