United Nations Peacekeeping
"Biased Bases? Host Government Influence on Peacekeeper Temporary Operating Base Deployment"
Most modern peacekeeping operations are mandated to protect civilians from violence. However, peacekeepers can only protect civilians that are within their proximity. Understanding where peacekeepers are located, in turn, provides an understanding of how peacekeepers protect civilians. I argue that the preferences of host governments may play a key role in determining the subnational location of peacekeeper bases, due to the UN’s need to maintain governmental consent. This implies that peacekeeper base locations may in part be a result of the strategic considerations of the host government and can have important implications for the UN’s ability to deter conflict and human rights violations by government actors. In this paper, I consider how this dynamic affects the placement of UN temporary operating bases (TOBs), posts that are more mobile and responsive to conflict events than their larger and more stable counterparts. Using novel data on subnational peacekeeper TOB locations in African civil conflicts from 2000-2015, I test how battle dynamics shape TOB deployment. I find that while TOBs initially deploy the areas with battle violence regardless of which actor has the upper hand, TOBs are more likely to deploy to areas of non-state actor control after violence has quieted.
"Peacekeeping as Coup-Proofing? Evidence from United Nations Peacekeeping Contributions"
The threat of coups often motivates leaders across the world to limit the ability of the military to seize power. These ``coup-proofing'' measures include separating the military into multiple branches or increasing the number of paramilitary forces. Recent work has started to explore the relationship between peacekeeping contributions and coups. This paper contributes to this discussion by examining the use of peacekeeping contributions as a coup-proofing mechanism; we argue that contributing military and police personnel to peacekeeping operations is another way of coup-proofing the security sector. We test these predictions using two common measures of coup-proofing: increasing the size of the state's paramilitary and increasing the number of organizations to rival the army. We find that states engaged in both coup-proofing mechanisms are are significantly more likely to send police to UN peacekeeping missions in the following year. However, leaders increasing the size of their paramilitaries are less likely to send troops, whereas leaders increasing the number of effective organizations are more likely to send troops. These results demonstrate that the use of UN peacekeeping contributions as a form of coup-proofing is multifaceted, and underscore the importance of the police as a key actor in peacekeeping and internal security.
Human Security and Pro-Social Behavior
"After the Quake: Heterogeneous Gender Effects and the Political and Social Consequences of the 2010 Haitian Earthquake" (with Dara Kay Cohen and Danielle Jung)
Scholars have found exposure to violence and trauma have a positive influence on political activism and prosocial behaviors. However, open questions remain as to whether there are gender differences in these positive outcomes. We present a gender-based theory of prosocial outcomes, arguing women are systematically less likely to experience the positive aftermath of traumatic events. Focusing on the massively destructive 2010 earthquake in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, we leverage respondents’ differential earthquake affectedness to estimate political and social consequences. In general, living closer to the epicenter is associated with reports of increased political activism and community engagement, echoing earlier studies. However, we find striking differences by gender, providing strong evidence for our theory. Women are less likely than men to report nearly every prosocial behavior. These results show disaster-related trauma has political and social consequences, and shed light on critical—and previously overlooked—heterogeneous gender effects in how trauma is experienced by vulnerable people.
International Military Intervention
"Economic and Security Motivations for Foreign Imposed Regime Change: Empirical Tests, 1947-1991" (with Dan Reiter and Daniel Arnon)
This paper explores why a major power seeks to impose regime change on a minor power. It develops two categories of explanations. The first category is economic. As leftist historians have long argued, major, capitalist powers like the United States seek to impose regime if a minor power within its economic sphere nationalizes its economy, as nationalization threatens the economic interests of the major power, as well as the financial interests of its corporations who have invested in that country or who might seek to invest in that country. The second category is security. If a minor power moves away from security ties with a major power, either towards neutrality or towards developing security ties with a rival major power, then that major power is more likely to seek to impose regime change. The paper tests how economic and security factors affected the likelihood of US attempts to impose regime change on minor powers from 1947-1991. It is the first quantitative test of the determinants of foreign imposed regime change attempts. It uses new data on economic nationalization efforts, and explores whether or not economic and security motivations can be separated. It uses existing data listing all covert and overt attempts of the US to impose regime change during this time period. Preliminary empirical results demonstrate, contra O’Rourke (2018), that a country is significantly more likely to seek to impose regime change if that country has taken steps to nationalize some portion of its economy.
