David Sobek

The Dynamics of Civil War Duration and Outcome

Civil wars have several outcomes: government victory, rebel victory, truce, or treaty. This analysis models state capacity as a theoretical starting point to underpin hypotheses on duration and outcome. To test these hypotheses, multinomial logit and competing risk survival analysis are utilized. These methods allow for the examination of each outcome and its respective duration dynamics. Logit tells us what shapes the probability of each outcome, and hazard analysis identifies the factors that determine the time to each outcome. The models examine the years 1944 to 1997 and find that state capacity is involved in outcome and duration in at least two important ways. An effective state bureaucracy undermines the rebels, but a strong government army does not necessarily enhance the government cause. UN intervention decreases the probability of both government and rebel victory, while increasing the likelihood of a treaty or truce. In addition, rebels have a decreased probability of winning ethnic wars. Forest cover hinders rebels and treaties, while mountain cover tends to help rebels. African wars are harder for governments to win. African wars and ethnic wars are longer.

Masters of their domains: The role of state capacity in civil wars

Civil wars are complex events affected by numerous factors. Recent research, however, seems to have concentrated on the rebels and their motivations to the exclusion of how the state can affect the onset and outcome of civil wars. This special issue addresses this lacuna by looking at the role of state capacity. In particular, state capacity is a multi-dimensional concept that encompasses not only the extractive abilities of a state but also economic development and bureaucratic quality. Despite the various ways in which state capacity can be measured, the articles clearly show that strong states have a decreased risk of experiencing a civil war, although there is evidence that civil violence decreases state capacity, implying a reverse causality. In addition, it appears that the capable states that do experience civil violence are more able to credibly commit to a negotiated solution, which increases the possibility of a bargained end to the violence. While these articles do not represent the last word on the subject, they do provide convincing evidence that state capacity plays a critical role in the onset and conduct of civil violence.

The Human Rights Peace: How the Respect for Human Rights at Home Leads to Peace Abroad

Respect for human rights represents self-imposed restraints on the behavior of a government. These limits signify both a domestic norm and a state that has decided to settle political disputes through nonviolent methods. When these governments interact in the international system, we suspect that their basic norms of behavior will remain and generate relatively peaceful interactions. We test this contention on pairs of all states from 1980 to 2001 and find that joint respect for human rights decreases the probability of conflict. This relationship is maintained even when one controls for the effect of democracy and its influence on the human rights record of states.

Rallying Around the Podesta: Testing Diversionary Theory Across Time

Diversionary theory argues that leaders threatened by domestic turmoil manipulate the ‘rally around the flag’ effect by initiating conflict abroad. This conflict mitigates the negative effects of the unrest, saving the leader’s position. Previous analyses of the diversionary impulse have proven inconclusive. This study expands the literature in three ways. First, it broadens the spatial and temporal domain by examining the seven major powers of Renaissance Italy (1250-1494). Since diversionary theory was developed by looking at the actions of states in the modern system, testing it in a different empirical domain is important. Second, it uses a directed-dyadic research design, which can examine directional hypotheses. For instance, does domestic unrest increase the probability that the challenger will initiate conflict, or do targets avoid states experiencing unrest? Last, the analyses simultaneously assess the effects of regime change (the highest form of unrest) and domestic turmoil on the conflict behavior of states. In other words, does unrest severe enough to change the political system create an incentive to rally the public to the new regime, or do these states experience a honeymoon of support? The analyses find modest support for the diversionary hypothesis. Oligarchies are more likely to initiate wars during periods of domestic unrest, while republics tend to initiate wars against city-states that experienced a republican reversal.

Victim of Success: American Dominance and Terrorism

While terrorist attacks against American interests represent an important topic, few studies use international relations theory and a rigorous statistical methodology to examine their occurrence. In recognition of these shortcomings, this paper hypothesizes and tests a simple yet powerful relationship: as American dominance of the international system increases, the number of attacks against its interests will also rise. This relationship exists because American dominance leaves little room for revisionist actors to alter the status quo through conventional means, which makes terrorist methods an increasingly likely choice. Using ARIMA modeling techniques on a data set that spans from 1968—1996, we gain confirmation that increasing levels of American dominance are positively correlated with large numbers of attacks against American interests.

