Humanitarian aid has rapidly emerged as a core component of modern peacebuilding and post‐conflict reconstruction. However, some practitioners and policymakers claim that humanitarian assistance may actually prolong conflict. The current debate about the effect of humanitarian aid on conflict underspecifies causal mechanisms and takes place largely through case studies. I use a bargaining framework to argue that aid can inadvertently increase each combatant's uncertainty about the other side's relative strength, thereby prolonging civil war. I test my argument using panel data on cross‐national humanitarian aid expenditures. From 1989 to 2008, increased levels of humanitarian assistance lengthen civil wars, particularly those involving rebels on the outskirts of a state. This result suggests that policymakers need to carefully consider whether the specific benefits provided by humanitarian aid outweigh the risk of prolonging civil conflicts, and to look for methods of disbursement that reduce that risk.
The principles of humanitarian assistance dictate that aid be distributed in accordance with need while remaining neutral with respect to the political stakes. However, these principles have unique implications in the postconflict context, where need is often correlated with opponents' performance in the previous contest. In these cases, humanitarian assistance is likely to be biased towards the conflict loser. Using a crisis-bargaining framework, this article describes a simple logic for how humanitarian aid can inadvertently undermine peace by creating a revisionist party with the incentive to renegotiate the postwar settlement. The empirical expectations of the theory are tested using a panel dataset of cross-national humanitarian aid expenditures in civil conflicts since the end of the Cold War. As the theory predicts, postconflict states treated with higher levels of humanitarian assistance exhibit shorter spells of peace; however, this effect only occurs after conflicts that ended with a decisive victory.
The causes and consequences of nuclear proliferation have received a great deal of academic attention. However, nuclear weapons are rarely discussed in isolation in policy circles. Instead, nuclear weapons are relevant as part of a category of weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) that includes chemical and biological weapons (CBWs). Are the factors that drive CBWs proliferation similar to those that drive nuclear proliferation? What is the relationship between these weapons types? In this article, we explore whether nuclear weapons and CBWs serve as complements or substitutes. Using newly collected data on both CBWs pursuit and possession over time, we find that nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons generally function as complements at the pursuit stage. In addition, countries that acquire nuclear weapons become less interested in pursuing other types of WMDs and are even willing to give them up in some cases.
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