Targeting Civilians to Win? Assessing the Military Effectiveness of Civilian Victimization in Interstate War

Fuhrmann, Matthew; Kocher, Matthew Adam; Lawrence, Adria; Lyall, Jason; Downes, Alexander B.; Arjona, Ana; Carpenter, Charli; Chenoweth, Erica; Cochran, Kathryn McNabb

doi:10.7551/mitpress/9780262014205.003.0002

Cited by 7 publications

(9 citation statements)

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“…One of the earliest findings of the new scholarship on political violence, and the one that has proved the most enduring, is the appreciation of the intimate connection between armed conflict and violence against unarmed civilians, including genocide, mass killing, and ethnic cleansing (Melson 1992;Fein 1993;Kalyvas 1999Kalyvas , 2006Valentino 2000;Arreguín-Toft 2001;Harff 2003;Straus 2006;Downes 2008). Since the early 1990s, scholars have increasingly come to recognize that large-scale violence against civilians during interstate and civil wars is neither arbitrary, unintended, nor distinct from the central logic of war itself.…”

Section: War By Other Meansmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…As a result, practitioners of both insurgency and counterinsurgency have long recognized that prevailing in an insurgency usually means winning control of the civilian population. If, as Mao famously counseled, guerrillas should aim to be like the fish swimming in a nurturing sea of civilians, then counterinsurgents have incentives to catch the fish by "draining the sea" (Valentino et al 2004, Downes 2008. This strategy may be particularly attractive when the insurgency draws on an especially large base of civilian supporters (Valentino et al 2004) or when the government lacks the capacity to defeat or appease the insurgency in other ways (Valentino 2004, Downes 2008.…”

Section: War By Other Meansmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Why We Kill: The Political Science of Political Violence against Civilians

Valentino

2014

Annu. Rev. Polit. Sci.

117

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This article reviews the political science literature on political violence against civilians, including genocide, mass killing, and terrorism. Early work on these subjects tended to portray this kind of violence as irrational, random, or the result of ancient hatreds between ethnic groups. Most scholars studying political violence today, however, understand it to be primarily, if not exclusively, instrumental and orchestrated by powerful actors seeking to achieve tangible political or military objectives. Scholars continue to disagree, however, about the specific motives that drive belligerents to target civilians or the conditions under which large-scale violence against civilians is most likely.

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Section: War By Other Meansmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: War By Other Meansmentioning

confidence: 99%

Why We Kill: The Political Science of Political Violence against Civilians

Valentino

2014

Annu. Rev. Polit. Sci.

117

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“…The Credibility Paradox predicts that challenger states will also underperform at coercion with extreme tactics. Indeed, the civilian victimization literature generally finds that state challengers likewise fail to benefit politically by targeting the population (see Downes ). Carr charts the political successes of empires and great powers based on their brutality toward civilians, providing a wealth of historical examples that “The nation or faction that resorts to warfare against civilians most quickly, most often, and most viciously is the nation or faction most likely to see its interests frustrated and, in many cases, its existence terminated” (Carr :12).…”

Section: Generalizability Of the Credibility Paradoxmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Credibility Paradox: Violence as a Double-Edged Sword in International Politics

Abrahms

2013

Int Stud Q

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Implicit in the rationalist literature on bargaining over the last half‐century is the political utility of violence. Given our anarchical international system populated with egoistic actors, violence is thought to promote concessions by lending credibility to their threats. From the vantage of bargaining theory, then, empirical research on terrorism poses a puzzle. For nonstate actors, terrorism signals a credible threat in comparison with less extreme tactical alternatives. In recent years, however, a spate of studies across disciplines and methodologies has nonetheless found that neither escalating to terrorism nor with terrorism encourages government concessions. In fact, perpetrating terrorist acts reportedly lowers the likelihood of government compliance, particularly as the civilian casualties rise. The apparent tendency for this extreme form of violence to impede concessions challenges the external validity of bargaining theory, as traditionally understood. In this study, I propose and test an important psychological refinement to the standard rationalist narrative. Via an experiment on a national sample of adults, I find evidence of a newfound cognitive heuristic undermining the coercive logic of escalation enshrined in bargaining theory. Due to this oversight, mainstream bargaining theory overestimates the political utility of violence, particularly as an instrument of coercion.

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“…45 Many case studies highlight the role of a perceived emerging (or emerged) existential threat; for example, case studies or synopses of the destruction of the Yana Indians in Northern California in the 1860s and 1870s (Madley, 2016), Armenia (Adalian, 2013), the Holocaust (Valentino, 2004), China during the Cultural Revolution (Cribb, 2010), West Papua in the late 1960s (Robinson, 2010), Cambodia (Valentino, 2004), Rwanda (Lemarchand, 2009), and the Anfal operations in Iraqi Kurdistan (Leezenberg, 2013). 46 Krain (1997), Valentino, Huth, andBalch-Lindsay (2004), , Downes (2008), Downes and Cochran (2010), Melander (2009), Wayman and Tago (2010), Hazlett (2011), Esteban, Morelli, and Rohner (2015), Anderton and Carter (2015), Uzonyi (2015Uzonyi ( , 2018, Brehm (2017a), Kim (2018).…”

Section: Large-n Studies Of Cross-country Evidence Of High-level Mass Atrocity Risksmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mass Atrocities and Their Prevention

Anderton

Bräuer

2021

Journal of Economic Literature

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Counting conservatively, data show about 100 million mass atrocity-related deaths since 1900. A distinct empirical phenomenon, mass atrocities are events of enormous scale, severity, and brutality, occur in wartime and in peacetime, are geographically widespread, occur with surprising frequency, under various systems of governance, and can be long-lasting in their effects on economic and human development, wellbeing, and wealth, more so when nonfatal physical injuries and mental trauma also are considered. As such, mass atrocities are a major economic concern. Given the multidisciplinary nature of the subject matter, the pertinent conceptual, theoretical, and empirical literatures are voluminous and widely dispersed, and have not been synthesized before from an economics point of view. We address two gaps: a “mass atrocities gap” in the economics literature and an “economics gap” in mass atrocities scholarship. Our goals are, first, to survey and synthesize for economists a broad sweep of literatures on which to base further work in this field and, second, for both economists and noneconomists to learn how economic inquiry contributes to understanding the causes and conduct of mass atrocities and, possibly, to their mitigation and prevention. In drawing on standard, behavioral, identity, social network, and complex systems economics, we find that the big puzzles of the “how” and “why” of mass atrocities, and mass participation therein, are being well addressed. While new research on such topics will be valuable, work should also progress to develop improved prevention approaches. (JEL D72, D74, K38, N40, Z13)

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Targeting Civilians to Win? Assessing the Military Effectiveness of Civilian Victimization in Interstate War

Cited by 7 publications

References 0 publications

Why We Kill: The Political Science of Political Violence against Civilians

Why We Kill: The Political Science of Political Violence against Civilians

The Credibility Paradox: Violence as a Double-Edged Sword in International Politics

Mass Atrocities and Their Prevention

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