On this page, you will find updated drafts of my publications and working papers, information about works in progress, as well as a copy of my doctoral dissertation.
You may also visit my Google Scholar Page and my ORCid Page.
Comments, especially on working papers, are welcomed.
You may also visit my Google Scholar Page and my ORCid Page.
Comments, especially on working papers, are welcomed.
Peer-Reviewed Publications:
American Fatalities in Foreign Wars and Right-Wing Radicalization at Home
McAlexander, R.J., M.A. Rubin, and R. Williams. "They're Still There, He's All Gone: American Fatalities in Foreign Wars and Right-Wing Radicalization at Home," Accepted, American Political Science Review.
McAlexander, R.J., M.A. Rubin, and R. Williams. "They're Still There, He's All Gone: American Fatalities in Foreign Wars and Right-Wing Radicalization at Home," Accepted, American Political Science Review.
Abstract
What explains right-wing radicalization in the US? Research shows that demographic changes and economic decline both drive support for the far-right. We contribute to this research agenda by 1) studying the elusive early stages in the process of radicalization and 2) highlighting an additional factor that contributes to right-wing radicalization in the US: the impact of foreign wars on society at home. We argue that the communities that bear the greatest costs of foreign wars are most prone to high rates of right-wing radicalization. To support this claim, we present robust correlations between participation in the far-right social media website Parler and fatalities among residents who served in the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. This correlation holds at both the county and census tract level, and persists after controlling for the level of military service in an area. The costs of the US’s foreign wars have important effects on domestic US politics.
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Social Cohesion and Community Displacement in Armed Conflict
Arnon, D.Y., R.J. McAlexander, and M.A. Rubin. 2023. "Social Cohesion and Community Displacement in Armed Conflict" International Security, Vol. 47, No. 3 (Winter 2022/23), pages 52–94.
abstract
What factors influence civilian behavior during armed conflict? Under what conditions do civilians adopt certain survival strategies over others, and how do these choices shape conflict processes and organized violence? What are the origins of conflict-related population displacement? Existing research addressing civilian agency in armed conflict has explored civilians’ strategies to resist or bargain with belligerents, on the one hand, and their decisions whether to flee the conflict zone, on the other. While the former explores how civilians influence belligerent conduct, the latter primarily focuses on how belligerent actions shape civilian migration and displacement. However, whether civilians flee preemptively, prior to belligerent arrival, influences belligerents’ political and military strategy. Thus explaining the conditions under which civilians flee preemptively is central to understanding subsequent conflict processes. We argue that social cohesion enhances civilians’ capability to efficiently acquire the resources necessary to survive migration and displacement, thereby increasing the likelihood that they manage to leave prior to belligerent occupation. We test the theory’s community-level empirical implications in the context of Arab Palestinian displacement during the 1948 war in Mandate Palestine. We measure community displacement drawing upon village-level historical accounts during the war and measure social cohesion using an original dataset based on archival material from a survey of Arab Palestinian villages conducted during the early 1940s. We find villages with greater social cohesion are more likely to preemptively evacuate, shedding new light on how civilian agency shapes conflict and displacement processes.
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Rebel Territorial Control and Governance
Rubin, M.A. and M.A. Stewart. 2022. "Rebel Territorial Control and Governance," in Loyle, C.E., Braithwaite, J.M., Cunningham, K.G., Huang, R., Huddleston, R.J., Jung, D.F. and Rubin, M.A., "Revolt and Rule: Learning about Governance from Rebel Groups." International Studies Review, 24(4), p.viac043.
forum abstract
Recent work in international relations has problematized state-centric assumptions of governance to explore variations in authority by a range of non-state actors (e.g. NGOs, criminal syndicates, gangs, etc.). This forum centers on the phenomenon of rebel group governance during civil wars and leverages the concept to advance our understanding of current theories and conceptualizations of governance. The nature of rebel organizations provides a unique opportunity for researchers to expand the state-centric focus on governance because rebel actors differ from states in their comparative position within the global state system, the contexts in which they operate, and their lack of legitimizing principles that permit consistent membership as a class of political actors. These differences allow for meaningful extensions of how we theorize and conceptualize governance beyond the state. Furthermore, variation across these differences allows our findings in the study rebel governance to speak directly to the broader literature in international relations on governance by state actors. In our introduction to this forum we detail the ways in which rebel groups have chosen to address the central components of governance through a variety of governance strategies. We then devote three essays in the forum to the concepts of legitimacy, capacity, and territorial control. In each of the three essays authors discuss the ways in which rebel governance problematizes and advances these concepts for the broader study of governance. In the conclusion this forum synthesizes extant and emerging work in the field of rebel governance in order to raise new questions of the governance and state building literatures. In this way we show how investigating governance by rebel groups in particular advances our understanding of governance more broadly.
