Pub Date : 2024-11-16DOI: 10.1177/00223433241279377
Andrey Tomashevskiy
The notion of affinity among countries is central in studies of international relations: it plays an important role in research as scholars use measures of affinity to study conflict and cooperation in a variety of contexts. To more effectively measure affinity, I argue that it is necessary to utilize multidimensional data and take into account the network context of international relations. In this paper, I develop the deep affinity concept and introduce a new algorithm, the three-step graphical LASSO (GLASSO), to infer and recover latent affinity networks. This technique leverages the abundance of monadic and dyadic state-level data to identify the presence or absence of affinity links between pairs of countries. Directly incorporating network effects and using a variety of multidimensional data inputs, I used the three-step GLASSO to estimate latent affinity links among countries. With these data, I examined the implications of affinity for international conflict and foreign direct investment, and found that the measure of affinity generated with the three-step GLASSO outperformed alternative affinity measures and was associated with decreased conflict and increased economic interaction.
{"title":"Friends and partners: Estimating latent affinity networks with the graphical LASSO","authors":"Andrey Tomashevskiy","doi":"10.1177/00223433241279377","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00223433241279377","url":null,"abstract":"The notion of affinity among countries is central in studies of international relations: it plays an important role in research as scholars use measures of affinity to study conflict and cooperation in a variety of contexts. To more effectively measure affinity, I argue that it is necessary to utilize multidimensional data and take into account the network context of international relations. In this paper, I develop the deep affinity concept and introduce a new algorithm, the three-step graphical LASSO (GLASSO), to infer and recover latent affinity networks. This technique leverages the abundance of monadic and dyadic state-level data to identify the presence or absence of affinity links between pairs of countries. Directly incorporating network effects and using a variety of multidimensional data inputs, I used the three-step GLASSO to estimate latent affinity links among countries. With these data, I examined the implications of affinity for international conflict and foreign direct investment, and found that the measure of affinity generated with the three-step GLASSO outperformed alternative affinity measures and was associated with decreased conflict and increased economic interaction.","PeriodicalId":48324,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Peace Research","volume":"12 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.6,"publicationDate":"2024-11-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142645941","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-11-16DOI: 10.1177/00223433241267800
Peyman Asadzade
Why do protests emerge and endure in some localities but not others? This study focuses on urban protests in the city of Tehran, Iran’s capital and largest city, during the 2022 uprising to explain why protests emerged and endured in some neighbourhoods but not others. Using an original geocoded dataset of 339 protest events at the neighbourhood level, I test two competing sets of demographic and spatial explanations. The results reveal that protests are more likely to emerge and persist in neighbourhoods with a higher percentage of educated citizens, closer proximity to university campuses and convenient access to metro stations. I provide theoretical explanations on how education boosts political awareness, university campuses act as networking hubs influencing surrounding areas and metro stations facilitate critical gathering points for protests. The findings remain consistent even when I control for a range of variables and use alternative specifications.
