Week 12 - Transnational Dimension Flashcards
(17 cards)
What is Tobler’s first law of geography?
“Everything is related to everything else, but near things are
more related than distant things.”
What is the conflict trap?
- Conflict begets conflict
- The same countries tend to be afflicted over and over again
- Many reasons: economic, social, emotional, etc.
- Bottom line: Many conflicts today are directly related to
previous conflict in the same location or between the same
actors
→ temporal autocorrelation - many conflicts are related to neighbouring conflict
–> spatial autocorrelations
What are the differences between clustering, diffusion and contagion?
Clustering: is desriptive. Conflicts often occur in regional patterns.
Diffusion: is regarding the process of spreading conflict.
Contagion: is regarding the causal mechanism. Conflict may spread through arms flows,
economic shocks, shared identity, etc
What is Galton’s Problem?
Two possible reasons for clustering of conflict:
- common shock (e.g. drought )
OR
- because of interdependence (e.g. conflict diffusion)?
According to Buhaug & Gleditsch (2005), how can one dea with Galton’s Problem?
Need to account/control for
domestic factors
▶ “there is a genuine neighborhood effect of armed conflict,
over and beyond what individual country characteristics can
account for” (p. 215)
▶ degree of exposure to proximate conflicts does not seem to
matter
▶ ethnic ties to groups in neighboring states a mechanism of
CONTAGION
What are the differences between positive and negative externalities?
Positive externalities induce strategic-substitute relations
▶ Kyoto Protocol (≈ public good) → free riding (negative
interdependence)
▶ Free-riding in defensive alliances, e.g. NATO
▶ Collective action dilemma
→ negative interdependence
Negative externalities induce strategic-complements
relations
▶ Arms race (≈ private good) → competition (positive
interdependence)
→ positive interdependence
According to Metternich & Wucherpfennig, 2020, how do negative and positive interdependences influence civil wars?
- Prevalence: 50% of civil wars involve multiple non-state
actors. - Puzzle: These wars tend to be longer - why?
Positive interdependence - Strategic complements (Why keep fighting?)
* Staying armed preserves ability to:
1 Negotiate
2 Spoil deals
3 Enforce outcomes
4 Protect allies
Negative interdependence - Strategic Substitutes (Why stop fighting?)
* Shared goals are public goods
* Incentivizes free-riding, reducing fighting
Finding: Rebel groups show strategic complementarity, except
in secessionist conflicts where free-riding dominates.
What are the different causal mechanism of diffusion? (These causal mechanisms are pooled under the term contagion)
1 Competition
▶ Competition among actors conditions policies and can lead
to “races to the bottom” or “top”.
▶ Empirically, we have to identify who is competing with
whom to make policy predictions.
2 Coercion
▶ In the simplest form, dominant actors and their agents
directly coerce weaker actors to adopt policy changes that
those weaker actors would not otherwise have adopted.
▶ E.g. aid, sanctions, interventions
3 Learning
▶ Adopting policies with beneficial outcomes
4 Emulation
▶ Norms; social knowledge; social construction
5 Transnational Actors
▶ Migration (Franzese and Hays, 2008)
▶ Transnational civil wars (Gleditsch, 2007)
▶ Foreign fighters, etc
What are the different factors behind refugee flows?
- Push factors:
▶ Violence (against civilians)
▶ Persecution - Pull factors:
▶ Proximate destination
▶ Political factors
▶ Economic and ecological factors
▶ Reliance on existing networks of human smugglers and
trafficking
▶ Existing social networks (ethnic ties, transnational ethnic kin and their proximity) - Both can be “weaponized” (Greenhill 2016)
According to Salehyan & Gleditsch, 2007, and Bohnet et al. 2018, what are the mechanisms behind refugees and onset of civil war?
1 Direct fighting
▶ Refugee flows may imply the direct “importation” of
combatants, arms, and ideologies from neighboring states
that facilitate the spread of conflict.
▶ In many cases, refugees are able to set up complex political
structures in exile and can challenge the host government
directly
2 Indirect support
▶ Rather than fighting openly with the host government,
refugee populations can provide resources and support to
domestic opposition groups of a similar ethnicity or political
faction
3 Changing balance of power
▶ Refugee flows can change the ethnic balance in a country,
sparking discontent among local populations toward the
refugees as well as the government that allows access.
