Cullen S. Hendrix

Measuring State Capacity: Theoretical and Empirical Implications for the Study of Civil Conflict

This article identifies and addresses key conceptual and measurement issues raised by measures of state capacity in studies of civil conflict. First, it reviews competing definitions and operationalizations of state capacity, focusing specifically on those that emphasize (1) military capacity, (2) bureaucratic administrative capacity, and (3) the quality and coherence of political institutions. Second, it critically assesses these measures on the basis of construct validity, focusing attention on whether they accurately capture the theoretical concept of state capacity, and whether they allow the researcher to differentiate between competing causal mechanisms. Third, it employs principal factor analysis to identify the underlying dimensionality of 15 different operationalizations of state capacity. State capacity is characterized by low dimensionality, with three factors — or dimensions of state capacity — explaining over 90% of the variance in the 15 measures. While the first factor, rational legality, captures bureaucratic and administrative capacity, the second, rentier-autocraticness, and third, neopatrimoniality, capture aspects of state capacity that cut across theoretical categories. The article concludes by suggesting a multivariate approach to modeling state capacity, and that (1) survey measures of bureaucratic quality, and (2) tax capacity are the most theoretically and empirically justified.

Climate change, rainfall, and social conflict in Africa

Much of the debate over the security implications of climate change revolves around whether changing weather patterns will lead to future conflict. This article addresses whether deviations from normal rainfall patterns affect the propensity for individuals and groups to engage in disruptive activities such as demonstrations, riots, strikes, communal conflict, and anti-government violence. In contrast to much of the environmental security literature, it uses a much broader definition of conflict that includes, but is not limited to, organized rebellion. Using a new database of over 6,000 instances of social conflict over 20 years – the Social Conflict in Africa Database (SCAD) – it examines the effect of deviations from normal rainfall patterns on various types of conflict. The results indicate that rainfall variability has a significant effect on both large-scale and smaller-scale instances of political conflict. Rainfall correlates with civil war and insurgency, although wetter years are more likely to suffer from violent events. Extreme deviations in rainfall – particularly dry and wet years – are associated positively with all types of political conflict, though the relationship is strongest with respect to violent events, which are more responsive to abundant than scarce rainfall. By looking at a broader spectrum of social conflict, rather than limiting the analysis to civil war, we demonstrate a robust relationship between environmental shocks and unrest.

Social Conflict in Africa: A New Database

We describe the Social Conflict in Africa Database (SCAD), a new event dataset for conducting research and analysis on various forms of social and political unrest in Africa. SCAD contains information on over 7,200 instances of protests, riots, strikes, government repression, communal violence, and other forms of unrest for 47 African countries from 1990–2010. SCAD includes information on event dates, actors and targets, lethality, georeferenced location information, and other conflict attributes. This article gives an overview of the data collection process, presents descriptive statistics and trends across the continent, and compares SCAD to the widely used Banks event data. We believe that SCAD will be a useful resource for scholars across multiple disciplines as well as for the policy community.

When Is the Pen Truly Mighty? Regime Type and the Efficacy of Naming and Shaming in Curbing Human Rights Abuses

Does naming and shaming states affect respect for human rights in those states? This article argues that incentives to change repressive behaviour when facing international condemnation vary across regime types. In democracies and hybrid regimes – which combine democratic and authoritarian elements – opposition parties and relatively free presses paradoxically make rulers less likely to change behaviour when facing international criticism. In contrast, autocracies, which lack these domestic sources of information on abuses, are more sensitive to international shaming. Using data on naming and shaming taken from Western press reports and Amnesty International, the authors demonstrate that naming and shaming is associated with improved human rights outcomes in autocracies, but with either no effect or a worsening of outcomes in democracies and hybrid regimes.

Food Insecurity and Conflict Dynamics: Causal Linkages and Complex Feedbacks

This paper addresses two related topics: 1) the circular link between food insecurity and conflict, with particular emphasis on the Sahel, and 2) the potential role of food security interventions in reducing the risk of violent conflicts. While we eschew mono-causal expla nations of conflict, acute food insecurity can be a factor in popular mobilization and a risk multiplier. Moreover, violent conflict itself is a major driver of acute food insecurity. If food insecurity is a threat multiplier for conflict, improving food security can reduce ten sions and contribute to more stable environments. If these interventions are done right, the vicious cycle of food insecurity and conflict can be transformed into a virtuous cycle of food security and stability that provides peace dividends, reduces conflict drivers, enhances social cohesion, rebuilds social trust, and builds the legitimacy and capacity of governments.