{"title":"Demographic features or spatial structures? Unpacking local variation during the 2022 Iranian protests","authors":"Peyman Asadzade","doi":"10.1177/00223433241267800","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00223433241267800","url":null,"abstract":"Why do protests emerge and endure in some localities but not others? This study focuses on urban protests in the city of Tehran, Iran’s capital and largest city, during the 2022 uprising to explain why protests emerged and endured in some neighbourhoods but not others. Using an original geocoded dataset of 339 protest events at the neighbourhood level, I test two competing sets of demographic and spatial explanations. The results reveal that protests are more likely to emerge and persist in neighbourhoods with a higher percentage of educated citizens, closer proximity to university campuses and convenient access to metro stations. I provide theoretical explanations on how education boosts political awareness, university campuses act as networking hubs influencing surrounding areas and metro stations facilitate critical gathering points for protests. The findings remain consistent even when I control for a range of variables and use alternative specifications.","PeriodicalId":48324,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Peace Research","volume":"8 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.6,"publicationDate":"2024-11-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142645942","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-11-16DOI: 10.1177/00223433241276341
Hannah Smidt, Constantin Ruhe, Sabine Otto
Human rights are a fundamental principle and purpose of the United Nations (UN). Yet, UN peacekeeping operations (PKOs) exhibit substantial variation in their ability to engage in human rights activities. While existing research has investigated deployment and mandates, we explain what peacekeepers can actually do on the ground. We argue that the UN Security Council’s permanent member states (the P5) limit human rights mandates if they have private interests in PKO host countries, thereby diminishing peacekeepers’ ability to promote and protect human rights. Moreover, armed conflict shifts priorities away from human rights activities. We use novel data on 21 human rights activities in African countries (1991–2016) and item response models to capture PKOs’ latent ability to engage in these activities. Random and fixed effects regression and mediation analyses with sensitivity tests support our expectations. We find that the P5’s economic interests in the PKO host country negatively correlate with the strength of human rights mandate provisions, which in turn negatively correlates with PKOs’ ability to engage in human rights activities. We find similar, although less consistent, correlations for P5’s security interests. Yet, while mandates partly define the scope of PKOs’ activities, field-level conditions also have an influence. Specifically, ongoing armed conflict negatively correlates with PKOs’ ability to engage in human rights activities. Our results suggest that rising challenges to the liberal international order by powerful states, coupled with the more frequent deployment of PKOs in conflict zones, will likely increase the hurdles that UN PKOs need to overcome to meet expectations regarding their human rights engagement.
{"title":"Many hurdles to take: Explaining peacekeepers’ ability to engage in human rights activities","authors":"Hannah Smidt, Constantin Ruhe, Sabine Otto","doi":"10.1177/00223433241276341","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00223433241276341","url":null,"abstract":"Human rights are a fundamental principle and purpose of the United Nations (UN). Yet, UN peacekeeping operations (PKOs) exhibit substantial variation in their ability to engage in human rights activities. While existing research has investigated deployment and mandates, we explain what peacekeepers can actually do on the ground. We argue that the UN Security Council’s permanent member states (the P5) limit human rights mandates if they have private interests in PKO host countries, thereby diminishing peacekeepers’ ability to promote and protect human rights. Moreover, armed conflict shifts priorities away from human rights activities. We use novel data on 21 human rights activities in African countries (1991–2016) and item response models to capture PKOs’ latent ability to engage in these activities. Random and fixed effects regression and mediation analyses with sensitivity tests support our expectations. We find that the P5’s economic interests in the PKO host country negatively correlate with the strength of human rights mandate provisions, which in turn negatively correlates with PKOs’ ability to engage in human rights activities. We find similar, although less consistent, correlations for P5’s security interests. Yet, while mandates partly define the scope of PKOs’ activities, field-level conditions also have an influence. Specifically, ongoing armed conflict negatively correlates with PKOs’ ability to engage in human rights activities. Our results suggest that rising challenges to the liberal international order by powerful states, coupled with the more frequent deployment of PKOs in conflict zones, will likely increase the hurdles that UN PKOs need to overcome to meet expectations regarding their human rights engagement.","PeriodicalId":48324,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Peace Research","volume":"15 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.6,"publicationDate":"2024-11-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142645947","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-11-11DOI: 10.1177/00223433241271879
Alix Ziff, Miriam Barnum, Ashley Abadeer, Jasmine Chu, Nicole Jao, Marie Zaragoza, Benjamin AT Graham
Powersharing institutions are often prescribed to enhance civil peace, democratic survival, and the equitable provision of public services, and these institutions have become more prevalent over time. Nonetheless, the past decade has seen a rise in democratic backsliding and competitive authoritarianism, raising questions about how the relationship between powersharing, democracy, and civil peace may be evolving. This article introduces an update to the Inclusion, Dispersion, and Constraints (IDC) powersharing dataset that adds nine years of data, up through 2019. These new data include enhanced intercoder reliability checks, a significant reduction in missing values, and the documentation and correction of some coding errors in the original data. We also employ latent variable models to estimate each of three types of powersharing, allowing scholars to account for measurement uncertainty in analyses of the causes and consequences of powersharing. This dataset allows scholars to address urgent questions about whether previously observed relationships between powersharing and democracy and powersharing and civil peace still hold in this new era, and in what contexts powersharing institutions remain advisable.
