Research Statement Michael A. Rubin michaelarubin.com mar2252@columbia.edu October 25, 2017 My research investigates the causes and consequences of inter- and intra-state armed conflict. The dissertation project examines the local-level political forces shaping intra-state conflict processes. If the distribution of territorial control is as crucial to explaining the conduct and outcomes of civil war as the literature suggests, it is equally important to understand its origins. The dissertation advances a political accountability theory of rebel group conduct: community collective action capacity, the ability to mobilize collective action to pursue common interests, influences rebel groups territorial control and governance during insurgency. It fills a gap in existing research that has marginalized the role of civilians and contributes original data collection. I test the theory using village-level Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) military intelligence data, a rare opportunity to measure the elusive concept of territorial control with remarkable precision, and a measure of village-level collective action capacity constructed from its micro-level foundations using network analysis on a nation-wide household census. Analysis of qualitative data from a survey of 75 randomly selected villages in Mindanao, funded by the NSF Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant, tests the theory s mechanisms and probes the possibility of endogeneity bias. The Terrorism in Armed Conflict (TAC) project, a collaboration with Page Fortna and Nicholas Lotito, introduces a new dataset to fill a crucial gap in the empirical research examining the use of terrorism in civil wars. With a few exceptions, 1 data used in empirical studies of terrorism include only groups that have committed acts of terrorism without including similar groups that may use terrorism. TAC links rebel groups in the UCDP Armed Conflict datasets to incidents of terrorism in the Global Terrorism Database (GTD). Our first paper, Biting the Hand that Feeds, is under review at International Studies Quarterly. Studying intra- and inter-state conflicts separately yields only partial understanding of either. How do inter-state and international security politics influence rebels opportunities and constraints? How do states leverage local political forces driving rebellion against their rivals towards their own ends? My broader research agenda leverages insights from my work on the local-level dynamics of civil wars to build on the literature addressing the nexus between intra- and inter-state conflict. Projects planned for my first years as a faculty member explain strategic alignment between states and rebel groups, the determinants of political concessions during civil war, and the consequences of each for civil war outcomes. This research contributes broadly to the International Relations field by reconciling statecentric theories in the prevailing literature with the growing influence of non-state actors by folding non-state actors into a model of international hierarchy, 2 to advance novel theories of international security politics. I have used multi-level modeling, spatial econometrics, geographic information systems, and network analysis techniques in my quantitative empirical work. I have additional training in econometric methods for causal inference in observational data, such as regression discontinuity and instrumental variables approaches. I have conducted qualitative fieldwork and survey-based research in conflict-affected areas of Mindanao, Philippines. 1 See especially Stanton (2013). 2 See especially Lake (2009) on hierarchical structure in the international system. 1
Political Accountability and Rebel Conduct: Under what conditions do rebel organizations successfully control territory, and under what conditions do they provide governance, during civil war? The accountability theory of rebel conduct introduces a new unifying framework for understanding rebel groups territorial control, governance, and strategic use of violence during civil war. The process by which insurgency expands or contracts represents the crucial first stage that determines the context in which subsequent conflict outcomes occur. 3 Failure to consider the determinants of territorial control presents clear inferential challenges for existing theories of insurgent and counterinsurgent behavior. By emphasizing rebel accountability to civilians, the project contributes a theory that privileges the role of non-combatants in conflict processes. 4 Collective action capacity represents a mobilization technology; facilitating community efforts to form political committees, gather resources and supplies, and monitor individual defections. Because of these concomitant advantages, belligerents have incentives to control territory in which communities enjoy high collective action capacity. However, collective action capacity empowers communities to leverage belligerents dependence on their collaboration to demand higher standards of governance and protection from violence. Because governance is costly, collective action capacity may cut against belligerents benefits to territorial control. Whether collective action capacity encourages or deters rebel territorial control depends on the community s alternatives (including alignment with the state or asserting autonomy/providing self-protection from conflict belligerents). Collective action capacity increases rebel control where the state or local power brokers cannot provide basic services and security from civil war violence. Under these conditions, the community accepts rebel control at low levels of governance because even minimal protection improves community security. Rebels surplus benefits associated with higher collective action capacity outweigh the expected governance costs. By contrast, communities under more effective state or local governance enjoy greater bargaining power to demand rebel governance; collective action capacity deters rebel territorial control. The empirical strategy investigates the extent to which the theory s predictions are consistent with evidence from the Philippines. AFP military intelligence assessments from 2011-2014 categorize villages based on the sophistication of organized networks of support for the communist insurgency, and on the New People s Army (NPA) capabilities to attack military and police units with precision. 