Jacob N. Shapiro

Can Hearts and Minds Be Bought? The Economics of Counterinsurgency in Iraq

We develop and test an economic theory of insurgency motivated by the informal literature and by recent military doctrine. We model a three-way contest between violent rebels, a government seeking to minimize violence by mixing service provision and coercion, and civilians deciding whether to share information about insurgents. We test the model using panel data from Iraq on violence against Coalition and Iraqi forces, reconstruction spending, and community characteristics (sectarian status, socioeconomic grievances, and natural resource endowments). Our results support the theory’s predictions: improved service provision reduces insurgent violence, particularly for smaller projects and since the “surge” began in 2007.

Do Working Men Rebel? Insurgency and Unemployment in Afghanistan, Iraq and the Philippines

Most aid spending by governments seeking to rebuild social and political order is based on an opportunity-cost theory of distracting potential recruits. The logic is that gainfully employed young men are less likely to participate in political violence, implying a positive correlation between unemployment and violence in locations with active insurgencies. The authors test that prediction in Afghanistan, Iraq, and the Philippines, using survey data on unemployment and two newly available measures of insurgency: (1) attacks against government and allied forces and (2) violence that kill civilians. Contrary to the opportunity-cost theory, the data emphatically reject a positive correlation between unemployment and attacks against government and allied forces (p < .05 percent). There is no significant relationship between unemployment and the rate of insurgent attacks that kill civilians. The authors identify several potential explanations, introducing the notion of insurgent precision to adjudicate between the possibilities that predation on one hand, and security measures and information costs on the other, account for the negative correlation between unemployment and violence in these three conflicts.

Testing the Surge: Why Did Violence Decline in Iraq in 2007?

Why did violence decline in Iraq in 2007? Many policymakers and scholars credit the “surge,” or the program of U.S. reinforcements and doctrinal changes that began in January 2007. Others cite the voluntary insurgent stand-downs of the Sunni Awakening or say that the violence had simply run its course with the end of a wave of sectarian cleansing; still others credit an interaction between the surge and the Awakening. The difference matters for policy and scholarship, yet this debate has not moved from hypothesis to test. An assessment of the competing claims based on recently declassified data on violence at local levels and information gathered from seventy structured interviews with coalition participants finds little support for the cleansing or Awakening theses. Instead, a synergistic interaction between the surge and the Awakening was required for violence to drop as quickly and widely as it did: both were necessary; neither was sufficient. U.S. policy thus played an important role in reducing the violence in Iraq in 2007, but Iraq provides no evidence that similar methods will produce similar results elsewhere without local equivalents of the Sunni Awakening.

Understanding Support for Islamist Militancy in Pakistan

Islamist militancy in Pakistan has long stood atop the international security agenda, yet there is almost no systematic evidence about why individual Pakistanis support Islamist militant organizations. An analysis of data from a nationally representative survey of urban Pakistanis refutes four influential conventional wisdoms about why Pakistanis support Islamic militancy. First, there is no clear relationship between poverty and support for militancy. If anything, support for militant organizations is increasing in terms of both subjective economic well-being and community economic performance. Second, personal religiosity and support for sharia law are poor predictors of support for Islamist militant organizations. Third, support for political goals espoused by legal Islamist parties is a weak indicator of support for militant organizations. Fourth, those who support core democratic principles or have faith in Pakistans democratic process are not less supportive of militancy. Taken together, these results suggest that commonly prescribed solutions to Islamist militancyeconomic development, democratization, and the likemay be irrelevant at best and might even be counterproductive.

Is the Phone Mightier Than the Sword? Cellphones and Insurgent Violence in Iraq

Does improved communication provided by modern cellphone technology affect the rise or fall of violence during insurgencies? A priori predictions are ambiguous; introducing cellphones can enhance insurgent communications but can also make it easier for the population to share information with counterinsurgents and creates opportunities for signals intelligence collection. We provide the first systematic micro-level test of the effect of cellphone communication on conflict using data on Iraqs cellphone network (2004–2009) and event data on violence. We show that increased mobile communications reduced insurgent violence in Iraq, both at the district level and for specific local coverage areas. The results provide support for models of insurgency that focus on noncombatants providing information as the key constraint on violent groups and highlight the fact that small changes in the transaction costs of cooperating with the government can have large macro effects on conflict.

Islam, Militancy and Politics in Pakistan: Insights from a National Sample

We use data from an innovative nationally representative survey of 6,000 Pakistanis in April 2009 to study beliefs about political Islam, Sharia, the legitimacy and efficacy of jihad, and attitudes towards specific militant organizations. These issues are at the forefront of U.S. policy towards Pakistan. Four results shed new light on the politics of militancy and Islamic identity in Pakistan. First, there is no relationship between measures of personal religiosity and the likelihood a respondent expresses highly sectarian sentiments. Second, militarized jihad is widely seen as legitimate in Pakistan but there are substantial regional differences in the acceptance of militarized jihad. Third, attitudes towards militant groups vary dramatically across groups, particularly when it comes to the efficacy of their actions. Fourth, while Pakistanis express massive levels of support for Sharia law, this is driven by its perceived connection with good governance, not by sympathy with the goals of militant groups claiming to implement it.

