Explaining Civilian Support for Political and Criminal Armed Groups

解释平民对政治和犯罪武装团体的支持

• 批准号: 2038632
• 负责人: Erica De Bruin
• 金额: $ 21.82万
• 依托单位: Hamilton College
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2020
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2020-08-15 至 2023-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2038632&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Explaining; Civilian; Support; Political; Criminal

General SummaryWhat determines whether and how civilians support the armed groups that aim to govern their communities? Scholars have found that one of the most important determinants of civilian collaboration is the degree of control that an armed group has over a territory. Yet in many communities, multiple armed groups, including rebel groups, state security forces, drug trafficking organizations, and/or gangs compete for control. This project investigates how civilians in areas of contested control choose which groups, if any, to support. Doing so is important because civilian support can help tip a community towards one group or another and thereby affect conflict outcomes. We focus in particular on the role of exposure to violence, connections to elites, and the public goods that armed groups provide in determining civilian support. In drawing connections between individual- and community-level characteristics that may influence civilian support, this project helps address the disjuncture many scholars have identified between master cleavages of civil wars (what they are "about") and violence on the ground. In uniting the study of political and criminal armed groups, the project also seeks to uncover common logics in civilian decision-making when facing prototypically political actors versus those commonly considered criminal actors. The findings will give scholars and policymakers new tools with which to better predict (and prevent) civilian collaboration with armed groups, improve counterinsurgency and anti-crime efforts, and facilitate the demobilization of combatants in post-conflict settings.Technical SummaryThe research team will survey civilians in Colombia about their attitudes and behavior towards political and criminal armed groups. The country provides an ideal setting in which to answer our research questions: in addition to its ongoing civil war, which features multiple rebel groups, Colombia is also affected by high levels of organized criminal and gang activity. Surveying civilians in violence-prone areas is complicated by safety concerns, preference falsification, and the potential for non-random participation. To mitigate these concerns, our surveys will employ indirect methods of questioning, including list experiments to measure respondents' behaviors and endorsement experiments to capture attitudes towards competing groups. Although the project surveys civilians in a single country, most conflicts today involve multiple armed actors with the capacity to control territory and as a result we expect the results to generalize well beyond Colombia.

是什么决定了平民是否以及如何支持旨在统治其社区的武装团体？学者们发现，民间合作的最重要决定因素之一是武装团体对领土的控制程度。然而，在许多社区，包括反叛团体、国家安全部队、贩毒组织和/或帮派在内的多个武装团体争夺控制权。该项目调查了在有争议的控制地区的平民如何选择支持哪些团体（如果有的话）。这样做很重要，因为平民的支持有助于使社区倾向于这个或那个团体，从而影响冲突的结果。我们特别关注暴露于暴力的作用，与精英的联系，以及武装团体在决定平民支持方面提供的公共产品。在绘制可能影响平民支持的个人和社区一级特征之间的联系时，该项目有助于解决许多学者在内战的主要分裂（它们“关于”什么）和实地暴力之间发现的脱节问题。在将政治和犯罪武装团体的研究结合起来时，该项目还试图揭示平民决策中的共同逻辑，当面对原型政治行为者与那些通常被认为是犯罪行为者时。研究结果将为学者和政策制定者提供新的工具，以更好地预测（和防止）民间与武装团体的合作，提高反叛乱和打击犯罪的努力，并促进战斗人员在冲突后settings.Technical摘要复员研究小组将调查哥伦比亚平民对政治和犯罪武装团体的态度和行为。该国为回答我们的研究问题提供了一个理想的环境：除了以多个反叛团体为特征的持续内战外，哥伦比亚还受到高水平有组织犯罪和帮派活动的影响。由于安全问题、偏好伪造和非随机参与的可能性，在暴力易发地区调查平民是复杂的。为了减轻这些担忧，我们的调查将采用间接的提问方法，包括衡量受访者行为的列表实验和捕捉对竞争群体态度的认可实验。虽然该项目调查的是一个国家的平民，但今天的大多数冲突都涉及有能力控制领土的多个武装行为体，因此，我们预计调查结果将推广到哥伦比亚以外的地方。