▶ Minority groups may feel that the influx of foreigners further
dilutes their strength.
▶ The sudden influx of refugees can aggravate ethnic
problems and further complicate the picture by changing
the domestic balance of power.
4 Refugees as “threat”
▶ Refugees may pose actual or perceived negative economic
externalities.
▶ Immigrants and refugees compete with locals over scarce
resources such as employment, housing, land, and water,
constituting an economic “threat”
What are Polo & Wucherpfennig’s (2022) findings in their on Refugee inflows influencing terrorism?
Refugee inflows per se do not influence terrorism in the host
- Limited evidence of “Trojan Horse” effect: OECD countries
immune from this (overblown concerns) - Refugees more likely to become targets of terrorist attacks
by frightened/hostile locals, especially in rich countries - Current debates in media and politics miss a central issue:
refugees as targets of terrorism - Policies/discourses that fuel hostility and fear
→ more terrorism against out-groups in Western
democracies
→ worse integration → more terrorism - Travel bans and immigration restrictions: ineffective against
fear mechanism and fail to protect immigrants from attacks
What is tangible contagion, according to Forsberg 2016, and Chavez & Swed, 2024
- Tangible spillovers-like weapons, refugees, and economic
shocks-raise the risk of conflict in nearby states. - Arms flows: After Gaddafi’s fall in 2011, weapons from
Libya fueled conflict in Mali. - Economic disruption: Civil wars in Liberia and Sierra
Leone in the 1990s triggered economic instability in
neighboring Ivory Coast and Guinea.
What is intangible contagion?
- Conflict spreads not just through weapons, but through
ideas and perceptions. - Demonstration effects: success in one rebellion inspires
others elsewhere. - Strategic learning: groups learn tactics and mobilization
strategies from conflicts abroad. - Ethnic kinship: cross-border ethnic ties can mobilize
shared identity and solidarity
Example:
Kosovo - Macedonia (early 2000s)
* Ethnic Albanians in Macedonia were inspired by the
Kosovo Liberation Army’s success in achieving autonomy.
* Led to armed mobilization of Albanian groups in
Macedonia.
What are “regional conflict complexes” in terms of connectedness of conflicts? according to Gurses, 2015, Forsberg 2016, Gleditsch 2017
- Conflicts often become intertwined through shared actors,
issues, and cross-border networks. - These dynamics form “regional conflict complexes”.
- Conflicts in such regions reinforce each other and are
difficult to resolve in isolation.
Example: The Great Lakes region (1990s-2000s)
* Rwandan genocide - influx of Hutu militants into DRC.
* Congolese civil war drew in Rwanda, Uganda, Angola,
Zimbabwe.
* Conflicts became deeply interlinked - “Africa’s First World
War.”
What is the role of external support and War economies in connectedness of conflicts?
- External actors support rebels and governments-militarily
and financially. - War economies emerge, sustained by cross-border trade
in arms, drugs, and resources. - These links incentivize continued fighting and complicate
peacebuilding.
Example: Liberia and Sierra Leone
* Charles Taylor (Liberia) supported Sierra Leone’s RUF in
exchange for “blood diamonds.”
* Regional arms-for-resources networks made conflict
profitable and self-sustaining.
What are the implications of contagion an connectedness for peacebuilding?
- More external actors = more stakeholders, more spoilers.
- Regional dynamics make national peace harder-conflict
often just moves across borders. - Illicit trade and ex-combatants can destabilize neighboring
countries if not demobilized.
Key Point: Durable peace requires regional solutions-not just
national ones. Peacekeeping and peacebuilding must address regional dynamics, not just national settlements.
Example: Failure of DDR in Sierra Leone and Liberia
* Weapons and ex-fighters crossed borders into Guinea and
Ivory Coast.
* Incomplete reintegration - new violence elsewhere.
What are three key transnational mechanism?
▶ Clustering: Conflicts often occur in regional patterns.
▶ Contagion: Conflict may spread through arms flows,
economic shocks, shared identity, etc.
▶ Connectedness: Overlapping issues, actors, and war
economies form regional conflict complexes
