Browsing by Subject "civil war"

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    The Epidemiology of Civil War
    (2022-07) Stundal, Logan
    This dissertation explores the causal connection between violence occurring in armed conflicts and the emergence of infectious disease within or in close proximity to active conflict zones. While we have known for quite some time that war leads to disease, our understanding of what types of violence contribute to higher (or lower) incidence of specific types of infectious disease remains limited. Establishing the connection between disease and patterns of violence in armed conflict is important since that knowledge can help to inform where humanitarian aid should go and, crucially, what form that aid should take to best support the health needs of civilians suffering the effects of violence. I propose a new theory explaining the disease-conflict connection through a mechanism of civilian population movements in response to changing patterns of observable violence occurring across varying conflict contexts. Variation in conflict intensity as well as the spatial location of that violence – conflict geography – helps to explain downstream variation in the spread of infectious disease. This theory relies upon a mechanism of rational civilians making decisions to maximize their safety in response to violence. As security conditions deteriorate, civilians attempt to improve their situation by pursuing a strategy to remove themselves from areas which present the greatest risk to their personal integrity. In order to decide how to respond to the violence they observe, civilians jointly examine the intensity and geographic location of violence and decide whether to shelter in place, shuffle into nearby areas to find safety, or flee longer distances into neighboring regions or countries. My dissertation demonstrates that conflict context shapes how civilians respond to changing levels of violence. The varied strategies civilians pursue in response to this violence influences the spread of infectious disease by shaping which disease-causing pathogens civilians are more or less likely to encounter. Some patterns of violence facilitate contagious disease transmission while others create ideal conditions for noncontagious disease infections. By explaining the connection between conflict and war through civilian displacement mechanisms, the theory presented and tested in this dissertation allows us to better understand why disease emerges in some conflicts but not others, but also where and what types of disease will emerge across different conflict contexts.
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    Hunger Games: Analyzing Relationships between Food Insecurity and Violence
    (2018-03) Koren, Ore
    What impact does food security have on patterns of conflict within developing states? Does increasing local food security levels exacerbate or help to quell violence in these areas? Answering these questions using both high-resolution and global data on conflict and food production, as well as a large variety of analytical techniques designed to address the different reciprocal and sequential relationships between food production and conflict, my dissertation shows that—contrary to previous expectations—conflict in the developing world is frequently driven, on average, by abundance and not by scarcity. The dissertation establishes two mechanisms to explain this relationship. The first in- volves conflict designed to secure local food resources for the group’s own consumption, and is hence termed “possessive conflict” over food security. The second relates to situations where armed groups use violence to regulate the food supply available to other groups by prevent- ing access to and destroying these resources, and is hence termed “preemptive conflict” over food security. Original archival evidence from the Mau Mau rebellion in Kenya highlights the microlevel importance of controlling food resources and increasing group—and community—resilience; different armed actors might therefore gravitate into food-abundant areas, increasing the frequency of local armed conflict and incidents of violence against civilians. This archival evidence also shows that some food resources, such as maize and wheat, are much more valuable as an input of rebellion, and are thus more likely to and more frequently attract conflict locally. Finally, the role of highly nutritional food resources in engendering and perpetuating rebellions is evaluated on a global sample consisting of all rebellions. The data used in these macrolevel cross-national models builds on food types and other factors deemed especially salient in the microlevel analyses. Substantively, the effect of nutritious food resources is shown to surpass that of other benchmark explanations of conflict such as economic development and political openness. These findings suggest that food resources and their impact on rebellions should be taken seriously by academics and policymakers alike.