Zeynep Taydas

Can states buy peace? Social welfare spending and civil conflicts:

This study examines whether the state’s ability to provide social welfare services has any major effect on the probability of civil conflict onset. We argue that welfare spending contributes to sustaining peace because the provision of social services reduces grievances by offsetting the effects of poverty and inequality in society. Welfare spending serves as an indication of the commitment of the government to social services and reflects its priorities and dedication to citizens. By enacting welfare policies that improve the living standards of citizens, governments can co-opt the political opposition and decrease the incentives for organizing a rebellion. Utilizing time-series, cross-national data for the 1975–2005 period, the results indicate that as the level of the government investment in welfare policies (i.e. education, health, and social security) increases, the likelihood of civil conflict onset declines significantly, controlling for several other covariates of internal conflict. Additional data analysis shows that general public spending and military expenditures are unlikely to increase or decrease the probability of civil unrest. Overall, these findings suggest that certain types of public spending, such as welfare spending, might have a strong pacifying effect on civil conflict, and therefore the state’s welfare efforts are vital for the maintenance of peace.

Does Religious Discrimination Promote Dissent? A Quantitative Analysis

Can religious grievances serve as a catalyst for political violence? This paper seeks to examine the impact of religious discrimination on the probability of ethnic dissent. It is argued that religious discrimination leads to the generation of grievances, which in turn encourages ethnoreligious minorities to engage in peaceful and violent opposition against the state. To test this argument, the authors collected data on religious discrimination of ethnoreligious minorities for the period 1990–2003. The empirical findings suggest that religious discrimination is a strong predictor of violent dissent, including rebellion and civil war. As the level of religious discrimination against ethnoreligious groups increases, the probability of rebellion and civil war heightens, controlling for several other state and group-level factors. The exact opposite is true for protest, however: higher levels of religious discrimination are associated with lower levels of non-violent protest activity. These findings suggest that the impact of religious discrimination on anti-state activity is not uniform, and that religious discrimination encourages only violent forms of dissent.

Why Do Civil Wars Occur? Understanding the Importance of Institutional Quality

As states get stronger, they are expected to be more successful in preventing insurgency and, in turn, the occurrence of civil wars. While intuitively appealing, the theoretical and empirical understanding of the linkage between state capacity and civil war onset remains at an early stage of development. To date, the role of state capacity has been conceptualised and measured in limited ways that focus mainly on the repressive ability of the state. In this paper, we broaden the understanding of state capacity by incorporating an important but neglected dimension; institutional quality. We examine the relationship between institutional quality and civil war onset and argue that states characterised with high institutional quality are less likely to experience civil war. Analysis of cross-national time-series data from 1984 to 1999 reveals that the quality of institutions, defined as freedom from corruption in government, rule of law, and bureaucratic quality, plays a significant role in explaining the likelihood of civil war onset.

Free Votes, MPs, and Constituents: The Case of Same-Sex Marriage in Canada

In the summer of 2005, with the passage of the Civil Marriage Act, Canada became the third country to extend full rights to same-sex marriages. This article explores passage of the CMA, focusing on parliamentary voting behavior on the free vote used in the House of Commons. Using multivariate empirical analysis we find unusually strong evidence of constituency characteristics influencing the voting behavior of MPs, a rare outcome given the existing scholarly literature on free votes. In a concluding section, we discuss what these findings imply about the increasingly important debate in Canada about parliamentary accountability.

Why do civil wars occur? Another look at the theoretical dichotomy of opportunity versus grievance

The purpose of this article is to review major theoretical arguments with regard to the causes of civil war and identify problems associated with the conceptual juxtaposition of opportunity versus grievance that predominates in the field. While they are critical aspects of conflict processes, perception of opportunity and grievance as two mutually competing explanations or separate categories ultimately can limit, rather than facilitate, our understanding of civil conflicts. For example, we show that not all motives can be designated easily as deriving from one or the other. In addition, the existing dichotomous framework masks other important questions about the way that collective action is achieved in some circumstances and not others or the way that some factors seem to generate grievances at one stage, perhaps, but then an opportunity at another or vice versa . Thus the priority should be to develop an integrated, comprehensive approach that can account for fundamental aspects of complex conflict processes. We conclude by providing suggestions for future research on civil conflict.

One-Sided Crises in World Politics: A Study of Oxymoron, Violence and Outcomes

This paper focuses on crises and seeks to extend understanding of escalation processes, outcomes, and legacy. We go beyond Hewitt and Wilkenfelds (1999) initial study of one-sided crises, which emphasized crisis type as an explanation for violence levels, in three ways: We (1) pursue an explanation for why some crises remain one-sided; (2) include two additional crisis attributes, protractedness of conflict and ethnicity, which are expected to impact upon the role of violence; and (3) link outcomes and subsequent tension levels for adversaries with crisis type (i.e., one-sided versus others) to expand the potential explanatory range of one-sidedness. To achieve these goals, the paper unfolds in four parts. First, the study is placed in the context of ongoing research on crises in world politics, most notably as carried out by the International Crisis Behavior (ICB) Project. The second part presents a theoretical overview of the factors that might distinguish crisis type, along with those deemed important in determining violence, outcomes, and subsequent tension. Explicit hypotheses are derived as well. The third part conveys data, variables, data analysis for crisis type (Stage 1) and violence, outcomes, and subsequent tension levels (Stage 2), and a comparison of results for the two stages. The fourth and final part summarizes the papers accomplishments. Key findings are that (1) we can distinguish crisis type on the basis of characteristics such as contiguity, gravity of threat, and civil war involvement; and (2) the Hewitt and Wilkenfeld model is most successful in explaining violence as opposed to outcome and legacy, which seem especially difficult to account for, even with the addition of theoretically important factors like ethnicity and protracted conflict.

Did Secularism Fail? The Rise of Religion in Turkish Politics

Religious movements have long been challenging the modernist and secularist ideas around the world. Within the last decade or so, pro-religious parties made significant electoral advances in various countries, including India, Sudan, Algeria, and the Palestinian territories. In this article, we focus on the rise of the pro-religious Justice and Development Party ( Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi - AKP) to power in the 2002 elections in Turkey. Using the Turkish experience with political Islam, we evaluate the explanatory value of Mark Juergensmeyers rise of religious nationalism theory, with a special emphasis on the “failed secularism” argument. Our analysis indicates that the theoretical approach formulated by Juergensmeyer has a great deal of explanatory power; however, it does not provide a complete explanation for the success of the AKP. The rise of religion in Turkish politics is the result of a complex process over long years of encounter and confrontation between two frameworks of order, starting with the sudden imposition of secularism from above, when the republic was established. Hence, to understand the rise of religion in contemporary Turkish politics, an in-depth understanding of history, politics, and the sources of tension between secularists and Islamists is essential. The findings of this article have important implications for other countries, especially those that are experiencing a resurgence of religion in politics, and are struggling to integrate religious parties into a democratic system.