Journal of Peace Research

Caruso, Raul; Echevarria-Coco, Jon

doi: 10.1177/00223433221116657pmid: N/A

This article presents a theoretical model of conflict between two parties in a two-sector economy. In a ‘contested’ sector, they struggle to appropriate the maximum possible fraction of a contestable output. In an ‘uncontested’ sector, they hold secure property rights over the production of some goods. Parties split their resource endowment between ‘butter’ and ‘guns’ (in the contested sector) and ‘ice cream’ (in the uncontested sector). The model predicts that the optimal level of ‘guns’ depends positively on the price of ‘butter’ and negatively on the price of ‘ice cream’. Theoretical results are tested by means of a panel analysis of sub-Saharan African countries for the period 1980–2017. The results show that international prices of manufactures (interpreted as the uncontested ice cream sector) are negatively associated with arms imports and military expenditure, so confirming the theoretical prediction. In addition, world prices of some commodities are positively associated with arms imports and military expenditure.

Hillesund, Solveig

doi: 10.1177/00223433221111825pmid: N/A

Do disadvantaged ethnic groups favor violent over nonviolent conflict tactics? To understand when and why civil war breaks out, we need to study violent and nonviolent forms of conflict together, using analytical tools that can account for the choice between them. Yet, most large-N analyses of the causes of civil war do not account for nonviolent conflict, and vice versa. Because the mechanisms held to link horizontal inequalities to civil war closely resemble those used to explain largely nonviolent social movements, this article studies group disadvantages, political violence and nonviolent resistance together. To reduce concerns about selection bias in horizontal inequality research, it extends the analysis to socially as well as politically relevant groups around the world. A consensus is emerging that politically disadvantaged ethnic groups shun nonviolent tactics, because they lack ties to people close to the regime and its institutions. This article challenges the consensus, by showing that political group disadvantages predict nonviolent as well as violent forms of conflict. Groups’ economic status helps explain tactical choices. Among economically advantaged groups, political disadvantages increase the risk of nonviolent conflict. Among the economically disadvantaged, they facilitate violence. This pattern is strongest in situations where no policies are in place to remedy group disadvantages, in authoritarian and less economically open societies, and in analyses that account for conflicts of low intensity, to capture onsets early. The results point to the importance of economic and other forms of leverage, which have been largely overlooked in the econometric literature.

Canavan, Miceal; Turkoglu, Oguzhan

doi: 10.1177/00223433221111824pmid: N/A

National identity remains one of the most potent forces in global politics, yet surprisingly little is known about processes of national identity formation and change. This article argues that national identity preferences are susceptible to fluctuations in group status and distance but constrained by conflict experience and socialization. Integrating research on conflict socialization with social identity theory, we hypothesize that growing up during violent intergroup conflict socializes individuals into identities and attitudes which are durable to significant changes. Conversely, the identity preferences of those who grow up during relative peace are more malleable and likely to change due to significant events which affect perception of group identities. Exploiting the unique political context in Northern Ireland, where individuals can legally choose to identify as Irish, British, or both, we use a diff-in-diff approach to estimate national identity preferences of individuals before and after the EU referendum. The results show that 20% of Protestants who did not experience conflict shifted from British towards Irish identity after the referendum. However, for those who experienced violent intergroup conflict, there is a ‘durable distance’ between groups which constrains identity change irrespective of fluctuations in status. The results have important implications for our understanding of national identity, particularly in post-conflict societies.

Dowd, Caitriona

doi: 10.1177/00223433221099309pmid: N/A

Violent conflict is the key driver in global food crises. In response, researchers, humanitarians and policy stakeholders have sought to better predict, analyse and respond to food crises in conflict-affected contexts. However, efforts to model conflict’s impacts on hunger typically focus on ‘conflict’ as an aggregate category, rarely distinguishing between violence that directly involves food and food systems from wider insecurity. This study proposes a narrower measure of ‘food-related violence (FRV),’ in which food and food systems feature in acts of political violence. The study asks: to what extent is FRV a driver of food crises? To answer, it develops a measure of disaggregated food-related violence from the Armed Conflict Location & Event Dataset, then tests the comparative strength of the relationship between FRV and subsequent food crises in 16 Sub-Saharan African contexts, drawing on food security data from the Integrated Food Phase Classification system and Cadre Harmonisé. The analysis finds that FRV is more strongly correlated to subsequent food crisis than either general – or other subcategories of – violent events across the sample, pointing to the distinct profile of this modality of violence. The findings suggest that researchers, policymakers and practitioners seeking to understand and address the conflict–hunger nexus would benefit from integrating a measure of this specific modality of violence, as existing approaches with a broad focus on conflict-driven food crises may obscure the extent to which FRV, specifically, contributes to hunger.

