Extremism and terrorism are thought to go hand in hand in civil wars. Yet do they? Are rebel groups with more extreme goals more likely than moderate ones to use terrorism, as commonly assumed? Arguments linking extremism to terrorism are often circular: groups are tagged as extremist because they do extreme things. Our article addresses this problem by articulating a novel conceptualization of extremism as the distance of group goals from the status quo. Understanding the relationship between what groups want and how they try to achieve it has obvious theoretical and policy implications. We theorize mechanisms that might connect extremist goals to terrorism and use new data on rebel group aims in civil wars from 1970 to 2013 to examine the empirical relationship between extremism and terrorism in a nontautological way. The results show that some extremist goals are associated with terrorism but not others. Groups with goals that involve changing the political ideology of the state or transforming political power across identity groups are more likely to use terrorism or to use more of it. Secessionist groups, however, are no more likely to produce terrorism than are those with less extreme territorial aims such as autonomy.

That terrorism is a “weapon of the weak” is such deeply held conventional wisdom it has become almost a cliché. “Weak” means many different things in the literature, however, and little rigorous empirical research has tested the contention that weaker groups, however conceived, are more likely to employ terrorism. This article explores prominent weapon of the weak arguments to develop testable hypotheses about group strength and the prevalence of terrorism. Using measures of deliberately indiscriminate attacks on civilians by rebel groups in civil conflicts, as well as multiple measures of rebel strength, it examines systematically whether weaker groups are more likely to employ terrorism. I find surprisingly little empirical support for the conventional wisdom. There is no clear or consistent evidence that deliberately indiscriminate terrorism is a weapon of the weak rather than the strong.

The Terrorism in Armed Conflict project integrates the Uppsala Conflict Data Project sample of rebel organizations with START’s Global Terrorism Database, covering 409 organizations for 1970–2013. For many Global Terrorism Database incidents, perpetrator information is missing, or ambiguous. Because the accuracy of perpetrator information likely varies systematically, simply dropping these incidents from analyses may bias results. Terrorism in Armed Conflict provides possible attribution to specific rebel groups with coding for uncertainty, enabling 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 Terrorism in Armed Conflict dataset further provides a measure of deliberately indiscriminate terrorism that allows for more nuanced testing of arguments about the strategic logic of terrorism.

Numerous empirical studies have examined the role of third-party peacekeeping in reducing violence around the world. Their results reveal an extraordinary relationship between peacekeepers and peace, notwithstanding a number of well-known problems. This review article has three goals. The first is to summarize the results of past empirical research to move the debate beyond the question of whether peacekeeping works to the more pressing questions of how, when and why it works. The second is to reveal the limitations of the current quantitative research in order to identify areas in which scholars can make big, new contributions to the field. The final goal is to propose a new research agenda that is heavily evaluative - one that informs policy makers about the specific practices, mission compositions, and mandates that work, and identifies the local, regional, and international conditions that amplify or diminish peacekeeping's effectiveness. This type of research could help reduce the costs of peacekeeping operations, eliminate some of the negative consequences of interventions and save even more lives.

This report by the APSA Presidential Task Force on Women’s Advancement in the Profession is based on personal and confidential semi-structured interviews with individuals from three graduate programs who entered graduate school around the same time (the early 1990s) about their educational and career experiences from the decision to pursue the PhD to the present—regardless of whether or not the individuals completed the degree or work in the profession today. How do people experience the profession of political science? What explains differences in individual trajectories—both within and outside the academy? How do climate, efforts to diversify the academy, and policies such as family leave impact individual careers? What policies and practices help graduate students on the job market, and faculty on the tenure-track? What are the tradeoffs in academic and non-academic pursuits? And what is the value of the Ph.D.—inside and outside the academy?

Why do some rebel groups resort to terrorism tactics while others refrain from doing so? How rebel organizations finance their rebellion creates variation in the extent to which terrorism undermines their legitimacy. Rebel organizations pay attention to the legitimacy costs associated with terrorism. Organizations that rely primarily on civilian support, and to a lesser extent on foreign support, exercise more restraint in their use of terrorism. Rebels who finance their fight with lootable resources such as gems or drugs are least vulnerable to the costs of alienating domestic supporters. Thus, they are more likely to resort to terrorism and to employ more of it. The article elaborates this 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. 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.

How effective is terrorism? This question has generated lively scholarly debate and is of obvious importance to policy-makers. However, most existing studies of terrorism are not well equipped to answer this question because they lack an appropriate comparison. This article compares the outcomes of civil wars to assess whether rebel groups that use terrorism fare better than those who eschew this tactic. I evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of terrorism relative to other tactics used in civil war. Because terrorism is not a tactic employed at random, I first briefly explore empirically which groups use terrorism. Controlling for factors that may affect both the use of terrorism and war outcomes, I find that although civil wars involving terrorism last longer than other wars, terrorist rebel groups are generally less likely to achieve their larger political objectives than are nonterrorist groups. Terrorism may be less ineffective against democracies, but even in this context, terrorists do not win.

