External Intervention, Identity, and Civil War

Abstract

We examine how external intervention interacts with ethnic polarization to induce rebellion and civil war. Previous literature views polarization as internally produced—the result of demographic characteristics or intergroup differences made salient by ethnic entrepreneurs. We complement these approaches by showing that polarization is also affected by international politics. We model intervention’s effect on civil war via the pathway of ethnic identification—a mechanism not previously identified in the literature. In our model, local actors representing different groups are emboldened by foreign patrons to pursue their objectives violently. This, in turn, makes ethnic identity salient and induces polarization. Without the specter of intervention, polarization is often insufficient to induce war and, in turn, in the absence of polarization, intervention is insufficient to induce war. We illustrate the model with case evidence from Ukraine.

National Identity, Public Goods, and Modern Economic Development

“…For instance, having a country with high levels of growth, that wins wars, that builds high-speed railways, or that goes to the Moon all confers prestige and status to the nation, bringing psychological satisfaction to individual citizens who identify with the nation. We define group status similarly, albeit in simplified fashion, to Sambanis and Shayo (2013). Here, the national status in period t and the per-period status payoff from identifying with the nation are equivalently defined as:…”

“…Commoners, meanwhile, begin with an alternative identity but can choose to instead identify with the nation. Group identification is defined in terms of preferences, with psychological payoffs that emanate from the identity to which an agent adheres (Shayo, 2009;Sambanis and Shayo, 2013).…”

“…To do this, we first estimate the relative importance of a wide array of plausibly-relevant country-level predictors of individual national identification, using a large sample of respondents from the World Values Survey (WVS). Drawing from the vast prior literature on nation building, propaganda, and patriotism (Alesina and Spolaore, 2005;Sambanis et al, 2015;Bazzi et al, 2019;Alesina et al, 2021), these countrylevel variables include those related to military conflict, institutional history, compulsory education, and social diversity, among others. As this set of variables is large, we then use a least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO) to identify an optimal set of country-level predictors of national identity and its dynamics for countries.…”

“…The composition of identities in a population may evolve over time in response to both material and psychological factors, with profound implications for conflict and collective action. Previous theoretical work has focused on a variety of ethnic, religious, regional, and class identity cleavages found within citizenries, as they relate to violent conflict (Sambanis and Shayo, 2013), support for redistribution (Shayo, 2009;Lindqvist and Ostling, 2013;Holm, 2016), and the rise of populist movements (Grossman and Helpman, 2020). This paper is unique in its application of this framework to the study of cleavages between the citizenry and the ruling elite, as well as the formation of common identities across these groups via the advent of nation-states.…”

Major power politics and non-violent resistance movements

“…Scholarship examining intrastate armed conflict has expanded rapidly in the post-Cold War period. This literature includes important discussions on the role of external actors in contributing to the outbreak of civil war (Cunningham, 2016;Sambanis et al, 2020) and their progression (Cunningham, 2010;Regan, 2000Regan, , 2002, as well as third party efforts to bring about resolution (Doyle and Sambanis, 2000;Olson Lounsbery and DeRouen, 2018;Regan et al, 2009;Walter, 2002). In comparison, however, the role of external actors and their influence on non-violent uprisings has yet to be explored.…”