Emigration and Political Contestation

How does migration affect global patterns of political violence and protest? While political scientists have examined the links between trade and conflict, less attention has been paid to the links between migration and conflict. In this paper, we show that greater emigration reduces domestic political violence by providing exit opportunities for aggrieved citizens and economic benefits to those who remain. Emigration also reduces non-violent forms of political contestation, including protests and strikes, implying that high emigration rates can produce relatively quiescent populations. However, larger flows of emigrants to democracies can increase non-violent protest in autocracies, as exposure to freer countries spreads democratic norms and the tools of peaceful opposition. We use instrumental variables analysis to account for the endogeneity of migration flows and find robust results for a range of indicators of civil violence and protest from 1960 to 2010.

Epidemic Shocks and Civil Violence: Evidence from Malaria Outbreaks in Africa

This paper presents the first systematic investigation of the effect of epidemic shocks on civil violence. The identification exploits exogenous within cell×year variation in conditions that are suitable for malaria transmission using a panel database with month-by-month variation at a resolution of 1° × 1° latitude/longitude for Africa. Suitable conditions increase civil violence in areas with populations susceptible to epidemic outbreaks. The effect is immediate, related to the acute phase of the epidemic, and largest during short harvesting seasons of subsistence crops. Genetic immunities and anti-malaria policies attenuate the effect. The results deliver new insights for prevention and attenuation policies and for potential consequences of climate change.

Violence and Political Authority

This chapter explores how Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet explicitly dramatizes civil city life threatened by civil violence. These two competing forms of power—civil city life and civil violence—are further juxtaposed, in the plot, with inter-personal erotic intimacy, which is figured, in the language and in the action of the play, as potentially transcendent of material relations; with the norms and social logic of commerce and exchange; and with the aspiration to finality of sovereign authority. The play demonstrates how violence and an economy in which everything is for sale are as destructive of civic republican politics as they are of intimate love.

Confronting Rebellion in Weak States: Government Response to Military Mutiny in Benin

Military mutinies are a serious threat to peace in Africa, as they may be a catalyst for large-scale civil violence. Unlike most studies that solely focus on the causes of military revolts, this article explores both cause and government response by examining a 1992 military sedition in Benin. Relying on interviews and government archives, Codjo uncovers the sources of the revolt and compares two consecutive administrations in their management of the crisis. The main takeaway is that presidential leadership style and antecedents of elite consensus on governance rules are sometimes critical in rallying support for a lasting solution to mutinies.

Leadership and Regimes

This chapter looks at the similarities and differences between Thucydides and Hobbes on the subject of regimes. Hobbes was convinced that Thucydides had proved the absurdity of democracy and the desirability of absolute monarchy. However, Hobbes misread Thucydides on this point. For Hobbes, monarchy was the only regime in which the selfish interests of the ruler and ruled rationally coincide. Revealingly, in order to deal with the leadership of Pericles, Hobbes had to characterize him superficially as a monarch, ignoring how Pericles won and maintained his power. But it is just the type of statesmanship exemplified by Pericles that Hobbes cannot accept because of his rigid assumptions about human nature. Thucydides' focus on the importance of studying the thought, character, and actions of statesmen is an important difference between the Thucydidean and the Hobbesian realist models. Hobbes's horror at civil violence led him to lose faith in ordinary human reason and thus in political deliberation. It is because he lost faith in the latter that scientific reason emerged as a powerful alternative. But if human beings are so unreasonable that one can no longer take seriously what they say, how can one expect them to be reasonable enough to accept Hobbes's prescriptions? The Hobbesian solution is that an absolute government must enforce the plan. The chapter then argues that this solution to political problems is even more dangerous than the Thucydidean solution, which relies on political rhetoric and judgment.

The Ties That Bind: Ethnicity, Pro-government Militia, and the Dynamics of Violence in Civil War

Existing research reveals many of the ways pro-government militia (PGM) shape civil violence but overlooks how the ethno-political ties between the state and a PGM might influence these effects. We argue that co-ethnic militia (i.e., groups composed of the ruling elite’s ethnic kin) are relatively loyal irregular forces that multiply state military capacity. The greater loyalty of co-ethnic groups mitigates principal–agent problems but further polarizes ethnic communities, and as a result, co-ethnic PGMs are likely to be associated with longer and more intense civil conflict. We test this argument on a global sample of cases from 1989 to 2007 using new data capturing the ethnic ties of all PGMs. The results support our claims that co-ethnic militia are associated with more intense and longer civil conflict.