DISSERTATION

Explaining Sexual Violence During Civil War
Why do some civil war combatant groups commit mass rape while others, even in the context of the same conflict, never turn to sexual violence? More broadly, what explains cross-national variation in widespread rape during civil conflict? In my dissertation, I develop a theory of rape during civil war based on the internal dynamics of combatant groups. I argue that armed factions with low levels of internal cohesion turn to costly forms of group violence, such as gang rape, to create social bonds. I test the theory using an original data set of sexual violence and armed group recruitment practices in recent civil conflicts. I also draw on extensive interviews with hundreds of ex-combatants and non-combatants collected during eight months of field work in Sierra Leone and East Timor, as well as newly available survey data.

Awarded a 2007-2008 NSF Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant
 

PUBLICATIONS Color Bind: Lessons from the Failed Homeland Security Advisory System (with J. Shapiro) International Security, Fall 2007 .pdf Abstract: From its inception in 2002, the color-coded terrorist alert system known as the Homeland Security Advisory System (HSAS) has been both the U.S. government’s most visible domestic counterterrorism tool and the brunt of endless jokes and derision. Underlying these comic insults, however, remain serious questions about the system: Does it work? If not, what are the central problems? And how might these problems be eliminated, or at least mitigated, in an alternative system? In this article, we argue that compliance with a terrorist alert system must be based on confidence in the value of the information it provides. The HSAS was not designed to generate such confidence; rather, its designers assumed that the public would trust the national leadership and believe in the utility of the system’s information. Over time, as the system became increasingly perceived as politically manipulated, there was no built-in mechanism to recover lost confidence, and as a result the HSAS has failed.  Crisis Bureaucracy: Homeland Security and the Political Design of Legal Mandates (with M. Cuéllar and B. Weingast) Stanford Law Review, Dec 2006 .pdf Abstract: Policymakers fight over bureaucratic structure because it helps shape the legal interpretations and regulatory decisions of agencies through which modern governments operate. In this Article, we update positive political theories of bureaucratic structure to encompass two new issues with important implications for lawyers and political scientists: the significance of legislative responses to a crisis and the uncertainty surrounding major bureaucratic reorganizations. The resulting perspective affords a better understanding of how agencies interpret their legal mandates and deploy their administrative discretion. We apply the theory to the creation of the Department of Homeland Security. Two principal questions surrounding this creation are (1) why the President changed from opposing the creation of a new department to supporting it and (2) why his plan for such a department was far beyond the scope of any other existing proposal. We argue that the President changed his mind in part because he did not want to be on the losing side of a major legislative battle. But more significantly, the President supported the massive new Department in part to further domestic policy priorities unrelated to homeland security. By moving a large set of agencies within the Department and instilling them with new homeland security responsibilities without additional budgets, the President forced these agencies to move resources out of their legacy mandates. Perversely, these goals appear to have been accomplished at the expense of homeland security. Finally, we briefly discuss more general implications of our perspective: first, previous reorganizations (such as FDR’s creation of a Federal Security Agency and Carter’s creation of an Energy Department) also seem to reflect politicians’ efforts to enhance their control of administrative functions by making bureaucratic changes, and particularly by mixing domestic and national security functions; and, second, our analysis raises questions about some of the most often asserted justifications for judicial deference to agency legal interpretations.

WORKING PAPERS (copies are available by request)

Evaluating the Causes of Sexual Violence During Civil War: Cross-National Evidence (1980-1999)
Abstract: Why do some armed groups commit rape on a large scale, while others never turn to sexual violence? Although scholars and policymakers have made many claims about the rates, severity and locations of wartime sexual violence, there have been few systematic efforts to gather data on sexual violence during conflict. Much of the existing literature is based on studies of selected high profile cases, which have caused misleading impressions regarding the patterns of the incidence of wartime sexual violence. In this paper, I examine the incidence of sexual violence by all armed groups during civil wars between 1980-1999. I first present basic patterns from the data set, and then use the data in a statistical analysis to test a series of competing hypotheses about wartime sexual violence. I find strong evidence that the choice of recruitment mechanism—namely, whether the armed group forcibly recruited its members—results in the use of sexual violence. I argue that this finding supports a theory of combatant socialization, in which members of insurgent groups who are recruited by force use rape as a means of creating and maintaining unit cohesion. I find no support that ethnic conflict, ethnic or religious fractionalization or gender inequality are predictors of wartime rape. These findings undermine conventional wisdom on the causes of sexual violence and suggest that multiple mechanisms may be at work in understanding wartime sexual violence.

Explaining Sexual Violence During Civil War: Evidence from Sierra Leone (1991-2002)
Abstract: Rape reportedly occurred on a mass scale during the Sierra Leone civil war. Yet existing theories of rape during conflict—including ethnic war and state breakdown—cannot account for the incidence and patterns of rape in Sierra Leone. Drawing on over 200 original interviews of both noncombatants and ex-combatants collected during six months of fieldwork in Sierra Leone, as well as a newly available household survey of wartime human rights violations, I argue that factions with low levels of internal cohesion—in particular, those that relied on abduction as a recruitment mechanism—turned to costly forms of group violence, such as gang rape, in order to create a coherent fighting unit. I examine evidence for the theory using microlevel data in Sierra Leone and also explore the support for two alternative explanations.

The Role of Female Combatants in Armed Groups: Women and Wartime Rape in Sierra Leone (1991-2002)
Abstract: Much of the current scholarship on rape in conflict settings assumes that women are victims and men are perpetrators. In this paper, I argue against the idea that women are purely victims of sexual violence. Using both newly available survey data and original interviews with female ex-combatants, I find that in the case of the Sierra Leone civil war, female combatants were active participants in the widespread conflict-related rape. Indeed, nearly one in five incidents of the total reported rape—and 25% of the gang rape, the vast majority of the total rape—was reported to have been perpetrated by groups that included women. Preliminary evidence from other conflicts suggest that Sierra Leone in not an anomaly, and that women likely participate in violence, including sexual violence, far more often than is currently believed. Many standard interpretations of wartime rape are undermined by the existence of female perpetrators of sexual violence. To explain the involvement of women in wartime rape, I introduce a theory of sexual violence in conflict, and argue that groups with low levels of internal cohesion—in particular, groups that rely on abduction as a recruitment mechanism—must turn to costly forms of group violence, such as gang rape, in order to create a coherent fighting unit. I conclude with suggestions for future avenues of research. 

 Red Herrings: Fishing Disputes, Regime Type and Interstate Conflict (with Jessica Weeks)
Abstract: A large body of international relations research has studied the effects of regime type on patterns of militarized conflict, relying heavily on the Militarized Interstate Disputes (MID) data set. However, our project finds that the MID data set contains a set of disputes whose inclusion distorts inferences about the relationship between regime type and conflict. Specifically, the MID dataset includes disputes in which the primary threat or use of force by one state is targeted at a private, non-state actor rather than another state’s government or territory. Examples of such MIDs include fishing disputes, attacks on shipping vessels and oil rigs, and, less frequently, MIDs involving sub-state rebel groups. Based on a preliminary sample of the MID dataset, our research has found that non-state actor MIDS are both more likely to occur between democracies and more likely to be resolved peacefully than other MIDS. Therefore, we argue that the inclusion of these non-state-actor-MIDs may lead to inaccurate inferences about the relationship between democracy and state behavior in interstate disputes.