Explaining Civilian Support for Political and Criminal Armed Groups

是什么决定了平民是否以及如何支持旨在治理其社区的武装团体？学者们发现，民间合作最重要的决定因素之一是武装组织对一块领土的控制程度。然而，在许多社区，包括反叛组织、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。这个项目调查了在有争议的控制地区的平民如何选择支持哪个组织。这样做很重要，因为文职人员的支持有助于使一个社区倾向于一个或另一个群体，从而影响冲突的结果。我们特别关注暴露于暴力、与精英的联系以及武装团体提供的公共产品在决定平民支持方面的作用。通过将可能影响平民支持的个人和社区层面的特征联系起来，该项目有助于解决许多学者已经确定的内战的主要分裂（它们“关于什么”）与地面暴力之间的脱节。在将政治和犯罪武装团体的研究结合起来的过程中，该项目还试图揭示在面对典型的政治行为者和通常被认为是犯罪行为者时，民事决策中的共同逻辑。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）平民与武装组织的合作，改善反叛乱和打击犯罪的努力，并促进冲突后环境中战斗人员的复员。技术摘要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。这个国家为回答我们的研究问题提供了一个理想的环境：除了其持续的内战，其中包括多个反叛团体，哥伦比亚还受到高水平的有组织犯罪和帮派活动的影响。对暴力易发地区平民的调查因安全问题、偏好造假和非随机参与的可能性而变得复杂。为了减轻这些担忧，我们的调查将采用间接的提问方法，包括列表实验来衡量受访者的行为和背书实验来捕捉对竞争群体的态度。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涉及多个有能力控制领土的武装行为体，因此我们预计其结果将远远超出哥伦比亚。

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.