Terrorism in Armed Conflict: New Data Attributing Terrorism to Rebel Organizations
Fortna, V.P., N.J. Lotito, and M.A. Rubin. 2022. "Terrorism in Armed Conflict: New Data Attributing Terrorism to Rebel Organizations," Conflict Management and Peace Science, Volume 39, Issue 2: pages 214-236.
abstract
The Terrorism in Armed Conflict (TAC) data collection project, developed with Page Fortna (Columbia University) and Nicholas Lotito (Yale University), links violent incidents in the Global Terrorism Database (GTD) to civil war combatants included in the Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP) datasets, filling a crucial gap in existing empirical studies addressing the causes and consequences of terrorism. Many GTD incidents are missing, or include ambiguous, perpetrator information. Because the accuracy of perpetrator information likely varies systematically, simply dropping these incidents from analyses may bias results. TAC provides possible attribution to specific rebel groups, with coding for uncertainty. TAC enables researchers to 1) address "description bias" in media-based terrorism data, 2) model uncertainty regarding perpetrator attribution, and 3) vary the way terrorism is counted. The data coder 409 rebel organizations from 1970-2013.
ACCess
Terrorism and the Varieties of Civil Liberties
Rubin, M.A. and R.K. Morgan. 2021. "Terrorism and the Varieties of Civil Liberties." Journal of Global Security Studies, Volume 6, Issue 3.
abstract
How do government protections of, and infringement upon, its citizens’ civil liberties influence the country’s exposure to terrorism? Existing research remains divided on whether civil liberties protections increase or decrease vulnerability to terrorism, and the conditions under which violating civil liberties mitigate or exacerbate the security threats associated with terrorism. We provide clarity on these debates by disaggregating civil liberties into component dimensions—political liberties, private liberties, and physical integrity—which we argue have distinct effects on a country’s exposure to terrorism. We argue political liberties increase terrorism while physical integrity rights decrease terrorism. These countervailing effects provide an alternative explanation for the“inverted-U” relationship between civil liberties protections and terrorism. We isolate the effects of specific political institutional features and government behaviors by leveraging the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) data. We measure a country’s exposure to terrorism using the Global Terrorism Database. Our sample covers 176 states from 1970-2016. We find evidence consistent with our hypotheses regarding the effects of the distinct component dimensions of civil liberties.
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Rebel Territorial Control and Civilian Collective Action in Civil War
Rubin, M.A. 2020. “Rebel Territorial Control and Civilian Collective Action in Civil War: Evidence from the Communist Insurgency in the Philippines.” Journal of Conflict Resolution, Vol. 64(2-3): 459-489.
abstrACT
Under what conditions do rebel organizations control territory during civil war? How do civilians influence the distribution of territorial control? This article introduces a civilian agency theory, emphasizing community collective action capacity (CAC) defined by underlying social network structure, to complement existing explanations of territorial control. I argue communities with greater CAC mobilize information and resources more efficiently, increasing belligerents’ incentives to control territory. However, CAC also increases community bargaining power to demand costly investments in governance, partially offsetting these gains. CAC increases rebel control in areas of state neglect. But, as state service provision increases, communities leverage CAC to demand prohibitively costly rebel governance, deterring rebel control. This article tests the theory in the context of the communist insurgency in the Philippines, using military intelligence reports from 2011 to 2014 to measure village-level communist insurgent territorial control and a household-level census (2008–2010) to measure village CAC. Interviews with village elders in Eastern Mindanao illustrate causal mechanisms and explore alternative explanations.
support
Research supported by the National Science Foundation Law and Social Sciences Program (Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant, Award Number: 1535598). Support also provided by the Earth Institute's AC4 program, the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, and the Columbia University Political Science Department.