{"title":"De jure powersharing 1975–2019: Updating the Inclusion, Dispersion, and Constraints Dataset","authors":"Alix Ziff, Miriam Barnum, Ashley Abadeer, Jasmine Chu, Nicole Jao, Marie Zaragoza, Benjamin AT Graham","doi":"10.1177/00223433241271879","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00223433241271879","url":null,"abstract":"Powersharing institutions are often prescribed to enhance civil peace, democratic survival, and the equitable provision of public services, and these institutions have become more prevalent over time. Nonetheless, the past decade has seen a rise in democratic backsliding and competitive authoritarianism, raising questions about how the relationship between powersharing, democracy, and civil peace may be evolving. This article introduces an update to the Inclusion, Dispersion, and Constraints (IDC) powersharing dataset that adds nine years of data, up through 2019. These new data include enhanced intercoder reliability checks, a significant reduction in missing values, and the documentation and correction of some coding errors in the original data. We also employ latent variable models to estimate each of three types of powersharing, allowing scholars to account for measurement uncertainty in analyses of the causes and consequences of powersharing. This dataset allows scholars to address urgent questions about whether previously observed relationships between powersharing and democracy and powersharing and civil peace still hold in this new era, and in what contexts powersharing institutions remain advisable.","PeriodicalId":48324,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Peace Research","volume":"4 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.6,"publicationDate":"2024-11-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142598099","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-11-04DOI: 10.1177/00223433241267798
Jordan Becker, Paul Poast, Tim Haesebrouck
Why do countries mutually agree to constraints on their behavior? Why do they comply with such constraints in the absence of enforcement mechanisms? More specifically, why did NATO allies, with disparate geography and perceptions of the international security environment, agree to ‘aim to move towards’ increased defense spending (2% of GDP on defense and 20% of defense budgets on equipment modernization) at their 2014 Wales Summit? Moreover, why have they largely complied with this agreement subsequently? We argue that the ‘Interest Based’ framework for understanding the success or failure of environmental agreements is useful for understanding the agreement and implementation of the Wales Pledge. This argument finds support from interviews with participants and a purpose-built dataset including outcomes of interest (overall defense spending and share of defense budgets allocated to equipment modernization) and key independent variables (vulnerability to security threats and ‘abatement cost’ of meeting the Wales Pledge aims). We find that vulnerability and abatement costs affected both the order in which states agreed the pledge, and the extent to which they have complied with it.
{"title":"Setting targets: Abatement cost, vulnerability, and the agreement of NATO’s Wales Pledge on Defense Investment","authors":"Jordan Becker, Paul Poast, Tim Haesebrouck","doi":"10.1177/00223433241267798","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00223433241267798","url":null,"abstract":"Why do countries mutually agree to constraints on their behavior? Why do they comply with such constraints in the absence of enforcement mechanisms? More specifically, why did NATO allies, with disparate geography and perceptions of the international security environment, agree to ‘aim to move towards’ increased defense spending (2% of GDP on defense and 20% of defense budgets on equipment modernization) at their 2014 Wales Summit? Moreover, why have they largely complied with this agreement subsequently? We argue that the ‘Interest Based’ framework for understanding the success or failure of environmental agreements is useful for understanding the agreement and implementation of the Wales Pledge. This argument finds support from interviews with participants and a purpose-built dataset including outcomes of interest (overall defense spending and share of defense budgets allocated to equipment modernization) and key independent variables (vulnerability to security threats and ‘abatement cost’ of meeting the Wales Pledge aims). We find that vulnerability and abatement costs affected both the order in which states agreed the pledge, and the extent to which they have complied with it.","PeriodicalId":48324,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Peace Research","volume":"26 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.6,"publicationDate":"2024-11-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142580064","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-11-04DOI: 10.1177/00223433241279381
Christoph Valentin Steinert, Daniel Kazenwadel
OpenAI’s ChatGPT language model has gained popularity as a powerful tool for problem-solving and information retrieval. However, concerns arise about the reproduction of biases present in the language-specific training data. In this study, we address this issue in the context of the Israeli–Palestinian and Turkish–Kurdish conflicts. Using GPT-3.5, we employed an automated query procedure to inquire about casualties in specific airstrikes, in both Hebrew and Arabic for the former conflict and Turkish and Kurdish for the latter. Our analysis reveals that GPT-3.5 provides 34 ± 11% lower fatality estimates when queried in the language of the attacker than in the language of the targeted group. Evasive answers denying the existence of such attacks further increase the discrepancy. A simplified analysis on the current GPT-4 model shows the same trends. To explain the origin of the bias, we conducted a systematic media content analysis of Arabic news sources. The media analysis suggests that the large-language model fails to link specific attacks to the corresponding fatality numbers reported in the Arabic news. Due to its reliance on co-occurring words, the large-language model may provide death tolls from different attacks with greater news impact or cumulative death counts that are prevalent in the training data. Given that large-language models may shape information dissemination in the future, the language bias identified in our study has the potential to amplify existing biases along linguistic dyads and contribute to information bubbles.
