Abstract

Why do insurgencies erupt in some places and not in others? This article exploits an original violent event database of 274,428 municipality-month observations in Colombia to determine the conditions favoring organized violence at the subnational level. The data cast doubt on the conventional correlates of war: poverty, rough terrain, lootable natural resources, and large, sparsely distributed populations. The evidence suggests that rebellions begin not in localities that afford sanctuaries, impoverished recruits, and abundant finances, but instead in regions providing receptacles of collective action: the organizational legacies of war. Specifically, the data indicate that regions affected by past mobilization are six times more likely to experience rebellion than those without a tradition of armed organized action. The significant correlation between prior and future mobilization is robust across different measurements of the concepts, levels of aggregations of the data, units of analysis, and specifications of the model. These include rare events and spatial lag analyses. These results highlight the need for micro conflict data, theory disentangling the causes of war onset from those of war recurrence, and a reorientation away from physical geography and back to the human and social geography that determines if rebellion is organizationally feasible. The findings suggest new avenues of research on the post-war trajectories of armed organizations, the causes of repeated war, and the micro-foundations of rebellion.

How does the resource base of a rebel group impact its membership, structure, and behavior? While scholars, analysts, and policy makers increasingly link natural resources to the onset and duration of civil war, this article explores how resource endowments shape the character and conduct of rebel groups. This article identifies a rebel "resource curse" much like the one that undermines state institutions in resource-rich environments. While the presence of economic endowments makes it possible for leaders to recruit on the basis of short-term rewards, these groups are flooded with opportunistic joiners who exhibit little commitment to the long-term goals of the organization. In resource-poor environments, leaders attract new recruits by drawing on social ties to make credible promises about the private rewards that will come with victory. Opportunistic joiners stay away from these movements, leaving a pool of activist recruits willing to invest their time and energy in the hope of reaping large gains in the future.

Following the end of the Cold War, the United States and its allies recognized that it was in their vital security interests to promote stable transitions in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) and the New Independent States (NIS) of the former Soviet Union. For the most part, such transitions would depend on the efforts of the states in transition themselves, including many that had been newly formed. However, one way in which the Western nations could help was by economic assistance -- both financial and technical.

The most abundant and efficacious form of financing will eventually be direct investment by Western private industry combined with indigenous investment in the countries; however, many of the transitioning countries, particularly those of the NIS did not have many attractive investment targets, with the possible exception of the natural resources sector. Recognizing this, the Western countries established a variety of unilateral and multilateral mechanisms to provide interim financing. These mechanisms utilized existing multilateral institutions such as the World Bank Group and the International Monetary Fund as well as existing unilateral institutions such as the United States' Export-Import Bank, the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, and the Trade and Development Agency. The charters and agendas of several existing institutions were expanded to address the specific issues in CEE/NIS. In addition, they established new multilateral institutions such as the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and unilateral institutions such as several enterprise funds set up by the United States and TACIS (Technical Assistance to the Commonwealth of Independent States) set up by the European Union.

In conjunction with these sources of finance the Western countries also initiated an extensive series of programs designed to address specific economic development and security issues in the region. These programs provided their own funding for projects, provided extensive technical assistance, and in some cases were designed to attract and work with Western private industry. One such program is the Nuclear Cities Initiative (NCI), which is managed by the U.S. Department of Energy. NCI's primary objective is to help prevent the flow of critical weapons technology and personnel from Russia to countries aspiring to acquire nuclear weapons. NCI's approach is to assist Russia in downsizing its nuclear weapons complex by creating sustainable, non-military employment for nuclear weapon specialists in Russia's closed nuclear cities. NCI is designed to build infrastructure necessary to attract private investment and to facilitate the efforts of private investors, thereby leveraging NCI's own budget.

Many of the sources of finance cited herein require a Western company as a strategic partner and co-investor. Thus the missions of NCI and these financial sources are highly complementary. Recognizing this, Stanford's Center for International Security and Cooperation, under contract to NCI and under subcontract to the University of California Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, undertook a project to assemble information on many sources of finance that were applicable to NCI's mission, particularly those that are at least partially capitalized by the United States Government (USG). The intent was to make this information available to NCI partners to facilitate the establishment of ventures co-financed by NCI, the Russian Federation, private Western industry, and the sources described herein. While this research was performed for the purposes of NCI, much of the data are generally applicable to other projects seeking financing in Russia.

Why did the Soviet Union break up, whereas the Russian Federation has so far held together in the face of ostensibly similar secession crises? To what extent is regional separatism a product of economic incentives or local ethnic identity? Few areas of the world display a greater complexity of ethnic relations than the post-Soviet empire, and there are few with greater long-term strategic significance. Drawing on insights from political science, sociology, and anthropology, A Federation Imperiled asks why political elites in some regions in post-Soviet Russia have shown more of a proclivity for separatism from Moscow than others. Focusing on Chechnya, Dagestan, Sakha, Buryatia, Tyva, Pskov, and Primorye, this volume explores political programs articulated by top officials in the regions, local separtist or anti-separtist movements, and disputes between Moscow and the regions over natural resources and external trade. This is the first major comparative study on the Soviet Union and the Russian Federation.

As a result of the rapid changes following the breakup of the Soviet bloc, there were suddenly new markets of hundreds of millions of people, covering a large portion of the earth, containing large fractions of many of the world's natural resources, possessing extensive research and production capacity, with a highly educated workforce, and utilizing many advanced technologies. Russia contained a large fraction of these factors, especially those oriented toward high technology, and hence it behooves international companies to formulate and implement strategies for doing business in Russia.

This particular study was undertaken because the quest for cooperative ventures has been a major portion of the strategy of many Russian defense enterprises and U.S. companies in addressing these changes. We deemed it important to gain a better understanding of the factors affecting companies' and enterprises' decisions regarding cooperative ventures and some of the determinants of success, as well as to analyze strategies for U.S. companies and Russian enterprises contemplating or participating in cooperative ventures.

The conclusions in this report are based on case-study interviews with companies and enterprises engaged in cooperative ventures. All of the Russian enterprises in our study, with the exception of some start-ups, had been heavily involved in military work; the American companies were from both the military and civilian sectors.