Global food prices, regime type, and urban unrest in the developing world

The 2014 IPCC report concludes that changes in precipitation and temperature could cause global food prices to nearly double by 2050. Anecdotal evidence of riots during the global food price spikes of 2007–08 and 2010–11 raises the more general question of whether global food prices affect patterns of contentious politics in developing countries. Drawing on a dataset of urban unrest in 55 major cities in 49 Asian and African countries for the period 1961–2010, we find the effect of global food prices on protests and rioting is contingent on regime type: democracies are more prone to urban unrest during periods of high food prices than autocracies. We show that this is due both to the more permissive political opportunity structure in democratic systems and to systematic differences in food policy across regimes of different types. Relative to autocracies, democracies pursue policies that are more favorable to the rural sector and less favorable to the cities. The findings have longer-run implications. To the extent that climate change will make many developing countries more dependent on food imports, and that prices could rise and be more volatile, we suggest another vector by which climate change may affect political unrest. Our findings highlight the importance of both political institutions and policy choices in mediating global shocks.

State Capacity and Terrorism: A Two-Dimensional Approach

Conventional wisdom suggests that dissident groups use terrorism when they face an overwhelmingly more powerful state, yet attacks in developing countries have predominated in the post-Cold War era, suggesting that terrorism is an increasingly weak state phenomenon. Cross-national studies of terrorism find mixed results for how common measures of state capacity influence terrorism. We argue that these indeterminate findings are due in part to a partial understanding of both what constitutes state capacity and how different aspects of state strength or weakness relate to the propensity of groups to use terrorism. We decompose state capacity into two dimensions that we theorize are particularly relevant to dissident groups: military capacity, or the ability to project conventional military force, and bureaucratic/administrative capacity. Our analysis supports the claim that terrorist attacks are more frequently targeted at states with large, technologically sophisticated militaries but less frequently targeted at states with higher bureaucratic and administrative capacity. We also compare two militarily capable states, France and Russia, that have had different recent experiences with terrorism to help illustrate the causal mechanisms involved. Evidence from our models and cases suggest that states can be capable in different ways, and these various capabilities create differing incentives for using terror as a strategic and tactical tool.

Head for the Hills? Rough Terrain, State Capacity, and Civil War Onset

This article expands on the conventional discourse relating rough terrain – mountainous terrain and noncontiguous territory – to civil war onset. In addition to their direct effects on the strategic and tactical logic of insurgency, I argue these factors affect state capacity, as measured by tax capacity, and exert an indirect effect through this channel. Because tax capacity proxies bureaucratic and administrative capacity as well as material resources, it conditions the decision to rebel more than military capacity per se. I find a negative relationship between mountainous terrain and to a lesser extent, noncontiguous territory, and state capacity. Subsequently, I find tax capacity is strongly and negatively associated with civil war onset, though this relationship appears only with longer than conventional temporal lags. The cumulative (direct + indirect effects mediated by state capacity) of rough terrain is roughly 45 per cent larger than its direct effect.

Civil conflict and world fisheries, 1952–2004

While the negative economic consequences of civil conflict are well known, does civil conflict have sector-specific effects that threaten food and economic security? This article surveys the effects of civil conflict on reported marine and inland fish catch, focusing on the effects of conflict through redeployment of labor, population displacement, counter-insurgency strategy and tactics, and third-party encroachment into territorial waters. Analysis of 123 countries from 1952 to 2004 demonstrates a strong, statistically robust and negative relationship between civil conflict and fisheries, with civil wars (1000+ battle deaths) depressing catch by over 16% relative to prewar levels. The magnitude of this effect is large: the cumulative contraction in total fish catch associated with civil war onset is roughly 13 times larger than the estimated effect of an extraordinarily strong El Niño, the ocean-atmosphere phenomenon associated with global declines in fisheries. Robust evidence of a Phoenix effect is lacking: post-conflict fisheries do not quickly bounce back to prewar catch levels due to more rapid growth. Analysis of conflict episodes indicates that conflict intensity, measured by battle deaths, negatively affects fish catch, while population displacement and conflict proximity to the coast do not. While these findings contribute to the growing literature on the economic effects of civil conflict, they also are important for regional fisheries management organizations, which must increasingly pay attention to sociopolitical factors that dramatically affect the utilization of aquatic resources.

No News Is Good News: Mark and Recapture for Event Data When Reporting Probabilities Are Less Than One

We discuss a common, but often ignored, problem in event data: underreporting bias. When collecting data, it is often not the case that source materials capture all events of interest, leading to an undercount of the true number of events. To address this issue, we propose a common method first used to estimate the size of animal populations when a complete census is not feasible: mark and recapture. By taking multiple sources into consideration, one can estimate the rate of missing data across sources and come up with an estimate of the true number of events. To demonstrate the utility of the approach, we compare Associated Press and Agence France Press reports on conflict events, as contained in the Social Conflict in Africa Database. We show that these sources capture approximately 76% of all events in Africa but that the nondetection rate declines dramatically when considering more significant events. We also show through regression analysis that deadly events, events of a larger magnitude, and events with government repression, among others, are significant predictors of overlapping reporting. Ultimately, the approach can be used to correct for undercounting in event data and to assess the quality of sources used.