{"title":"How user language affects conflict fatality estimates in ChatGPT","authors":"Christoph Valentin Steinert, Daniel Kazenwadel","doi":"10.1177/00223433241279381","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00223433241279381","url":null,"abstract":"OpenAI’s ChatGPT language model has gained popularity as a powerful tool for problem-solving and information retrieval. However, concerns arise about the reproduction of biases present in the language-specific training data. In this study, we address this issue in the context of the Israeli–Palestinian and Turkish–Kurdish conflicts. Using GPT-3.5, we employed an automated query procedure to inquire about casualties in specific airstrikes, in both Hebrew and Arabic for the former conflict and Turkish and Kurdish for the latter. Our analysis reveals that GPT-3.5 provides 34 ± 11% lower fatality estimates when queried in the language of the attacker than in the language of the targeted group. Evasive answers denying the existence of such attacks further increase the discrepancy. A simplified analysis on the current GPT-4 model shows the same trends. To explain the origin of the bias, we conducted a systematic media content analysis of Arabic news sources. The media analysis suggests that the large-language model fails to link specific attacks to the corresponding fatality numbers reported in the Arabic news. Due to its reliance on co-occurring words, the large-language model may provide death tolls from different attacks with greater news impact or cumulative death counts that are prevalent in the training data. Given that large-language models may shape information dissemination in the future, the language bias identified in our study has the potential to amplify existing biases along linguistic dyads and contribute to information bubbles.","PeriodicalId":48324,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Peace Research","volume":"17 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.6,"publicationDate":"2024-11-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142580032","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-11-01DOI: 10.1177/00223433241268838
Paul R Hensel, Sara McLaughlin Mitchell, Andrew P Owsiak, Krista E Wiegand
This article introduces the Issue Correlates of War Identity Claims Dataset. An identity claim occurs when two states diplomatically contest the treatment of an ethnic group that both states share. A state that advances such a claim (i.e. the challenger) demands that the other state (i.e. the target) either: (i) change its domestic treatment of the group, (ii) grant the group independence, or (iii) allow the group to reunite with the challenger state (i.e. irredentism). Our research locates all known instances of identity claims throughout the world from 1946 to 2021 ( n = 111; 45 ongoing as of 31 December 2021). We first highlight the differences between these data and what appears in various existing datasets. We then elaborate on our data generating and coding processes, before descriptively presenting some of the dataset’s noteworthy characteristics (e.g. frequency over time and across regions; the most common challengers, targets, and ethnic groups involved; and claim militarization rates). Finally, we conclude with a discussion about promising ways to use the data in future research.