Don't Bite the Hand that Feeds: Rebel Funding Sources and the Use of Terrorism in Civil Wars
Fortna, V.P., N.J. Lotito, and M.A. Rubin. 2018. "Don't Bite the Hand that Feeds: Rebel Funding Sources and the Use of Terrorism in Civil Wars," International Studies Quarterly, Volume 62, Issue 4, Pages 782–794.
abstract
Why do some rebel groups resort to terrorism tactics, while others refrain from doing so? This paper argues that rebel organizations pay attention to the legitimacy costs associated with terrorism and that how rebel organizations finance their rebellion creates variation in their vulnerability to these legitimacy costs. Organizations that rely primarily on civilian support, and to a lesser extent on foreign support, are most constrained in their use of terrorism. Rebels who finance their fight with lootable resources such as gems or drugs are least vulnerable to legitimacy costs and so are more likely to resort to terrorism and to employ more of it. The paper develops legitimacy cost theory and tests it using new data on Terrorism in Armed Conflict from 1970 to 2007. We find robust support for the hypothesis that groups who finance their fight with natural resources are significantly more likely to employ terrorism (though not necessarily to conduct more deadly attacks) relative to those who rely on local civilian support. We find that groups with external sources of financing, such as foreign state support, may be more likely to engage in terrorism than those who rely on local civilians, but not significantly so.
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Book Project: Territorial Control in Civil War
Abstract/Summary
Under what conditions do rebel organizations control territory during armed conflict? Why does rebel control expand during certain periods of conflict and contract in others? What are the consequences of the fragmentation of territory for conflict processes and conflict termination? This book project explains the origins and dynamics of belligerents’ territorial control in armed conflict. Complementing existing research that privilege material, military, and identity factors shaping territorial control, this project emphasizes civilian agency, highlighting the role of social cohesion in shaping conflict processes.
Working Papers and Works in Progress:
Foreign Sponsorship of Armed Group and Civil War
with Iris Malone. Under Review.
abstract
Why does state sponsorship increase the risk of civil war in some cases, but not others? Rebel groups are more likely to receive state sponsorship than non-rebel groups, but the theoretical mechanisms underlying this relationship remain unclear. Existing work examining the organizational foundations of civil war onset, and of the consequences of external support, is often limited in its empirical focus on rebel groups. This creates a selection bias that precludes understanding which groups receive state support and how that support affects the trajectory of armed group conflict. To address this gap, this paper explores the organization-level dynamics linking state support to conflict escalation and civil war onset. We present a two-stage analysis comparing why some armed groups receive support, but not others, and the consequences of that support on escalatory processes. We suggest the timing and consequences of sponsorship depends, in part, on how it impacts an armed group’s violent capabilities and a target state’s vulnerability to this violence. Drawing upon the new Armed Group Dataset, we derive observable implications from this logic and use a cross-national dataset of 1,432 armed groups to test it. The results advance understanding about the consequences of state support and escalatory conflict processes.
State Support for Nonviolent Resistance Movements Abroad
with Maria Lotito and Chris Shay.
abstract
Under what conditions do states materially support nonviolent anti-regime movements in other countries? Research to answer this question has lagged behind efforts to understand foreign support for violent rebellion, which highlights the role of interstate rivalry and security-related competition. We argue that foreign support to nonviolent resistance follows a distinct logic. States support nonviolent resistance in secondary spheres of national interest, such as contexts in which economic interdependence or competition raise tensions. Examining new data on external state support to nonviolent resistance campaigns globally from 2000-2014, we find robust empirical support for this claim. We first present descriptive analysis, using a Latent Class Analysis (LCA) to classify interstate dyads, which shows that dyads distinguished for their deep economic ties are most strongly associated with foreign support for nonviolent resistance. We then investigate the claim in a regression framework to account for potential confounders, including security, and political/institutional factors shaping interstate relationships, ideological and identity ties between potential supporter states and nonviolent resistance movements, and global and regional structural conditions. The findings suggest that the logic of support for nonviolent resistance is distinct from that for violent rebellion. They provide new insights into persistent debates regarding the role of economic interdependence in interstate conflict by demonstrating that even when economic ties deter militarized conflict, it may encourage substitution into alternative tactics such as support for nonviolent resistance.