Why do some rebel groups use terrorism as a tactic while others do not? Why some opposition groups engage in terrorism while others do not is of obvious importance both to the study of terrorism more generally, and to policy makers. But most existing studies of terrorism are not well-equipped to answer this question as they lack an appropriate comparison category. This project examines terrorism in the context of civil war to remedy this problem.I argue that terrorism is more likely to be used when it is expected to be most effective, namely against democratic governments, and when the otherwise prohibitive legitimacy costs of using terrorism are expected to be lowest. I argue that legitimacy costs vary with government regime type, rebel aims and rebel funding sources. This paper begins to test hypotheses derived from this theory, as well as prominent alternative arguments, including the notion that terrorism is a weapon of the weak, and that it is caused by competition among groups (outbidding), with preliminary data on armed opposition groups involved in internal armed conflicts from 1970-2010. Preliminary findings show support for the efficacy/legitimacy argument and cast doubt on alternatives.

Following. closely the practice of peacekeeping, the literature on the subject has come in one small wave and then two larger ones. The first wave, during the Cold War, includes classic works focusing mainly on peacekeeping in wars between states. The second wave, at first inspired by the boom in peacekeeping shortly after the end of the Cold War, soon reflected disillusionment and focuses largely on failure and dysfunction, despite significant cases of success. The third and most recent wave also reflects a resurgence in peacekeeping but is newly concerned with systematic and methodologically rigorous analysis (both quantitative and qualitative) of basic empirical questions about the effects of peacekeeping and the sources of peacekeeping outcomes. Recent empirical studies have demonstrated peacekeeping's effectiveness in maintaining peace, but related questions persist concerning the use of force, transitional administrations, which organizations most effectively keep peace, perspectives of the "peacekept," and effects on democratization.

Fortna, Virginia Page and Reyko Huang. (2012) Democratization after Civil War: A Brush-Clearing Exercise. International Studies Quarterly, doi: 10.1111/j.1468-2478.2012.00730.x ?(c) 2012 International Studies Association Why do some states emerging from civil war take significant strides toward democracy while others do not? The existing literature comes to contradictory and puzzling findings, many of which, we argue, are driven by methodological problems. We examine the determinants of democratization in the short, medium, and long term after civil wars ending between 1945 and 1999. Other than a short-term effect of negotiated settlements, we find little support for the prominent claim that the outcome of the war shapes the prospects for postwar democratization. Neither does peacekeeping foster democratization. Meanwhile, consistent with the more general democratization literature, we find that economic development aids democratization while oil wealth hinders it. In short, we find the determinants of democratization to be much the same for post-civil war societies as for other societies.

LIST OF FIGURES, MAPS, AND TABLES ix ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xi CHAPTER ONE: Peacekeeping and the Peacekept Questions, Definitions, and Research Design 1 CHAPTER TWO: Where Peacekeepers Go I Hypotheses and Statistical Evidence 18 CHAPTER THREE: Where Peacekeepers Go II Evidence from the Cases 47 CHAPTER FOUR: A Causal Theory of Peacekeeping 76 CHAPTER FIVE: Peacekeeping Works Evidence of Effectiveness 104 CHAPTER SIX: How Peacekeeping Works Causal Mechanisms from the Perspective of the Peacekept 127 CHAPTER SEVEN: Conclusion and Implications 172 APPENDIX A: The Data 181 APPENDIX B: Predicting the Degree of Difficulty of Maintaining Peace 187 REFERENCES 191 INDEX 207

This paper documents and proposes an explanation for a puzzling empirical trend: the number of wars ending in a draw, rather than with a victory for one side, has increased markedly over time. This change in war outcomes occurs for interstate wars after WWII, and for civil wars after the end of the Cold War. I argue that this change, and its timing in the two types of war can best be explained by the development of peacekeeping. For war to end in a draw, two conditions must hold: neither side is able to defeat the other outright, and the belligerents can agree to stop fighting rather than continuing the war in the hope of eventual victory. Using this framework, I outline and test a number of possible explanations for the shift in outcomes. I rule out a number of alternative explanations, including the offense-defense balance, patterns of intervention, terrain, population growth, and issue salience. Only the peacekeeping argument can explain the change in both civil and interstate wars.

Why do some states emerging from civil war take significant strides toward democracy while others do not? Why, for example, did Mozambique, Nicaragua, and Peru become more democratic after their civil wars ended, while Angola and Sri Lanka did not? The small existing literature on this subject comes to several contradictory and puzzling findings. This paper examines the determinants of postwar democratization in the short, medium, and long term by testing a number of often competing hypotheses with a dataset of all civil wars ending between 1945 and 1999. Our findings refute some prominent hypotheses. For example, we find that the outcome of the war has no bearing on the prospects for democratization; neither does war resumption affect regime developments, contrary to expectations. On the other hand, we find, as expected, that economic development aids democratization while oil wealth hinders it. We also find less democratization after wars fought over identity issues and in countries with higher prewar levels of democracy. However, we find an unexpected relationship between ethnic fractionalization and democratization. In general, while civil wars appear to provide opportunities for democratization in many places, the factors that determine whether a country becomes more or less democratic are much the same for post-civil war societies as for other societies.