Military and civic action programs and the development of local economy and civic institutions

在越南和阿富汗等制度化程度较弱的国家，美国的军事和公民行动计划在过去半个世纪一直是美国外交政策的核心。这些都是美国联邦预算中最昂贵的支出之一，可能会对国家安全产生重要影响。然而，关于不同支出如何影响安全、治理、公民参与和经济成果（短期和长期）的严格证据仍然有限。调查人员将利用统计数据和越南战争提供的分析机会来研究这些问题。该项目旨在为政策制定者和军事规划者提供清晰、严谨的实证研究结果，并通过公开所有数据来鼓励有关越南战争的学术研究。很难估计美国军事和民间行动计划对当地经济和民间机构发展的因果影响，因为发生干预的地区与没有干预的地区通常非常不同，而且随机评估通常是不可行的。此外，关于地方治理和民间社会的数据在许多地方很少存在，因为收集这类信息的成本很高。通过广泛的档案研究，调查人员提供了详细的数据和新的鉴定机会，可以阐明南越军事行动的因果影响。该项目将通过利用用于瞄准空袭的算法中的不连续性来检查对平民人口中心的轰炸。该项目还将从经验上探索当地经济和公民机构发展的两种替代策略：将地面部队部署与参与式发展援助相结合的公民行动计划，以及旨在改变南越公民对国家和共产主义叛乱的看法的心理行动。

U.S. military and civic action programs in weakly institutionalized societies, such as Vietnam and Afghanistan, have been central to U.S. foreign policy over the past half-century. These have been among the most costly expenditures in the U.S. federal budget and may have important national security consequences. Yet rigorous evidence about how different expenditures influence security, governance, civic engagement, and economic outcomes -- in the short and long run -- remains limited. The investigators will examine these questions using statistical data and opportunities for analysis provided by the Vietnam War. This project aims to provide clear, rigorous empirical findings to policymakers and military planners and to encourage academic research on the Vietnam War by making all data publicly available. It is difficult to estimate the causal impacts of U.S. military and civic action programs on the development of local economy and civic institutions, because regions where interventions occur are typically very different from those where they do not, and randomized evaluations are often unfeasible. Moreover, data about local governance and civil society rarely exist for a large number of locations, due to the high cost involved in collecting such information. Through extensive archival research, the investigators have produced detailed data and novel opportunities for identification that can shed light on the causal impacts of military actions in South Vietnam. This project will examine the bombing of civilian population centers by exploiting discontinuities in an algorithm used to target air strikes. This project will also empirically explore two alternative strategies for the development of local economy and civic institutions: civic action programs that combined ground troop deployment with participatory development aid, and psychological operations that aimed to change how South Vietnamese citizens thought about the state and the communist insurgency.