{"title":"The Issue Correlates of War (ICOW) Identity Claims Dataset, 1946-2021","authors":"Paul R Hensel, Sara McLaughlin Mitchell, Andrew P Owsiak, Krista E Wiegand","doi":"10.1177/00223433241268838","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00223433241268838","url":null,"abstract":"This article introduces the Issue Correlates of War Identity Claims Dataset. An identity claim occurs when two states diplomatically contest the treatment of an ethnic group that both states share. A state that advances such a claim (i.e. the challenger) demands that the other state (i.e. the target) either: (i) change its domestic treatment of the group, (ii) grant the group independence, or (iii) allow the group to reunite with the challenger state (i.e. irredentism). Our research locates all known instances of identity claims throughout the world from 1946 to 2021 ( n = 111; 45 ongoing as of 31 December 2021). We first highlight the differences between these data and what appears in various existing datasets. We then elaborate on our data generating and coding processes, before descriptively presenting some of the dataset’s noteworthy characteristics (e.g. frequency over time and across regions; the most common challengers, targets, and ethnic groups involved; and claim militarization rates). Finally, we conclude with a discussion about promising ways to use the data in future research.","PeriodicalId":48324,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Peace Research","volume":"61 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.6,"publicationDate":"2024-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142563244","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-11-01DOI: 10.1177/00223433241268837
Matias Spektor, Marcos Ross Fernandes, Lucas de Oliveira Paes, João Victor Dalla Pola, Vitor Loureiro Sion
Transnational surveillance is a powerful tool in the arsenal of autocrats the world over. Despite its pervasive use in extraterritorial coercion, the systematic study of surveillance of regime opponents beyond national borders remains underdeveloped in political science, primarily due to limited data availability. To help fill this gap, we constructed the Latin American Transnational Surveillance dataset, a micro-level dataset based on declassified foreign surveillance reports produced between 1966 and 1986 by autocratic Brazil. Latin American Transnational Surveillance records the identity, locations, social ties and political activism of 17,000 individual targets of transnational surveillance, the vast majority of whom were tracked in neighbouring countries across Latin America. Drawing on these abundant data, we empirically explore existing theoretical insights about the motivations, methods and consequences of transnational surveillance, a task that would be difficult to do using other sources. We also leverage social network analysis to showcase potential applications of Latin American Transnational Surveillance in the testing of collective-action theories of transnational political violence.
{"title":"Introducing the Latin American Transnational Surveillance (LATS) dataset","authors":"Matias Spektor, Marcos Ross Fernandes, Lucas de Oliveira Paes, João Victor Dalla Pola, Vitor Loureiro Sion","doi":"10.1177/00223433241268837","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00223433241268837","url":null,"abstract":"Transnational surveillance is a powerful tool in the arsenal of autocrats the world over. Despite its pervasive use in extraterritorial coercion, the systematic study of surveillance of regime opponents beyond national borders remains underdeveloped in political science, primarily due to limited data availability. To help fill this gap, we constructed the Latin American Transnational Surveillance dataset, a micro-level dataset based on declassified foreign surveillance reports produced between 1966 and 1986 by autocratic Brazil. Latin American Transnational Surveillance records the identity, locations, social ties and political activism of 17,000 individual targets of transnational surveillance, the vast majority of whom were tracked in neighbouring countries across Latin America. Drawing on these abundant data, we empirically explore existing theoretical insights about the motivations, methods and consequences of transnational surveillance, a task that would be difficult to do using other sources. We also leverage social network analysis to showcase potential applications of Latin American Transnational Surveillance in the testing of collective-action theories of transnational political violence.","PeriodicalId":48324,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Peace Research","volume":"141 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.6,"publicationDate":"2024-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142563272","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-10-28DOI: 10.1177/00223433241261560
Gustav Agneman, Lisa Strömbom, Angelika Rettberg
Transitional justice practices frequently involve public apologies where former combatants confess their wrongdoings and ask for forgiveness, with the underlying assumption that such displays facilitate the reintegration of ex-combatants into society. However, little is known about the public response to ex-combatant apologies. In this article, we investigate the causal effect of an armed group apology on attitudes toward ex-combatant reintegration in Colombia. Our study builds on a novel experiment implemented in Meta, a conflict-ridden department of Colombia. The experiment entailed exposing a subset of participants to a video in which a former rebel group leader apologizes for violent acts committed by their armed group during the civil war. To examine the extent to which external actors influence the effectiveness of apologies, we incorporated third-party ‘encouragements to forgive’ (endorsements) in two additional treatment conditions. Our analysis demonstrates that, on average, participants do not exhibit higher reintegration attitudes when exposed to the apology, regardless of third-party endorsements. However, the absence of a treatment effect is not due to an indifference to the apology. In an exploratory heterogeneity analysis, we show that the apology induces negative effects on some indicators of reintegration attitudes among participants that did not support the peace agreement. This finding aligns with qualitative data gathered in a follow-up survey, which indicates that opponents of the peace agreement generally describe negative emotional responses to the FARC-EP apology. The results call for a reconsideration of unchallenged prescriptions of public apologies after conflict.
