Doctoral Dissertation Research in Political Science: Reformed or Reconfigured? Explaining Why Militant Groups Participate in Elections

政治学博士论文研究：改革还是重新配置？

• 批准号: 1022912
• 负责人: James Fearon
• 金额: $ 1.2万
• 依托单位: Stanford University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2010
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2010-07-01 至 2011-06-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1022912&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Research; Political; Science

Pundits and policymakers have recently debated whether a deal could and should bring the Taliban into Afghan politics as a party. The feasibility of a deal remains uncertain, however, as the militant group has so far shown few signs of engagement. Furthermore, even such a deal would not guarantee peace. Organizations such as the United Nations sometimes assume that holding elections after conflict, usually including the participation of former militant groups, facilitates a durable peace. Yet militant groups vary greatly in whether they run candidates in elections and otherwise behave like political parties during and after conflict, and, importantly, in whether they are willing to relinquish violence while participating.We know very little about why militant groups participate in elections, and how this affects the subsequent likelihood of peace. The few case studies addressing these questions focus on a small number of large militant groups at the end of full-scale civil wars, and so they tend to assume that peace results from militant group participation rather than exploring its prospects in different contexts. Moreover, this work fails to generate comprehensive, causal theories exploring militant group motivations for participation that also account for their reactions to the expected behavior by other actors. In conflicts ranging from small terrorist campaigns to large civil wars, this project seeks to answer two related questions: why do some militant groups participate in elections while others do not? And, why do some subsequently continue to use violence while others do not?The study employs a multi-method approach to understand militant group electoral participation, as well as the subsequent tactical use of violence. The researcher specifies a theory of militant group electoral participation based on her fieldwork on multiple militant groups in Colombia and Northern Ireland. The theory identifies both the group and the government as strategic actors whose incentives and actions jointly determine the outcome in terms of the militant group's participation, as well as in terms of post-election peace. Specifically, there must be a rough alignment between how the militant group expects to do competing in elections against the government versus fighting it militarily; the government's expectations must similarly align. Amid civil conflict, surprising events can shift these beliefs into such a configuration. The potential presence of an international actor, such as another government or a non-governmental organization, also influences both sides' decisions. The researcher located factors that change these expectations about competing through ballots or bullets in the case studies already conducted, but the states examined may differ for a variety of reasons. Thus, this project will test the theory more broadly. The researcher is building a global dataset of all militant groups, which features a measure of whether each participates in elections. With NSF support, the researcher will hire undergraduate assistants to finish coding this measure, and then collect a series of other variables permitting empirical tests of the hypotheses making up the project's theory. By examining these indicators across many cases, the researcher can assess the theory's validity in different contexts.This project makes theoretical, pragmatic, and methodological contributions. First, social science research has not yet generated solid explanations for many of the political decisions made during civil conflicts, especially militant group electoral participation. This study analyzes such participation as an initial step toward engaging this neglected research area. Second, understanding the incentives of the actors in these situations and their impact on the outcome--in terms of electoral participation and peace--informs policy recommendations for the conflicted state, as well as other states and international organizations. Finally, this project provides an unprecedented, sourced, and transparently coded dataset of all militant groups that includes information on group and government actions, as well as measures of popular and international support. This research on all sizes of militant groups using any type of violent tactics also facilitates collaboration between the often separate civil war and terrorism research communities by providing a forum for testing theories of tactical decisions during fighting, and their impact on conflict termination.

专家和政策制定者最近就是否可以而且应该将塔利班作为一个政党纳入阿富汗政治进行了辩论。然而，协议的可行性仍不确定，因为该激进组织迄今为止几乎没有表现出参与的迹象。此外，即使这样的协议也不能保证和平。联合国等组织有时认为，冲突后举行选举（通常包括前激进组织的参与）有助于实现持久和平。然而，激进组织在选举中是否推举候选人，在冲突期间和冲突后是否表现得像政党，以及重要的是，在参与选举时是否愿意放弃暴力方面，差异很大。我们对激进组织为什么参加选举，以及这如何影响随后的和平可能性知之甚少。 处理这些问题的少数案例研究集中于全面内战结束时的少数大型军事团体，因此他们倾向于假设和平是军事团体参与的结果，而不是在不同背景下探讨和平的前景。 此外，这项工作未能产生全面的因果理论，探索激进组织参与的动机，也解释了他们对其他行为者预期行为的反应。 在从小型恐怖活动到大型内战的冲突中，该项目试图回答两个相关的问题：为什么一些激进组织参加选举，而另一些则不参加？而且，为什么有些人后来继续使用暴力，而另一些人则不这样做？这项研究采用了多种方法来了解激进组织的选举参与，以及随后的战术使用暴力。研究人员根据她对哥伦比亚和北方爱尔兰多个激进组织的实地调查，详细说明了激进组织选举参与的理论。该理论将该组织和政府视为战略行动者，其动机和行动共同决定了激进组织的参与以及选举后和平的结果。具体来说，激进组织希望在选举中与政府竞争与在军事上与政府作战之间必须有一个大致的一致性;政府的期望也必须同样一致。在国内冲突中，令人惊讶的事件可以将这些信念转变为这样的配置。一个国际行动者，如另一国政府或非政府组织的潜在存在，也会影响双方的决定。研究人员在已经进行的案例研究中找到了改变这些对通过选票或子弹竞争的期望的因素，但所研究的州可能因各种原因而不同。因此，该项目将更广泛地测试该理论。研究人员正在建立一个所有激进组织的全球数据集，其中包括衡量每个组织是否参加选举的指标。在NSF的支持下，研究人员将聘请本科生助理完成编码这一措施，然后收集一系列其他变量，允许对构成该项目理论的假设进行实证检验。通过在许多案例中检验这些指标，研究者可以评估该理论在不同背景下的有效性。首先，社会科学研究尚未对国内冲突期间做出的许多政治决定做出可靠的解释，尤其是激进团体的选举参与。本研究分析了这种参与作为从事这一被忽视的研究领域的第一步。第二，了解这些局势中行为者的动机及其对选举参与与和平结果的影响，有助于为冲突国家以及其他国家和国际组织提供政策建议。最后，该项目提供了一个前所未有的、来源明确的、透明编码的所有激进组织的数据集，其中包括有关组织和政府行动的信息，以及民众和国际支持的衡量标准。对使用任何类型暴力战术的各种规模的激进组织的研究也促进了通常独立的内战和恐怖主义研究社区之间的合作，为测试战斗期间的战术决策理论及其对冲突终止的影响提供了一个论坛。