Measuring Territorial Control in Armed Conflict
with Andy Halterman, Nina McMurry, and Ben Radford.
abstract
Under what conditions do nonstate actors control territory in defiance of the incumbent government? How does nonstate territorial control and governance affect violent and nonviolent conflict processes, and states' sovereignty and legitimacy, and political and economic development? This article introduces the "Subnational Nonstate Actor Governance" (SNAG) project, which advances this research agenda by developing a measurement strategy to capture armed rebel nonstate actors' territorial control in conflict zones that is spatially and temporally disaggregated and comparable across countries and conflicts. Existing approaches to measuring territorial control during conflict focus on (primarily violent) conflict and contentious politics events, which represent areas of contested rather than complete control and indicate changes in control without tracking where it remains stable. SNAG addresses these issues by developing a measurement strategy that emphasizes both static and dynamic conditions of territorial control and governance at the local level in conflict zones. We employ text analysis methods on a corpus of news and other reporting to extract mentions of rebel presence and control, along with location and timing, which we use alongside events data in a measurement model to estimate the areas of rebel control and forms of governance. We then validate SNAG measures of subnational territorial control against ``ground truth" data on rebel control in two cases: the Syrian Civil War and post-coup Myanmar.
Terrorism and Territorial Control
abstract
Under what conditions do rebel organizations employ terrorism in their repertoire of tactics during armed conflict? Are rebels that control territory more or less likely to perpetrate terrorism? Under what conditions? In this article, I argue that, contrary to conventional wisdom, rebels use terrorism in areas of contested control (in the periphery) according to a military logic to gain territorial control. Terrorism discourages the state from deploying or expanding civilian government representatives, investing in physical infrastructure, and developing social capital in targeted areas, all of which are essential to the state's efforts to cultivate the support and legitimacy necessary to establish a monopoly of violence and clear rebels from holding territory. This theoretical framework departs from the prevailing conventional wisdom in existing research investigating the empirical relationship between terrorism and territorial control, which primarily considers terrorism as a "weapon of the weak" used by groups lacking the ability or interest in controlling territory. While some scholars note territorial control may increase terrorism by extending group longevity and violence capabilities, these studies still focus on the impact of territorial control on use of terrorism, assuming terrorism is not a strategy to control territory. I test the theory in light of these predominant alternatives through two channels. First, I examine the theory's implications for variation in territorial control across rebel groups in a global sample. I measure rebels' use of terrorism using the Terrorism in Armed Conflict (TAC) dataset and measure their territorial control using the Non-State Actor (NSA) dataset. Next, I conduct a micro-level analysis examining local-level changes in territorial control and use of terrorism, and its sequencing, for a set of rebel groups in Syria's civil war, 2012-2016 using geolocated terrorism incidents in the Global Terrorism Database (GTD) and the Carter Center's Syria Mapping project.
Government Repression and Rebel Organizations' use of Terrorism
with Page Fortna.
abstract
Under what conditions do rebel groups use terrorism as a tactic in armed conflict? Does the government’s human rights record, including its history of civilian-targeted violence, reduce the likelihood of terrorism by eliminating violent challengers or does it increase terrorism by legitimizing it as a warranted response to government abuse? We argue that rebel groups are more likely to perpetrate acts of terrorism when their constituent population finds terrorism an appropriate tactic; when the legitimacy costs, the expected loss in legitimacy among a key audience associated with specific actions, are lower. Specifically, constituent populations are more likely to accept terrorism as legitimate when the government adversary has committed its own abuses, especially, but not exclusively, violations of physical integrity rights such as indiscriminate violence, extrajudicial killings, and other forms of civilian-targeted violence. In other words, a rebel group’s legitimacy costs for terrorism are driven, at least in part, by the perceived legitimacy of the government adversary and prior exposure to civilian-targeted violence. We test the argument empirically in the context of ethnic conflicts. The Terrorism in Armed Conflict (TAC) dataset attributes incidents of terrorism to rebel group perpetrators, using the list of rebel groups in the Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP). The Ethnic One-Sided Violence Dataset records government repression of specific politically mobilized ethnic group populations, which we link to UCDP rebel groups that purport to represent those groups using the Ethnic Power Relations dataset.