5 To measure village collective action capacity, I construct family networks from a government census conducted during 2008-2010, using household head family names. In the Philippines, kinship represents the primary currency of social capital, providing the foundation for the clientelist networks that distribute economic resources and drive political competition. In 1849, the Spanish colonial Governor, facing difficulty tracking household tax contributions, directed local officials to assign unique surnames to each family 3 See Kalyvas (2006) and related work by Stathis Kalyvas, Ana Arjona, Laia Balcells, and others. 4 The emphasis on civilian agency builds on recent scholarship that has begun to bring strategic noncombatants into theories of civil conflict. See, among others, Petersen (2001), Wood (2003), Parkinson (2013), Staniland (2014), Arjona (2016), Balcells (2017) and Kaplan (2017). 5 The reports are designed for internal use, but were generously supplied by the Office of the Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process for research purposes. 2
in their municipality using a list of approved family names. This peculiar history of name reassignment along with strict naming conventions suggests households sharing a surname within the same municipality can be confidently identified as members of the same family line, which allows identification of kinship networks. 6 In the Philippines, collective action capacity increases the level of NPA control in villages with low quality of governance, while the effect declines as the quality of local governance increases, consistent with the theory. I test the theory s mechanisms by investigating the relationship between collective action capacity and rebel governance in qualitative data collected in a Key-Informant survey of local leaders in 75 randomly selected villages within 3 conflict-affected provinces (Agusan del Sur, Davao Oriental, and Compostela Valley) on the island of Mindanao. I present plausible alternative theories, consistent with the econometric results, and draw competing hypotheses regarding variation in rebel governance. I use the interview data in process-tracing and case comparison methods to adjudicate between the accountability theory and these alternatives. The book project will extend the empirical analysis beyond the communist insurgency in the Philippines, drawing upon qualitative case comparisons with the Naxalite (India) communist insurgency and the Moro (Philippines) and Bodo (Assam, Northeast India) ethno-nationalist conflicts to explore the local dynamics across countries and types of civil conflict. As of writing, survey instruments similar to those in the Eastern Mindanao survey are being implemented in Bodoland, in cooperation with a fellow Columbia graduate student. The book project will extend the dissertation s theoretical model of territorial control to incorporate the dynamics of local autonomy and self-defense forces. Follow-up fieldwork will investigate the parallel processes of grassroots community protection (autonomy) strategies alongside the proliferation of private armies, which present major security, political, and economic development challenges in the Philippines. This extension yields additional policy implications for the literature addressing government policies of arming and training local defense forces as a counterinsurgency strategy. Terrorism in Armed Conflict (TAC) Project: TAC improves on existing efforts to link incidents of terrorism to civil wars. First, we conducted extensive research into rebel group histories, rather than rely on text analysis. Second, we cast a wide net assigning attacks to particular rebel groups, using not only direct matches but also factions/umbrella groups, affiliated groups, and incidents in GTD that are attributed only to generic descriptors that may be shorthand reference to the rebel group. 7 We categorize these UCDP-GTD links to provide a flexible system for researchers to adjust data collection to fit their research purposes and check the robustness of analysis. 8 Our first paper, Biting the Hand that Feeds, argues that rebel groups with alternative sources of funding, including access to lootable natural resources or external material support, are less vulnerable to the legitimacy costs associated with targeting civilians. Because popular discontent with their tactics does not curtail their access to resources, groups with lower legitimacy costs are more likely to use terrorism. We find robust empirical support for the theory; access to natural resources, in particular, increases the use of terrorism. The TAC 6 See Cruz, Labonne and Querubin (forthcoming) for an example, and appropriate justification, of this process of building social networks from the census in a peer-reviewed article. 7 For example, an attack by Kurdish Separatists that occurs in Turkey may be attributable to the PKK. 8 For more information on the dataset, see our paper, Biting the Hand that Feeds. 3
