Abstract:  In recent decades, social scientists have begun to employ the rigorous research methods that used to be the province of the natural sciences. This evidence-based approach has revolutionized how academic work is judged, how policies are created and evaluated and, now, how war is viewed. At the forefront of this movement, the Empirical Studies of Conflict Project (ESOC) has developed a large body of evidence on conflict that enables a new perspective on the causes and effects of violence. Information and War presents a new framework to understand the conflicts that have prevailed since World War II and the kind in which the US was so recently embroiled: asymmetric contests where a greater power struggles to contain an insurgency.

About the Speakers: Dr. Joseph Felter joined CISAC as a senior research scholar in September 2011.

Felter retired from the US Army as a Colonel following a career as a Special Forces and foreign area officer with distinguished service in a variety of special operations and diplomatic assignments. He has conducted foreign internal defense and security assistance missions across East and Southeast Asia and has participated in combat deployments to Panama, Iraq, and Afghanistan.

Prior to arriving at CISAC, he led the International Security and Assistance Force, Counterinsurgency Advisory and Assistance Team (CAAT) in Afghanistan reporting directly to Gen. Stanley McChrystal and Gen. David Petraeus and advising them on counterinsurgency strategy. Felter held leadership positions in the US Army Rangers and Special Forces and directed the Combating Terrorism Center (CTC) at West Point from 2005-2008. He is Co-Director of the Empirical Studies of Conflict Project (ESOC) and a research fellow at the Hoover Institution.

He has published many scholarly articles on the topic of  counterinsurgency and has focused on the study of how to address the root causes of terrorism and political violence. Some highlights include: “Aid Under Fire: Development Projects and Civil Conflict” with Benjamin Crost and Patrick Johnston (American Economic Review), "Can Hearts and Minds be Bought? The Economics of Counterinsurgency in Iraq," with Eli Berman and Jacob N. Shapiro (Journal of Political Economy), and "Do Working Men Rebel? Insurgency and Unemployment in Afghanistan, Iraq, and the Philippines," with Eli Berman, Michael Callen, and Jacob N. Shapiro (Journal of Conflict Resolution).

Felter holds a BS from West Point, an MPA from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, and a PhD in Political Science from Stanford University.

Dr. Jacob N. Shapiro is Associate Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University and co-directs the Empirical Studies of Conflict Project. His active research projects study political violence, economic and political development in conflict zones, security policy, and urban conflict. He is author of The Terrorist’s Dilemma: Managing Violent Covert Organizations. His research has been published or is forthcoming in broad range of academic and policy journals including American Journal of Political Science, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, International Organization, International Security, Journal of Political Economy, and World Politics as well as a number of edited volumes. Shapiro is a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations, an Associate Editor of World Politics, a Faculty Fellow of the Association for Analytic Learning about Islam and Muslim Societies (AALIMS), a Research Fellow at the Center for Economic Research in Pakistan (CERP), and served in the U.S. Navy and Naval Reserve. Ph.D. Political Science, M.A. Economics, Stanford University. B.A. Political Science, University of Michigan.

Abstract: 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 those most reliant on tourism, and when the otherwise prohibitive legitimacy costs of using terrorism are expected to be lowest. I argue that legitimacy costs vary with factors such as government regime type, rebel aims, rebel funding sources, and government targeting of civilians/repression. I also explore prominent alternative arguments, including the notion that terrorism is a weapon of the weak, and that it is caused by competition among groups (outbidding).

About the Speaker: Page Fortna is Chair of the Political Science Department at Columbia University. Her research focuses on terrorism, the durability of peace in the aftermath of both civil and interstate wars, and war termination. She is the author of two books: Does Peacekeeping Work? Shaping Belligerents Choices after Civil War (Princeton University Press, 2008) and Peace Time: Cease-Fire Agreements and the Durability of Peace (Princeton University Press, 2004). She has published articles in journals such as World Politics, International Organization, International Studies Quarterly, and International Studies Review. She is currently working on a project on terrorism in civil wars. 

Fortna is a member of the Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies at Columbia University. She received the Karl Deutsch Award from the International Studies Association in 2010. She has held fellowships at the Olin Institute at Harvard, the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Hoover Institution. She received her BA from Wesleyan University and her PhD from Harvard University in 1998.

Abstract: In fragile states, regimes must cultivate military forces strong enough to ward off external threats, but loyal enough to resist launching a coup. This requires that leader distinguish the loyal from the untrustworthy, a particularly challenging exercise in post-conflict settings with weak institutions. In this study, I explore how Congolese soldiers operating in North Kivu, the largest operational theater in the Democratic Republic of Congo and the epicenter of one of the most violent conflicts in Africa, solve this crucial task. I argue that leaders use non-payment as a form of trial and tribulation that reveals commitment by driving non-loyal soldiers to defect and loyal soldiers to weather challenging times. Non-payments creates a dual-pronged screening process because unpaid soldiers engage in unit-managed extortion and violence against civilians, which is used to both test and generate loyalty. To detail and assess this argument, I couple thick description based on 100 open-ended qualitative interviews with a fine-grained quantitative analysis of 350 members of the armed forces of the Democratic Republic of Congo. This analysis provides a novel explanation for how leaders overcome classic screening dilemmas in ways that ultimately drives violence against civilians. 

His work has been supported by the United States Institute for Peace, Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab, and Texas A&M Center for Conflict and Development, among others. Grant is a 2015-2016 Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Completion Fellow and Resident Fellow at the Stanford Center on International Conflict and Negotiation.

Abstract: From the Trent Affair of 1861, to Yasser Arafat’s speech at the United Nations in 1974, to Syrian opposition lobbying today, acts of insurgent diplomacy have defined some of the most memorable and important events in international politics. International diplomacy is a ubiquitous feature of insurgent politics because it is intrinsically linked to how groups pursue third-party political and military support. However, although war-time diplomacy is central to insurgent politics, scholars still cannot explain the substantial and puzzling variation in insurgent diplomatic strategies over time. The fact is that rebel groups can choose to engage with different types of actors, solicit different types of assistance, and have a diverse set of political-military objectives motivating their diplomatic strategies abroad. This article examines the varying grand strategies of insurgent diplomacy, and more specifically, when and why rebel groups focus their diplomatic attention on certain international actors over others. This framework is then applied to the international diplomacy of the Iraqi Kurdish liberation movement from 1958 to 1990.

About the Speaker: Morgan L. Kaplan is a CISAC Predoctoral Fellow for 2015-2016. He is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Political Science at the University of Chicago.

Kaplan’s dissertation examines the strategic use of international diplomacy by insurgent groups to solicit help from third-party actors. The primary empirical focus of his research is on the Iraqi Kurdish and Palestinian national movements from the 1960s to 1990s. In addition to his work on insurgent diplomacy, he also studies the politics of intra-insurgent competition and cooperation in multi-party civil wars.

His research has been supported by the Smith Richardson Foundation, the Project on Middle East Political Science, and the Nicholson Center for British Studies, among others. He has conducted field work in Iraqi Kurdistan, Israel/Palestine, Jordan, and the United Kingdom. He holds a B.A. in International Affairs from the George Washington University, and an M.A. in Political Science from the University of Chicago.