Communities in Conflict in Mandate Palestine
with Daniel Arnon and Rick McAlexander.
Dissertation:
rebel territorial control, governance, and political accountability in civil war: evidence from the communist insurgency in the philippines
Research supported by the National Science Foundation Law and Social Sciences Program (Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant, (Award Number: 1535598). Support also provided by the Earth Institute's AC4 program, the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, and the Columbia University Political Science Department.
abstract
Under what conditions do rebel organizations successfully control territory, and under what conditions do they provide governance, during civil war? Under what conditions do non-combatants influence the spread and conduct of insurgency? 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. Though existing literature has explored in depth the consequences of local-level variation in territorial control for civil war violence and outcomes, little is known about the origins of territorial control despite obvious relevance to the escalation and perpetuation of intrastate conflict. Crucially, the process by which insurgency expands or contracts represents the crucial first stage that determines the context in which belligerents make subsequent decisions in the conduct of war. Failure to consider the determinants of rebel territorial control, then, presents clear inferential challenges for existing theories of insurgent and counterinsurgent behavior. By emphasizing rebel accountability to civilians, the project contributes to the existing literature by emphasizing the role of non-combatants to explain the origins of rebel territorial control.
The accountability theory argues that community collective action capacity, the ability to mobilize collective action to pursue common interests, influences rebel territorial control and conduct during intrastate conflict. Collective action capacity represents a mobilization technology: communities efficiently form political committees, gather resources and supplies, and monitor individuals’ collaboration with insurgents and/or counterinsurgents. 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 to rebel control; outside options, including alignment with the state or mobilization of autonomy/self-protection strategies, determine community bargaining power to demand rebel investment in governance. Collective action capacity increases rebel control where the state or local power brokers cannot provide basic services and security from civil war violence. The community accepts rebel control at low levels of governance, so rebels’ surplus benefits associated with local collaboration outweigh the expected governance costs. Communities with more effective state or local governance enjoy greater bargaining power to demand rebel governance that may become prohibitively expensive; collective action capacity deters rebel territorial control.
The empirical strategy draws upon complementary quantitative and qualitative methods to investigate the extent to which the theoretical predictions are consistent with evidence from the Philippines. First, I present and econometric analysis on nation-wide, village-level data from the communist insurgency in the Philippines. Armed Forces of 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. 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. 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 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. In the Philippines, collective action capacity increases the level of NPA control in villages with a history of state neglect, while the effect declines as the quality of local governance increases, consistent with the theory. I investigate potential threats to the inferences associated with endogeneity bias and 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 accountability theory argues that community collective action capacity, the ability to mobilize collective action to pursue common interests, influences rebel territorial control and conduct during intrastate conflict. Collective action capacity represents a mobilization technology: communities efficiently form political committees, gather resources and supplies, and monitor individuals’ collaboration with insurgents and/or counterinsurgents. 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 to rebel control; outside options, including alignment with the state or mobilization of autonomy/self-protection strategies, determine community bargaining power to demand rebel investment in governance. Collective action capacity increases rebel control where the state or local power brokers cannot provide basic services and security from civil war violence. The community accepts rebel control at low levels of governance, so rebels’ surplus benefits associated with local collaboration outweigh the expected governance costs. Communities with more effective state or local governance enjoy greater bargaining power to demand rebel governance that may become prohibitively expensive; collective action capacity deters rebel territorial control.
The empirical strategy draws upon complementary quantitative and qualitative methods to investigate the extent to which the theoretical predictions are consistent with evidence from the Philippines. First, I present and econometric analysis on nation-wide, village-level data from the communist insurgency in the Philippines. Armed Forces of 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. 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. 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 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. In the Philippines, collective action capacity increases the level of NPA control in villages with a history of state neglect, while the effect declines as the quality of local governance increases, consistent with the theory. I investigate potential threats to the inferences associated with endogeneity bias and 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.
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