Peer-reviewed publications |
'Political Threat & Hezbollah Responses to COVID-19: Evidence from Lebanon' w/Jori Breslawski (forthcoming at SSM - Population Health)
COVID-19 has presented governing authorities with challenging decisions that have required them to consider the tradeoffs between movement restriction and economic activity. We propose that non-state armed groups may make different decisions than state governments in response to these challenges. Drawing upon the case of Hezbollah in Lebanon, we investigate whether movement levels differed between areas with Hezbollah private governance in comparison to other areas of Lebanon. Using a difference in differences model, we show that following the first COVID-related death in Lebanon, movement in districts with private Hezbollah governance decreased significantly less than in other districts. We present three potential reasons for this disparity: one economic, one political, and one military. Ives, B. & Breslawski, J. (2022). Greed, Grievance, or Graduates? Why do Men Rebel? Journal of Peace Research, 59(3), 319-336. Ives, B. (2021). Trickledown politics: Do excluded ethnic groups benefit from non-violent national resistance campaigns?. Conflict Management and Peace Science, 07388942211045936. Ives, B., & Lewis, J. S. (2020). From rallies to riots: Why some protests become violent. Journal of Conflict Resolution, 64(5), 958-986. Ives, B. (2019). Religious institutionalism: a domestic explanation for external support of rebel groups. International Interactions, 45(4), 693-719. Ives, B. (2021). Ethnic external support and rebel group splintering. Terrorism and Political Violence, 33(7), 1546-1566. Breslawski, J., & Ives, B. (2019). Killing for god? Factional violence on the transnational stage. Journal of Conflict Resolution, 63(3), 617-643. |
Manuscripts in preparation |
'Commodity Price Shocks and Ethnic Population in Power Organization Ethnic Riot', in preparation
This study investigates the relationship between negative economic growth and ethnic population in power (EPP) organization ethnic riot. Studies on negative economic growth and ethnic violence focus primarily on out-of-power ethnic populations and civil war violence, devoting insufficient attention to EPP organizations and ethnic riots. This article introduces a novel dataset of yearly ethnic riot behavior of 907 EPP organizations from 90 randomly selected countries from 1990 to 2017. Using commodity terms of trade (CTOT) shocks as exogenous changes in national economic growth, OLS regression analysis demonstrates a systematic and substantive association between negative economic growth and EPP organization ethnic riot probability. Additional analysis demonstrates that negative CTOT shocks have a larger effect on EPP organizations that are not in a country’s governing coalition. Overall, the evidence demonstrates that negative economic growth is pivotal for declining inter-ethnic relations, and in particular, EPP organization ethnic riot. 'Transnational Grievances: Who Protests against Israel?', in preparation This article investigates why some Islamist organizations in Muslim-majority countries protest against Israel but not others. Through mechanisms related to increased demand for protest against Israel among existing supporters, organization reputation costs, and greater recruitment possibilities, it hypothesizes that non-terrorist, pan-Islamist organizations will see higher increases in protest against Israel following Israel-related war outbreaks. Novel data are collected on Islamist organizations’ protests in Muslim-majority countries in 60-day periods pre- and post-outbreak of three wars involving Israel (Palestinian/Lebanese civilian fatalities>100). Using a difference-in-difference-in-difference design, multivariate OLS regression analysis demonstrates that pan-Islam, being a terrorist organization, and war outbreak timing interact to increase protests against Israel. Among non-terrorist Islamist organizations, compared to pre-war outbreak, domestic-oriented Islamist organizations observe a 6.9 percentage point increase in predicted percentage of protests against Israel. By contrast, pan-Islamist organizations observe a 16.0 percentage point increase, a 131.9 percent relative increase in predicted percentage of protests against Israel. 'Perceived Threat and Demographic Misperception', w/Jori Breslawski, in preparation What causes demographic misperceptions of minority populations? We anticipate that the extent to which members of the majority group perceive the minority group as a threat shapes their estimation of minority group size. We test our argument using an experiment embedded in a survey of Muslims in Indonesia. We manipulate perceived threat of Christians in Indonesia and then ask respondents to estimate the size of the Christian population. While Muslims generally overestimate the size of the Christian population, we find that Muslims who felt a greater sense of threat estimated the Christian population to be significantly larger at both the national and provincial levels. 'Repression, backlash, and the duration of protests in Africa' w/Jacob Lewis, in preparation This article investigates the relationship between recent repression of protest and the duration of future protests. A rich scholarship examines how repression impacts dissent, highlighting dissent dimensions such as the number of future events and violent escalation. Less examined is another dimension of dissent—protest duration. We hypothesize that recent repression of protests is pivotal for longer duration of future protest events. Our expectation stems from a participant type mechanism. Recent repression of protest may generate more societal grievances but also increase protesting risks. A simultaneous jump in grievances and risks may increase the number of people protesting who are also risk-acceptant and willing to protest for longer durations. The Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project data and hierarchal negative binomial models are used to estimate the association between recent repression of protest and subsequent protest duration. Compared to having none of the most recent three protests repressed, a protest in a location where the last three protests were repressed has a 25% longer duration. The results are consistent with the participant type mechanism and existing literature on repression’s heterogeneous effects on individuals. 'Rebel Threat, Government Tactics, and Deaths from Hunger in Civil War' w/David Backer, Paul Huth and Peter White, in preparation 'When do Ethnic Groups Become Politically Disadvantaged? The Role of Contentious and Conventional Politics', in preparation ‘Within Self-Determination Movement Economic Inequality and Violence’, in preparation |
