Winning Hearts and Minds in Civil Wars: Governance and Support for Violence in Iraq

Mikulaschek, Christoph; Pant, Saurabh; Tesfaye, Beza

doi:10.2139/ssrn.2702219

Cited by 6 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 8 publications

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“…Civilians, or, more specifically, their attitudes toward warring parties, occupy a central role in current hearts and minds theories of violence during insurgencies and civil wars (Beath, Christia, and Enikolopov 2011; Berman, Shapiro, and Felter 2011; Condra and Shapiro 2012; Department of the Army 2007; Lyall, Blair, and Imai 2013; Mikulaschek, Pant, and Tesfaye 2016; Hirose, Imai, and Lyall 2017). Civilian attitudes toward the combatants are thought tightly coupled with subsequent behavior: win over hearts and minds, and behavior will follow.…”

Section: Theorizing How Aid Shapes Combatant Support In Wartimementioning

confidence: 99%

“…We focus on the first step in this causal sequence, namely, that aid affects civilian attitudes toward the combatants. We define combatant support as the degree to which an individual identifies with, and gives assistance to, a particular belligerent (here, either the government or an insurgent organization) instead of its armed rival during wartime (Beath, Christia, and Enikolopov 2011; Blair et al 2013; Blair, Imai, and Lyall 2014; Lyall, Blair, and Imai 2013; Mikulaschek, Pant, and Tesfaye 2016). Combatant support consists of two components: (1) the degree of attitudinal alignment with the political agendas of warring belligerents and (2) the degree to which an individual is willing to undertake actions to render material assistance to a given combatant.…”

Section: Theorizing How Aid Shapes Combatant Support In Wartimementioning

confidence: 99%

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Can Economic Assistance Shape Combatant Support in Wartime? Experimental Evidence from Afghanistan

2019

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Governments, militaries, and aid organizations all rely on economic interventions to shape civilian attitudes toward combatants during wartime. We have, however, little individual-level evidence that these “hearts and minds” programs actually influence combatant support. We address this problem by conducting a factorial randomized control trial of two common interventions—vocational training and cash transfers—on combatant support among 2,597 at-risk youth in Kandahar, Afghanistan. We find that training only improved economic livelihoods modestly and had little effect on combatant support. Cash failed to lift incomes, producing a boom-and-bust dynamic in which pro-government sentiment initially spiked and then quickly reversed itself, leaving a residue of increased Taliban support. Conditional on training, cash failed to improve beneficiaries’ livelihoods but did increase support for the Afghan government for at least eight months after the intervention. These findings suggest that aid affects attitudes by providing information about government resolve and competence rather than by improving economic livelihoods.

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Section: Theorizing How Aid Shapes Combatant Support In Wartimementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Theorizing How Aid Shapes Combatant Support In Wartimementioning

confidence: 99%

Can Economic Assistance Shape Combatant Support in Wartime? Experimental Evidence from Afghanistan

2019

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“…Our analysis has direct policy implications for countering political opposition (see, e.g., Kilcullen 2005), where most prescriptions revolve around efforts to eliminate the opposition's operational capacity or its leaders (Hansen‐Lewis and Shapiro 2015; Jones and Olken 2009; Price 2012), improve individuals' economic prospects (Berman et al. 2011), win hearts and minds (Mikulaschek, Pant, and Tesfaye 2020), or make individuals less susceptible to radicalization efforts (Neumann 2013).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sowing the Seeds: Radicalization as a Political Tool

Lehmann

Tyson

2021

American J Political Sci

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Do radicalized individuals with no logistical assistance from opposition groups generate liabilities or advantages for opposition leaders? To address this question, we develop a theory that articulates a novel strategic channel connecting radicalization, defined as self‐motivation to dissent, to repression targeting an opposition group's operational capacity or its leadership. Our main result shows that targeted repression is strictly decreasing in the proportion of radicalized citizens. We endogenize opposition leaders' decision to radicalize citizens and show that opposition leaders, even absent any direct benefit to radicalize, nevertheless invest effort into radicalization. Thus, radicalization is a political tool to deter repression by decreasing its usefulness. To better understand this strategic consequence, we analyze two common policy interventions—economic and psychological—and show that improving economic conditions reduces both radicalization efforts and dissent, while making individuals psychologically less susceptible to radicalization can sometimes backfire and increase dissent because it increases leaders' radicalization efforts.

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“…In Iraq, small aid projects financed through the CERP accounted for a significant decline in the number of violent attacks against Iraqi government and Coalition forces (Berman, Shapiro, and Felter 2011). Mikulaschek, Pant, and Tesfaye (2016) show that a rise in Sunni expectations of future public service and security provision in the wake of a change in the leadership of the Iraqi government triggered a realignment of popular support from an insurgency to the counterinsurgency. In addition, Shaver and Tenorio (2014) find that increased electricity supply in Iraq had a negative effect on insurgent violence.…”

Section: What Explains Local Variation In Conflict Intensity?mentioning

confidence: 98%

Lessons on Political Violence from America’s Post–9/11 Wars

Mikulaschek

Shapiro

2016

Journal of Conflict Resolution

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A large literature has emerged in political science that studies the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. This article summarizes the lessons learned from this literature, both theoretical and practical. To put this emerging knowledge base into perspective, we review findings along two dimensions of conflict: factors influencing whether states or substate groups enter into conflict in the first place and variables affecting the intensity of fighting at particular times and places once war has started. We then discuss the external validity issues entailed in learning about contemporary wars and insurgencies from research focused on the Afghanistan and Iraq wars during the period of US involvement. We close by summarizing the uniquely rich qualitative and quantitative data on these wars (both publicly available and what likely exists but has not been released) and outline potential avenues for future research.

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Winning Hearts and Minds in Civil Wars: Governance and Support for Violence in Iraq

Cited by 6 publications

References 8 publications

Can Economic Assistance Shape Combatant Support in Wartime? Experimental Evidence from Afghanistan

Can Economic Assistance Shape Combatant Support in Wartime? Experimental Evidence from Afghanistan

Sowing the Seeds: Radicalization as a Political Tool

Lessons on Political Violence from America’s Post–9/11 Wars

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