{"title":"Do apologies promote the reintegration of former combatants? Lessons from a video experiment in Colombia","authors":"Gustav Agneman, Lisa Strömbom, Angelika Rettberg","doi":"10.1177/00223433241261560","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00223433241261560","url":null,"abstract":"Transitional justice practices frequently involve public apologies where former combatants confess their wrongdoings and ask for forgiveness, with the underlying assumption that such displays facilitate the reintegration of ex-combatants into society. However, little is known about the public response to ex-combatant apologies. In this article, we investigate the causal effect of an armed group apology on attitudes toward ex-combatant reintegration in Colombia. Our study builds on a novel experiment implemented in Meta, a conflict-ridden department of Colombia. The experiment entailed exposing a subset of participants to a video in which a former rebel group leader apologizes for violent acts committed by their armed group during the civil war. To examine the extent to which external actors influence the effectiveness of apologies, we incorporated third-party ‘encouragements to forgive’ (endorsements) in two additional treatment conditions. Our analysis demonstrates that, on average, participants do not exhibit higher reintegration attitudes when exposed to the apology, regardless of third-party endorsements. However, the absence of a treatment effect is not due to an indifference to the apology. In an exploratory heterogeneity analysis, we show that the apology induces negative effects on some indicators of reintegration attitudes among participants that did not support the peace agreement. This finding aligns with qualitative data gathered in a follow-up survey, which indicates that opponents of the peace agreement generally describe negative emotional responses to the FARC-EP apology. The results call for a reconsideration of unchallenged prescriptions of public apologies after conflict.","PeriodicalId":48324,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Peace Research","volume":"18 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.6,"publicationDate":"2024-10-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142519386","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-10-28DOI: 10.1177/00223433241235854
Barbara F Walter, Gregoire Phillips
This article explores who is likely to benefit from Internet propaganda in civil wars. It argues that the global reach of the Internet, its lack of regulation and its filtering tools are more likely to help transnational rebel groups with external support and radical aims than local groups with home-grown support and moderate aims. The paper then introduces a new dataset on rebel propaganda that includes every available piece of public, downloadable Internet communication produced by every major rebel group in the Iraqi civil war between January 2011 and December 2015. A preliminary analysis of group-level Internet communication during the war revealed a number of striking patterns. Internet propaganda was not equally used by all rebel groups in Iraq during this time period. Groups with potentially larger international backing and low levels of local support were much more likely to produce Internet propaganda than those with strong in-country support. Ideologically extreme groups were also more likely to generate a higher volume of Internet propaganda than other types of groups. Finally, rebel groups that were new to a war tended to rely more heavily on Internet propaganda than more well-established groups. The article concludes by discussing the potential implications this new media environment could have for civil wars moving forward.
{"title":"Who uses Internet propaganda in civil wars and why?","authors":"Barbara F Walter, Gregoire Phillips","doi":"10.1177/00223433241235854","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00223433241235854","url":null,"abstract":"This article explores who is likely to benefit from Internet propaganda in civil wars. It argues that the global reach of the Internet, its lack of regulation and its filtering tools are more likely to help transnational rebel groups with external support and radical aims than local groups with home-grown support and moderate aims. The paper then introduces a new dataset on rebel propaganda that includes every available piece of public, downloadable Internet communication produced by every major rebel group in the Iraqi civil war between January 2011 and December 2015. A preliminary analysis of group-level Internet communication during the war revealed a number of striking patterns. Internet propaganda was not equally used by all rebel groups in Iraq during this time period. Groups with potentially larger international backing and low levels of local support were much more likely to produce Internet propaganda than those with strong in-country support. Ideologically extreme groups were also more likely to generate a higher volume of Internet propaganda than other types of groups. Finally, rebel groups that were new to a war tended to rely more heavily on Internet propaganda than more well-established groups. The article concludes by discussing the potential implications this new media environment could have for civil wars moving forward.","PeriodicalId":48324,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Peace Research","volume":"35 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.6,"publicationDate":"2024-10-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142519441","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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