"Biased Bases? Host Government Influence on Peacekeeper Temporary Operating Base Deployment"
Most modern peacekeeping operations are mandated to protect civilians from violence. However, peacekeepers can only protect civilians that are within their proximity. Understanding where peacekeepers are located, in turn, provides an understanding of how peacekeepers protect civilians. I argue that the preferences of host governments may play a key role in determining the subnational location of peacekeeper bases, due to the UN’s need to maintain governmental consent. This implies that peacekeeper base locations may in part be a result of the strategic considerations of the host government and can have important implications for the UN’s ability to deter conflict and human rights violations by government actors. In this paper, I consider how this dynamic affects the placement of UN temporary operating bases (TOBs), posts that are more mobile and responsive to conflict events than their larger and more stable counterparts. Using novel data on subnational peacekeeper TOB locations in African civil conflicts from 2000-2015, I test how battle dynamics shape TOB deployment. I find that while TOBs initially deploy the areas with battle violence regardless of which actor has the upper hand, TOBs are more likely to deploy to areas of non-state actor control after violence has quieted.
"Peacekeeping as Coup-Proofing? Evidence from United Nations Peacekeeping Contributions"
The threat of coups often motivates leaders across the world to limit the ability of the military to seize power. These ``coup-proofing'' measures include separating the military into multiple branches or increasing the number of paramilitary forces. Recent work has started to explore the relationship between peacekeeping contributions and coups. This paper contributes to this discussion by examining the use of peacekeeping contributions as a coup-proofing mechanism; we argue that contributing military and police personnel to peacekeeping operations is another way of coup-proofing the security sector. We test these predictions using two common measures of coup-proofing: increasing the size of the state's paramilitary and increasing the number of organizations to rival the army. We find that states engaged in both coup-proofing mechanisms are are significantly more likely to send police to UN peacekeeping missions in the following year. However, leaders increasing the size of their paramilitaries are less likely to send troops, whereas leaders increasing the number of effective organizations are more likely to send troops. These results demonstrate that the use of UN peacekeeping contributions as a form of coup-proofing is multifaceted, and underscore the importance of the police as a key actor in peacekeeping and internal security.
Human Security and Pro-Social Behavior
"After the Quake: Heterogeneous Gender Effects and the Political and Social Consequences of the 2010 Haitian Earthquake" (with Dara Kay Cohen and Danielle Jung)
Scholars have found exposure to violence and trauma have a positive influence on political activism and prosocial behaviors. However, open questions remain as to whether there are gender differences in these positive outcomes. We present a gender-based theory of prosocial outcomes, arguing women are systematically less likely to experience the positive aftermath of traumatic events. Focusing on the massively destructive 2010 earthquake in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, we leverage respondents’ differential earthquake affectedness to estimate political and social consequences. In general, living closer to the epicenter is associated with reports of increased political activism and community engagement, echoing earlier studies. However, we find striking differences by gender, providing strong evidence for our theory. Women are less likely than men to report nearly every prosocial behavior. These results show disaster-related trauma has political and social consequences, and shed light on critical—and previously overlooked—heterogeneous gender effects in how trauma is experienced by vulnerable people.
International Military Intervention
"Economic and Security Motivations for Foreign Imposed Regime Change: Empirical Tests, 1947-1991" (with Dan Reiter and Daniel Arnon)
This paper explores why a major power seeks to impose regime change on a minor power. It develops two categories of explanations. The first category is economic. As leftist historians have long argued, major, capitalist powers like the United States seek to impose regime if a minor power within its economic sphere nationalizes its economy, as nationalization threatens the economic interests of the major power, as well as the financial interests of its corporations who have invested in that country or who might seek to invest in that country. The second category is security. If a minor power moves away from security ties with a major power, either towards neutrality or towards developing security ties with a rival major power, then that major power is more likely to seek to impose regime change. The paper tests how economic and security factors affected the likelihood of US attempts to impose regime change on minor powers from 1947-1991. It is the first quantitative test of the determinants of foreign imposed regime change attempts. It uses new data on economic nationalization efforts, and explores whether or not economic and security motivations can be separated. It uses existing data listing all covert and overt attempts of the US to impose regime change during this time period. Preliminary empirical results demonstrate, contra O’Rourke (2018), that a country is significantly more likely to seek to impose regime change if that country has taken steps to nationalize some portion of its economy.