Beesley, Celeste; Cooper, Scott

doi: 10.1177/00223433221109621pmid: N/A

Most studies of the ‘commercial peace’ hypothesis – that trade increases the opportunity costs of war, making it less likely – assume the state has a unified interest with respect to trade. However, it is well-established that trade creates economic winners and losers within a country. Loss of export markets due to conflict imposes significant costs on local economies, but disruption of imports is often less costly, and potentially even beneficial. We posit that opposition to conflict should correlate with subnational variation in the degree to which trade represents benefits or losses for groups and individuals within the polity. Examining public opinion data from Ukraine in 2014–15, early in its long-term conflict with Russia, we disaggregate by province and find that, the greater the importance of regional net exports to Russia, the less likely citizens are to support fighting against Russia and the more they are willing to accept costly compromises to end the conflict. We demonstrate the robustness of these findings using two separate surveys.

Unfried, Kerstin; Kis-Katos, Krisztina

doi: 10.1177/00223433221099557pmid: N/A

Armed conflicts are expected to be harmful to education but micro-level studies find at times contradicting results. Therefore, this article identifies under which conditions and to what extent armed conflicts harm the long-term educational attainment of children in rural Sub-Saharan Africa. By combining 66 rounds of DHS surveys with geo-coded conflict information, our study contextualizes the findings of a series of country-specific case studies on the effects of conflict on education, and provides evidence on the mechanisms through which these effects occur. Our main identification strategy compares educational losses of youth living within the same household, while also controlling for local weather shocks and countrywide dynamics in education. The effects of conflict on education are strongly context-dependent. High-intensity conflicts reduce local educational attainment on average, although this effect becomes insignificant in strong autocracies. By contrast, education is generally unaffected by localized low-intensity conflict. Human capital loss due to conflict is most severely felt in weak states, and in response to non-state based conflicts, highlighting the importance of state capacity in mediating the educational costs of local conflicts.

Shenk, Jamie L

doi: 10.1177/00223433221105112pmid: N/A

Broad political participation is widely accepted as a crucial element of transitions from armed conflict to peace. As such, reforms to increase access to participatory democracy are often written into peace accords. Yet despite this connection between peace and participation in policy, we know relatively little about how the two interact in practice. Who uses participatory institutions? Does civilians’ experience during armed conflict affect how they participate after war ends? This article examines an unlikely case of post-conflict participation in Colombia to answer these questions: the activation and organization of local referenda from below – that is, by conflict-affected communities themselves – to contest the national government’s mining and oil policy. Using an original dataset of 95 municipality-level attempts to organize these referenda (consultas populares), I find that both conflict intensity and insurgent group presence have significant and positive effects on consulta activation. The impact of insurgent group presence, however, is mediated by the timing of armed groups’ consolidation of territorial control. I further explore this relationship through a qualitative case study. The results highlight the importance of considering the lingering impact that armed conflict may have on democratic participation beyond electoral politics. Even when communities explicitly avoid references to conflict or victim status in their discourse, experiences during armed conflict can still shape local dynamics of political participation during post-conflict transitions.

Souva, Mark

doi: 10.1177/00223433221112970pmid: N/A

Military power is central to diplomacy and much of international relations, yet common quantitative measures have limited surface validity. This limitation stems from focusing on latent power and only indirectly incorporating major weapon systems. I contend that weapons are central to military power and present a new measure of country military power based primarily on armaments. The measure includes major naval, air and land weapons as well as nuclear weapons and ballistic missile capability. I examine the surface, content and context validity of the measure and compare it to existing measures. I show that this measure of material military power (MMP) has more surface and context validity than alternative measures. I find that MMP better predicts war outcomes, better accounts for militarized threats, and performs well as a control variable for country power.

Duursma, Allard; Gamez, Samantha Marie

doi: 10.1177/00223433221100142pmid: N/A

This data feature introduces a new dataset to study peace processes to end organized armed violence in Africa: the African Peace Processes (APP) dataset. The APP dataset includes observations on both mediated and unmediated rounds of negotiations in state-based and non-state conflicts in Africa between 1989 and 2019 and builds on conflict data from the Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP). The APP dataset covers peacemaking efforts in both active and inactive conflicts. Moreover, the start and end month and year of each observation are specified, giving researchers some flexibility with regard to the temporal unit of analysis they use. In addition to discussing the rationale behind the creation of the APP dataset, we explain the data collection process and show some patterns based on the data. We also illustrate how the data could be used by looking at the association between the no. of peacekeepers deployed and the onset of mediated negotiations in intrastate and non-state conflicts. We find that high no. of peacekeepers are associated with a higher likelihood of negotiations in non-state conflicts, but not in intrastate conflicts. A plausible explanation for this finding is that security concerns play a more important role in the decision to initiate negotiations in non-state conflicts than in intrastate conflicts. Our short analysis thus illustrates the value of having data on both intrastate and non-state conflicts.