Zaryab Iqbal

Sic Semper Tyrannis? Power, Repression, and Assassination Since the Second World War

The killing of a head of state is among the most severe and consequential forms of political violence. But to date, there have been no systematic studies of the incidence of such assassinations, with the few existing case studies tending to emphasize the uniqueness of those events. Drawing on existing theories of social protest and contentious politics, we argue instead that institutional and sociopolitical factors should be important correlates of assassination. We examine empirically the implications of this theory, using data on the incidence of assassinations of heads of state between 1946 and 2000. Our findings suggest that institutional factors related to leadership succession, institutionalized power, and levels of repression interact to influence the occurrence of such killings. Notable in this respect is our conclusion that, while repressive leaders are at greater risk for assassination, the effect of repression is moderated by executive power, such that weak, repressive leaders in nondemocratic systems face the highest risk of assassination. Our findings dovetail neatly with the broader literature on other forms of insurgency, suggesting that assassinations are but one manifestation of the larger phenomenon of political violence.

Violent Conflict and the Spread of HIV/AIDS in Africa

It has been widely speculated that violent conflict acts as a key contributor to the transmission of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). Yet to date no empirical examination of the conflict-HIV relationship has been conducted. Drawing on work in political science and public health, we set forth a theoretical framework for understanding this potential relationship and go on to present data on the spatio-temporal dispersion of HIV/AIDS in 43 African countries during the period from 1997 to 2005. We then assess the association between domestic and international conflict and levels of HIV/AIDS infection while controlling for a range of other influential factors. Our analyses support a clear positive relationship between both international and domestic conflict and climbing HIV/AIDS prevalence, as well as significant palliative effects for education and economic development on the incidence of HIV/AIDS.

Bad Neighbors: Failed States and Their Consequences

State failure reflects the collapse of a sovereign state, and has been hypothesized to destabilize an entire region. We assess the negative effects of state collapse, focusing particularly on the spatial diffusion of these consequences. We argue that the instability, unrest, and civil war that increase the risk for state collapse are not limited to the failed/collapsed state; states neighboring—or located within close distance of—a failed state are also likely to experience subsequently higher levels of political instability, unrest, civil war, and interstate conflict. We also evaluate the likelihood of state failure itself diffusing to other states. Specifically, we test the proposition that state failure causes political turmoil in nearby states to a greater extent than in distant countries. We do so by including a distance-weighted measure of state failure and by evaluating the effect of collapse in contiguous states. We conclude that state failure/collapse itself is not contagious, but some of its most negative consequences do indeed diffuse to other states.

The Geo-Politics of Forced Migration in Africa, 1992–2001

Of the consequences of war, the movement of large numbers of displaced peoples across international borders is among the most significant. I examine the determinants of international refugee flows in Africa during the period from 1992 to 2001. I begin with a gravity model of refugee flows, which posits that levels of such flows will vary as a function of the population of the two states in question and the distance between the two. To this, I add consideration of two key factors theorized to generate refugee populations: the presence of armed conflict, and the regime type of both the source and target nations. Most important, distance between the source and the target countries is the single most important determinant of dyadic refugee flows; in addition to its direct effect, distance also mediates the effects of conflict and regime type on volumes of refugees. My findings confirm the strong influence of distance on the levels of refugee flows. Although I find clear effects for the presence of conflict, with war in the source country substantially increasing refugee flows and war in the host country decreasing them, I also find strong evidence that this effect is mediated by distance.

Civil War and Refugees in Post-Cold War Africa†

One inevitable by-product of large-scale civil conflict is the displacement of individuals, either voluntarily or by force. That fact has been a cornerstone of the international communitys involvement in civil conflicts, which has increased markedly since the end of the Cold War. Yet few studies have investigated empirically the connection between such conflicts and the occurrence and extent of forced migrations, and none have evaluated whether the ongoing international response has been effective in breaking the link between civil war and forced migration. We thus begin with the goal of assessing whether and the extent to which the effect of civil wars on volumes of refugees has declined since the end of the Cold War, chiefly due to international efforts to mitigate the conditions that facilitate civil conflict or enhance its detrimental effects. We present a model of refugee flows that accounts for the influence of spatial, domestic, and international factors on those movements, and which allows for the possibility of both temporal variation in the influence of civil wars on those flows and prospective and retrospective temporal dependence in those flows. We go on to evaluate our expectations empirically, using data on refugee movements in Africa during the period from 1992 to 2000. Our findings suggest that the effect of civil wars on forced migration has been steadily declining during those years, a result consistent with the greater levels of international intervention in those conflicts during the period.

Avoiding catastrophes: seeking synergies among the public health, environmental protection, and human security sectors

Global health catastrophes have complex origins, often rooted in social disruption, poverty, conflict, and environmental collapse. Avoiding them will require a new integrative analysis of the links ...