Working Papers

Foreign Aid as a Counterterrorism Tool: More Liberty, Less Terror? (with Daniel Tirone)
Is foreign aid effective in reducing terrorism? The existing evidence is mostly negative. We argue that this pessimistic outlook on the efficacy of aid as a counter-terrorism tool is partly a function of focusing on only one type of aid: economic aid. While aid given to decrease poverty may not be the magic bullet to fight terrorism, governance and civil society aid can dampen the participation in and support for terrorism by altering the political conditions of a country. We expect countries that receive high levels of governance and civil society aid to experience fewer domestic terrorist incidents than countries that receive little or none. Using a sample of aid eligible countries for the period from 1996 to 2010, we find that aid is effective in dampening domestic terrorism if it is targeted to improve the political conditions of a country but this effect is conditional on whether the recipient country is experiencing a civil conflict. Our findings provide support for the continued use of foreign aid targeted to improve governance and strengthen civil society as a counter-terrorism tool.

Reputation and Civil War: Do Ethnic Dominoes Fall, or Don’t They? (with Nils-Christian Bormann )
Barbara Walter’s application of the reputation theory to civil wars has made a significant advancement in our understanding of why self-determination movements are particularly likely to escalate to civil war. Walter has shown that in multi-ethnic societies territorial accommodations made by governments to ethnic minorities encourage other groups to demand similar concessions in the future. We probe the scope conditions of Walter’s argument by evaluating whether political concessions to ethnic groups, such as political power-sharing arrangements, have similar down-stream effects, i.e., increase the risk of future armed challenges by other ethnic groups in the state. In doing so, we further delineate the conditions under which government concessions may have future destabilizing effects in multi-ethnic societies. First, we argue that whether government concessions, be it territorial or political, encourage future rebellion depends on whether such concessions are made in peacetime or after a violent conflict. Second, the international system affects what forms of government concessions are likely to have domino-effects. While territorial concessions encourage future rebellion by other ethnic groups during the Cold War period, the domino effects of political power-sharing are more prevalent in the post-Cold War period. We evaluate our expectations on a global sample of ethnic groups in 120 states between 1946 and 2013 and find support for our expectations.

Welcoming the Unwelcome: Refugee Flows, Integration, and Political Violence(with Christian Gineste)
The existing literature on forced migration suggests that refugee flows increase the risk of political violence in receiving states. This insight, however, does not take into account the variation in domestic policies governing the rights of refugees in host states. We argue that extending integration rights to refugees deters violent collective action by raising the expected cost of refugee groups’ participation in violence while reducing its potential benefits. Therefore, countries that have extended rights to refugees, such as freedom of movement and right to work, should be less likely to experience refugee riots. Using a novel global dataset on refugee rights and refugee riots between 1996 and 2008, we show that not all refugee flows are politically destabilizing and that the provision of rights facilitating self-reliance and integration of uprooted populations mitigates the conflict-generating effects of refugee flows. Yet, the study also uncovers a critical trade-off faced by the leaders of host states. While it reduces the risk of political violence “by” refugees, extending refugees more integration rights is under some conditions likely to result in a backlash from the local population “against” refugees. Host states should be cognizant of this trade-off when deciding whether or not to facilitate the local integration of refugees.


Work-in-Progress


From Protection to Persecution: The Determinants of State Violence against Refugees (with Christian Gineste and Joshua Kaasik)
Transnational refugee flows continue to be one of the most pressing issues of today. While most states are signatories to international treaties recognizing the rights of refugees, we see a significant variance in the way host governments treat refugee groups in their territory. This paper examines why some states use violence against refugees while others do not. We consider a number of alternative causal mechanisms explaining the use of violence against refugees, such as institutional constraints, state of the economy, culture/xenophobia, and international dependence. To adjudicate between these competing explanations, we use a novel dataset on different types of violence that governments use against refugee groups between 1996 and 2008. The findings of this research contribute to the literatures on consequences of civil wars, one-sided violence, and forced migration.