Violent Adolescence: State Development and the Propensity for Militarized Interstate Conflict

This article examines how economic development influences interstate conflict. Rather than theorizing a linear relationship between economic development and state behavior in militarized conflicts, this article hypothesizes a non-linear relationship where both extreme poverty and prosperity reduce this risk. This occurs because states at an intermediate level of development have both the opportunity and willingness to pursue territorial claims, which makes them most prone to militarized interstate conflicts. The changing orientation of economies from agricultural and extractive activities eventually to service-based economies alters the cost–benefit calculations concerning territorial acquisition. Developed states, more reliant on services for their economic growth, are less likely to push territorial claims, decreasing their involvement in interstate conflict. Meanwhile, the poorest states, although they have more to gain through territorial expansion, have a decreased ability to pursue their objectives through military force. The authors examine all states between 1870 and 1992 at the monadic level of analysis. In general, the statistical analysis confirms the hypotheses. States at an intermediate level of development are most prone to initiate and participate in militarized conflicts, including those over the issue of territory and those that result in battlefield deaths. High levels of economic development mitigate the effects of military power and population growth that increase the risk of interstate violence. This project helps explain why past studies have linked development to both war and peace, as well as suggesting possible flashpoints in the future. Finally, the results also suggest that other models in the literature theorizing linear functions for economic development and conflict are misspecified.

Ballots, Bargains, and Bombs: Terrorist Targeting of Spoiler Opportunities

Benjamin Netanyahus come-from-behind victory over Shimon Peres in the Israeli national elections of May 1996, following an apparent intensification of Palestinian terrorism over the course of that spring, reminded observers of the political ramifications of terrorism. Since May 1996 was also the month in which Israel reentered Final Status negotiations with a Palestinian delegation in Taba, Egypt, the timing of this surge in violence encourages us to ask if terrorists regularly conceive of elections and rounds of negotiations as “spoiler opportunities,” or opportune times to undermine peaceful political processes. We address this question in the context of Israels long‐running experience with elections, negotiations, and terrorism. We hypothesize that attacks resulting in fatalities are likely to increase in periods immediately surrounding Israeli general elections and key rounds of negotiations affecting the fate of the Palestinian population. Negative binomial event count analyses of the period 1970–2007 suggest that violent opponents indeed viewed the periods preceding negotiations and the ends of electoral cycles as “spoiler opportunities.”

There Can Be No Compromise: Institutional Inclusiveness, Fractionalization and Domestic Terrorism

Research on terrorism in democracies borrows from the literature on civil war and rebellion to argue that more proportional representation decreases the likelihood of terrorist violence. However, theories of broader social mobilization may be ill-suited to predicting the occurrence of terrorism. This article proposes that proportionalisms institutionalization of small minority groups as legitimate but relatively insignificant political actors leads to militancy. Analyses of the Global Terrorism Database on domestic terrorist attacks across all democracies in 1975–2007 provide broad support for this argument. The presence and greater degrees of proportionalism are significantly associated with greater levels of domestic terrorism when ethnic fractionalization within a given society increases. Moreover, domestic terrorism increases as the number of small parties represented in the legislature increases.

Me, myself, and allies: Understanding the external sources of power

As far back as Thucydides, scholars have hypothesized that power affects the onset of conflict. Despite its importance, power remains a difficult concept to measure, and scholars have primarily relied on material measures that quantify the internal resources available to a state. This concentration on internal sources of power, however, excludes an important power resource available to a state: its external relations. It is reasonable to expect that when a state estimates the power of a potential opponent it looks not only at the internal resources but also at the power of states that would likely join the conflict. In this article, we develop a new measure of external power that explicitly accounts for the external sources of state power. Unlike previous studies that aggregate a state’s expected alliance contributions, our measure is based on the expected contribution of all states, allies and non-allies alike. We conduct a preliminary test of this new measure on dispute onset, and our results provide support for power preponderance over balance of power theories. External power parity contributes to dispute onset rather than deterrence. In addition, we show that examining the combined, rather than individual, effects of external and internal power produces some intriguing results, suggesting that one state’s internal power preponderance can be offset by another state’s preponderance of external power. These results altogether suggest that further studies examining the role of external power can produce fruitful results.

U.S. News Coverage of Global Terrorist Incidents

A slew of gruesome executions by terrorist groups in 2014–2015 renewed interest in the public relations strategies of terrorists. As a case in point, the Islamic State group’s escalating brutality reflects their efforts as a relatively nascent extremist group to ensure a high and sustained volume of media coverage, especially among Western outlets. But what characteristics of events actually prompt coverage from major U.S. news media? Using a rich data set of terrorist incidents and coverage from six major broadcast and cable U.S. networks, we model coverage of terrorist incidents as a function of event proximity from U.S. soil, target country affinity with the United States, number of total and U.S. casualties, and the characteristics of the terrorist group. Our findings largely corroborate expectations set forth by the literature on norms and routines of journalism and economics of news. When it comes to terrorism, coverage by U.S. major media outlets is largely dependent on proximity to and affinity with the United States, weapons of mass destruction, and the number of global and U.S. casualties.