Social Origins of Conflict

My research delves into the ways in which network ties and group membership impact intra- and interstate conflict, with a particular emphasis on conflict processes and international security.

Microlevel conflict processes:

My body of work and ongoing research delves into understanding how microlevel processes influence political violence. I've used unique data sets such as individual-level information on Islamic State combatants, gathered from job application forms that fighters filled out when they traveled to Syria, as well as gacaca court records from the Rwandan Genocide. Figure 1 shows an example of Islamic State job applications. Using this data, I have several publications and ongoing research projects.

In a 2022 Social Networks publication, my findings highlight the role of relational ties, indicating that combatants with more kin and peer ties to suicide bombers were more inclined to volunteer as one. Importantly, other demographic factors didn't significantly affect this decision. Such insights underscore the need for demobilization efforts to prioritize understanding and targeting these relational ties. Further research with Hollie Nyseth Nzitaria (OSU) delves into the Rwandan Genocide, examining how familial ties influenced engagement in the violence.

In an article published in 2023 at JCR, I assess how group identity and opportunity shape foreign fighter mobilization. This paper uses the combatants' home cities and states listed on their Islamic State job applications to identify how subnational factors influence mobilization. Specifically, I theorize that foreign rebel organizations offer individuals with identity-based grievances an opportunity to fight for a co-ethnic organization against a weaker state.

Consistent with my expectations, I find that a higher rate of fighters come from areas where Sunni Muslims were denied access to political power and have greater state capacity. Figure Regions with policies that excluded Sunni Muslim populations within the last 10, 20, and 30 years had an increase of 3.4, 2.2, and 3.5 more foreign fighters than regions that did not have exclusionary policies, ceritas paribus. Regions with higher levels of state capacity (measured as nighttime lights) also had a higher rate of foreign fighters, with a one-unit increase in nighttime light increasing the rate of mobilization by 1.4 combatants, ceritas paribus.

In addition to my individual research on the microlevel causes of conflict, I have several collaborative projects. In research with Hollie Nyseth Nzitaria (OSU) that builds on a 2022 JPR publication, I examine participation in genocide and reconciliation efforts in Rwanda. In an article under invitation to revise and resubmit at ASR, we analyze how political propaganda affected the rate of participation at the subnational level. This project reexamines earlier work that used exogenous variation in access to radio propaganda to see how “hate messages” affect participation in the genocide. Using a similar approach, we find that access to the radio was associated with a faster engagement in the genocide while having a null effect on the rate of mobilization.

Nyseth Nzitaria and I also have two other projects in later stages of development with graduate student coauthors. In the first project, we examine how individual and community level factors affect the severity of punishment. In the second project, we coauthor with Elizabeth Brannon (IU), and examine how women participated in the genocide. In particular, we focus on what factors made women more likely to participate in Hutu militias and what conditions made women more central actors within the Hutu militia groups.

mesolevel Conflict:

In research with Gary Uzonyi (UTN), I analyze how the strength and goals of rebel groups affect their targets and sequence of attacks. To study this process, I developed a novel spatiotemporal network measure. Figure 3 displays an example of the measure for the rebel group FARC in Colombia. For our first article using this approach, we analyze the interaction between rebel group strength, goal, and target of attack. Secessionist groups tend to carry out less clustered violence against civilian populations versus state forces compared to revolutionary groups. However, the effect is moderated by group strength, with weaker secessionist groups carrying out more clustered violence against civilian populations compared to stronger secessionist and revolutionary groups. In contrast, strength has a null effect on how revolutionary groups carry out their attacks against civilian populations and state forces.

I plan to extend this measure and project in three ways. First, Uzonyi and I plan to write two other papers using this approach that will examine: (1) how peacekeeping interventions affect the intrastate spread of violence and (2) how rebel groups respond to inflicting versus sustaining mass casualties. Second, I plan to measure the diffusion of other forms of political violence during conflicts. I am particularly interested in measuring how states choose their bombing targets---such as deciding whether to target civilian or state actors. And third, I plan to generalize this approach to measure the spread of political violence as a dynamic process between n groups. To analyze civil conflict as a dynamic multi-actor process, I plan to adapt bipartite network models to measure conflict as an action-reaction sequence.

macrolevel conflict:

In a forthcoming JOP article, I propose a theory that links network relations to the characteristics and behaviors of states. First, I argue that frequent interactions spread political institutions through reciprocal benefits and coercion. Second, I argue that the ability of major powers to choose the states with which they interact allows them to sever relationships with uncooperative states and form stronger relationships with cooperative states. Together, these network interactions create cooperative communities, or groups of states with similar political institutions that are less internally conflictual with one another than with states outside their group. My theory suggests that networked interactions are confounding variables in studies that attribute peace to shared political institutions.

I use three approaches to test my theory. First, I develop a new multiplex community detection algorithm. Using this approach, I identify groups of cooperative states and assess the effect of group relations on conflict. Second, I use several approaches to measure diffusion over ties and find a robust correlation between frequent interactions and the spread of political institutions from stronger to weaker states. Third, I offer a novel approach for pooling estimates across network layers. I plan to write an article that demonstrates how this approach is useful for understanding social processes across various interactions.

In addition to my solo authored research, I also have several collaborative research projects. In work that builds on a forthcoming article at AJPS, Mael Van Beek (postdoctoral scholar at Princeton University), and I analyze how status and power affect the rate of conflict at the international system level. To measure the relationship between status and power, we use the ranked centrality of states in the IGO network as a measure of relational power and their ranked CINC score as a measure of material power. We find that greater disparities in relational and material power increase the rate of conflict at the international system level.