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Dr. Idean Salehyan from The University of North Texas will present, however he co-authored this work with David Siroky (Arizona State University) and Reed Wood (Arizona State University).
About the Lecture:
While some militant groups work hard to foster collaborative ties with civilians, others engage in egregious abuses and war crimes. We argue that foreign state funding for rebel organizations greatly reduces the incentives of militant groups to the ‘win the hearts and minds’ of civilians because it diminishes the need to collect resources from the population. However, unlike other lucrative resources such as minerals and petroleum, foreign funding of rebel groups must be understood in principal-agent terms. Some external principals—namely, democratic states with strong human rights lobbies—are more concerned with atrocities in the conflict zone than others.
Rebels backed by states with these characteristics should engage in comparably less violence than those backed by other states. We also predict that multiple state sponsors lead to abuse, for no single state can effectively restrain the rebel organization. We test these expectations with new disaggregated organization-level data on foreign support for rebel groups and data on one-sided violence against civilians. The results are consistent our argument. We conclude that principal characteristics help influence agent actions, and that human rights organizations exert a powerful effect on the likelihood of civilian abuse and the magnitude of wartime atrocities.
Biography:
Idean Salehyan is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of North Texas and the co-Director of the Social Conflict in Africa Database project. His diverse research interests focus on topics related to civil and international conflict, international migration, and environmental politics. He is the author of Rebels Without Borders: Transnational Insurgencies in World Politics (Cornell University Press, 2009). HIs research has appeared in journals such as: the American Journal of Political Science, International Organization, International Studies Quarterly, the Journal of Conflict Resolution, the Journal of Peace Research, the Journal of Politics, and World Politics. He obtained his PhD in 2006 from the University of California, San Diego.
About the S-CAR Research Seminar:
This event is the first of The S-CAR Research Seminar, which is being organized by Dr. Thomas Flores. The format of the event is as follows. A researcher (usually from outside George Mason University) will be invited to present ongoing or "mid-stream" research. The paper upon which the presentation is based will be distributed via a website (we will post the URL shortly). Attendees are strongly encouraged to read the work ahead of time. The presenter will spend 15 minutes talking about his or her work, then a discussant from George Mason will critique the work. Then the audience will have an opportunity to ask questions and engage in discussion. For more information about the S-CAR Research Seminar Series, click here
-Please RSVP to Barre Hussen at [email protected]