data open the opportunity to investigate both new and long-debated questions regarding the strategic use of terrorism, the complementarity/substitutability of various forms of political violence, and the effects of terrorism on conflict intensity and duration. Works in Progress and Planned Research: Under what conditions do states support rebel groups? What are the consequences for the conduct and duration of civil war and for the escalation of conflict between the supporting and target states? The market for sponsorship theory argues that a state s decision whether to support a rebel group in its adversary s territory is shaped not only by constraints on alternative coercive foreign policy strategies, but also on the risk that other international actors may sponsor the rebel group instead. If multiple, non-aligned states/transnational groups are in conflict with a common adversary, there exists a competitive market for the adversary s political concessions, and by extension for a rebel group s services as an in-country partner. The paper hypothesizes that security competition in the regional international system increases the likelihood of state sponsorship, the likelihood of multiparty civil war, and conflict duration. The theory is tested using UCDP Armed Conflict Data, San-Akca (2016) data on state support for rebel groups, and Goertz, Diehl and Balas (2016) data on rivalry and alignment between states. In a future paper, I argue that multilateral inter-state rivalries increase the likelihood of violent intrastate conflict by crowding out non-violent organizations and strategies, as states compete to align with violent groups to enhance their bargaining leverage. The empirics use San-Akca (2016), Goertz, Diehl and Balas (2016), and NAVCO 2.0 data on violent and non-violent movements (Chenoweth and Lewis 2013). States may also contribute to civil war escalation within their own borders even through peaceful resolution strategies. In a paper with Nora Keller (PhD, Columbia), we argue that political concessions to internally divided self-determination movements may have the unintended consequence of prolonging armed conflict by increasing the risk organizational fracture. Weaker factions within the movement are more likely to spoil the peace through violence in order to avoid entrenching their subordinate political status in the post-conflict order. We test the theory using data on concessions to 146 self-determination movements in 77 countries (Cunningham 2014). New Ethnic Power Relations data identifying language and religious cleavages (Bormann, Cederman and Vogt 2017) are used to measure the withinmovement cleavage structure along which splintering may occur. Conclusion: My research agenda advances our understanding of the causes and consequences of armed conflict in the modern world. The dissertation investigates the local political dynamics within civil wars. By emphasizing civilians influence in conflict processes, it yields new insights regarding the origins and conduct of civil war. The book project extends the analysis to advance a theory of civilian agency linking these insights with the role of local power brokers. Subsequent research supplements the dissertation s focus on local processes with a new perspective on the international political forces shaping civil and international conflict. By investigating the intersection between interstate and intrastate conflicts, my research revisits seminal international security topics as yet analyzed primarily through the lens of the state-centric model of the international system. 4
REFERENCES REFERENCES References Arjona, Ana. 2016. Rebelocracy: Social Order in the Colombian Civil War. University New York, NY: Cambridge Balcells, Laia. 2017. Rivalry and Revenge. Cambridge University Bormann, Nils-Christian, Lars-Erik Cederman and Manuel Vogt. 2017. Language, religion, and ethnic civil war. Journal of Conflict Resolution 61(4):744 771. Chenoweth, Erica and Orion A Lewis. 2013. Unpacking nonviolent campaigns: Introducing the NAVCO 2.0 dataset. Journal of Peace Research 50(3):415 423. Cruz, Cesi, Julien Labonne and Pablo Querubin. forthcoming. Politician family networks and electoral outcomes: Evidence from the Philippines. American Economic Review. URL: https: // www. cesicruz. com/ research/ Cunningham, Kathleen Gallagher. 2014. Inside the Politics of Self-determination. Oxford University Goertz, Gary, Paul Francis Diehl and Alexandru Balas. 2016. The puzzle of peace: The evolution of peace in the international system. Oxford University Kalyvas, Stathis. 2006. The Logic of Violence in Civil War. Cambridge Studies in Comparative Politics, Cambridge University Kaplan, Oliver. 2017. Resisting War: How Communities Protect Themselves. Cambridge University Lake, David A. 2009. Hierarchy in international relations. Cornell University Parkinson, Sarah Elizabeth. 2013. Organizing rebellion: Rethinking high-risk mobilization and social networks in war. American Political Science Review 107(03):418 432. Petersen, Roger D. 2001. Resistance and rebellion: lessons from Eastern Europe. Cambridge University San-Akca, Belgin. 2016. States in disguise: causes of state support for rebel groups. Oxford University Staniland, Paul. 2014. Networks of Rebellion: Explaining Insurgent Cohesion and Collapse. Cornell University Stanton, Jessica A. 2013. Terrorism in the context of civil war. The Journal of Politics 75(4):1009 1022. Wood, Elisabeth Jean. 2003. Insurgent Collective Action and Civil War in El Salvador. Cambridge University 5