Democratic Values and Support for Militancy: Evidence from a National Survey of Pakistan

A long-standing research tradition on political culture argues that greater support for core liberal values leads to a rejection of destructive political activities and reduced support for violent politics. In this vein, many contemporary analysts of security policy contend that a lack of democratic values in the Middle East promotes the development of violent political organizations. Unfortunately, there have been few direct tests of the hypothesis that an individual’s rejection of democratic values correlates with support for militant groups. We conduct such a test in Pakistan using an original 6,000-person provincially representative survey. We find that strong supporters of democratic values are actually more supportive of militant groups and that this relationship is strongest among those who believe that Muslim rights and sovereignty are being violated in Kashmir. This is consistent with the context of Pakistani politics, where many militant groups use the principle of azadi (i.e., freedom and self-determination) to justify their actions. These results challenge the conventional wisdom about the roots of militancy and underscore the importance of understanding how local context mediates the influence of civic culture on political stability and violence.A long-standing research tradition on political culture argues that greater support for core liberal values leads to a rejection of destructive political activities and reduced support for violent politics. In this vein, many contemporary analysts of security policy contend that a lack of democratic values in the Middle East promotes the development of violent political organizations. Unfortunately, there have been few direct tests of the hypothesis that an individual’s rejection of democratic values correlates with support for militant groups. We conduct such a test in Pakistan using an original 6,000-person provincially representative survey. We find that strong supporters of democratic values are actually more supportive of militant groups and that this relationship is strongest among those who believe that Muslim rights and sovereignty are being violated in Kashmir. This is consistent with the context of Pakistani politics, where many militant groups use the principle of azadi (i.e., freedom and self-determination) to justify their actions. These results challenge the conventional wisdom about the roots of militancy and underscore the importance of understanding how local context mediates the influence of civic culture on political stability and violence.

Tortured Relations: Human Rights Abuses and Counterterrorism Cooperation

Two big assumptions fuel current mobilization against and policy discussions about the U.S. war on terror and its implications for human rights and international cooperation. First, terrorism creates strong pressures on governments—especially democracies—to restrict human rights. Second, these restrictions are not only immoral and illegal, but also counterproductive to curbing terrorism. If these two assumptions are correct, then democracies face a vicious circle: terrorist attacks provoke a reaction that makes it harder to defeat terrorist organizations.

Coordination and security

Recent work has shown that the introduction of mobile communications can substantially alter the course of conflict. In Afghanistan and India targeting mobile communications is a central part of the insurgent campaigns. The opposite was true in Iraq. There insurgents instead threatened providers who did not do enough to maintain mobile phone networks. These differences likely arise from two competing effects of mobile communications: they make it easier for antigovernment actors to coordinate collective action, thereby increasing violence, and for pro-government civilians to collaborate with security forces allowing them to more effectively suppress rebels, thereby decreasing violence. To study these competing effects we analyze a formal model of insurgent action in which changes in the communications environment alter both (i) the ability of rebels to impose costs on civilians who cooperate with the government and (ii) the information flow to government forces seeking to suppress rebellion with military action. Our analysis highlights the importance of the threat of information sharing by non-combatants in reducing violence and offers some guidelines for policymakers in thinking about how much to support ICT development in conflict zones. In particular, we show that officials can generate reasonable expectations about whether expanding ICT access will exacerbate conflict or reduce it by assessing the relative gains to both sides from changes in ICT access along several simple dimensions.

Measuring political violence in Pakistan: Insights from the BFRS Dataset:

This article presents the BFRS Political Violence in Pakistan dataset addressing its design, collection and utility. BFRS codes a broad range of information on 28,731 incidents of political violence from January 1988 to November 2011. For each incident we record the location, consequences, cause, type of violence and party responsible as specifically as possible. These are the first data to systematically record all different kinds of political violence in a country for such an extended period, including riots, violent political demonstrations, terrorism and state violence, as well as asymmetric and symmetric insurgent violence. Similar datasets from other countries tend to focus on one kind of violence—such as ethnic riots, terrorism or combat—and therefore do not allow scholars to study how different forms of violence interact or to account for tactical and strategic substitution between methods of contestation. To demonstrate the utility of the dataset, first we examine how patterns of tactical substitution vary over time and space in Pakistan, showing that they differ dramatically, and discuss implications for the study of political violence more broadly. Second, we show how these data can help illuminate ongoing debates in Pakistan about the causes of the increase in violence in the last 10 years. Both applications demonstrate the value of disaggregating violence within countries and are illustrative of the potential uses of these data.