TY - JOUR A1 - Polo, Sara M.T. A1 - Wucherpfennig, Julian T1 - Trojan Horse, Copycat, or Scapegoat? Unpacking the Refugees-Terrorism Nexus JF - The Journal of Politics N2 - Widespread fear that hosting refugees will mean more terrorism in host states is at the heart of the ‘refugee crisis’. Yet, we lack rigorous evidence for such claims. This article theoretically unpacks how and under what conditions transnational refugee movements plausibly lead to different types of terrorist outcomes. Combining original data with a multi-pronged approach involving a treatment-placebo design as well as instrumental variable estimation, we provide systematic and robust evidence that sheds new light on the security implications of forced migration. Our findings challenge the claim that hosting refugees heightens the risk of “importing” terrorist attacks against nationals of host countries, especially in developed countries. However, in these countries refugees themselves are particularly prone to becoming the targets of terrorist attacks by natives, driven by fear and revenge. Dominant policy responses to the refugee crisis that raise fears and suspicions are therefore not only ill-suited, but potentially counterproductive. Y1 - 2022 UR - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:b1570-opus4-38244 N1 - This is a manuscript version of an article published in The Journal of Politics. The final authenticated version is available online at https://doi.org/10.1086/714926 VL - 84 IS - 1 SP - 33 EP - 49 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Rodríguez Sánchez, Alejandra A1 - Wucherpfennig, Julian A1 - Rischke, Ramona A1 - Iacus, Stefano Maria T1 - Search-and-rescue in the Central Mediterranean Route does not induce migration: Predictive modeling to answer causal queries in migration research JF - Scientific Reports N2 - State- and private-led search-and-rescue are hypothesized to foster irregular migration (and thereby migrant fatalities) by altering the decision calculus associated with the journey. We here investigate this ‘pull factor’ claim by focusing on the Central Mediterranean route, the most frequented and deadly irregular migration route towards Europe during the past decade. Based on three intervention periods—(1) state-led Mare Nostrum, (2) private-led search-and-rescue, and (3) coordinated pushbacks by the Libyan Coast Guard—which correspond to substantial changes in laws, policies, and practices of search-and-rescue in the Mediterranean, we are able to test the ‘pull factor’ claim by employing an innovative machine learning method in combination with causal inference. We employ a Bayesian structural time-series model to estimate the effects of these three intervention periods on the migration flow as measured by crossing attempts (i.e., time-series aggregate counts of arrivals, pushbacks, and deaths), adjusting for various known drivers of irregular migration. We combine multiple sources of traditional and non-traditional data to build a synthetic, predicted counterfactual flow. Results show that our predictive modeling approach accurately captures the behavior of the target time-series during the various pre-intervention periods of interest. A comparison of the observed and predicted counterfactual time-series in the post-intervention periods suggest that pushback policies did affect the migration flow, but that the search-and-rescue periods did not yield a discernible difference between the observed and the predicted counterfactual number of crossing attempts. Hence we do not find support for search-and-rescue as a driver of irregular migration. In general, this modeling approach lends itself to forecasting migration flows with the goal of answering causal queries in migration research. KW - Human behaviour KW - Population dynamics Y1 - 2023 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-38119-4 VL - 13 IS - 1 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Gleditsch, Kristian Skrede A1 - Hug, Simon A1 - Schubiger, Livia I. A1 - Wucherpfennig, Julian T1 - International Conventions and Non-State Actors: Selection, Signaling and Reputation Effects JF - Journal of Conflict Resolution N2 - Whether international humanitarian norms are respected during and after civil conflict depends on the behavior of both governments and nonstate actors (NSAs). However, international conventions on the protection of civilians generally do not address NSAs, as such conventions are open only to the representatives of states. In a pioneering initiative, the nongovernmental organization Geneva Call has started to address this problem by soliciting NSAs to sign “deeds of commitment” to ban particular activities violating humanitarian norms. Focusing on the case of antipersonnel mines, we examine why NSAs would choose to sign conventions that limit their autonomy, and whether such conventions can change the behavior of governments and nonstate armed groups. We propose a game-theoretic model of how the interaction between governments and NSAs shape their incentives to commit to and comply with international humanitarian norms. Our empirical evidence highlights the importance of these interdependencies between governments and NSAs in the realm of humanitarian engagements. KW - civil wars, civilian casualties, human rights, international treaties Y1 - 2018 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1177/0022002716650924 SN - 0022-0027 VL - 62 IS - 2 SP - 346 EP - 380 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Bormann, Nils-Christian A1 - Cederman, Lars-Erik A1 - Gates, Scott A1 - Graham, Benjamin A.T. A1 - Hug, Simon A1 - Strom, Kaare A1 - Wucherpfennig, Julian T1 - Power Sharing: Institutions, Behavior, and Peace JF - American Journal of Political Science Y1 - 2019 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1111/ajps.12407 VL - 63 IS - 1 SP - 84 EP - 100 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Wucherpfennig, Julian T1 - Executive Power Sharing in the Face of Civil War JF - International Studies Quarterly N2 - Scholars have debated whether executive power sharing can secure peace in multiethnic states, but concerns about endogeneity due to reverse causation render this a difficult problem for empirical analyses. In the absence of a suitable instrumental variable, I explore an actor-based approach by studying a simple formal model. This highlights the conditions under which governments are likely to share power with a domestic challenger depending on the threat of violence. I then formulate a statistical “strategic selection” model that closely mirrors the theoretical model, thereby directly incorporating endogeneity. Applied to data at the level of ethnic groups, the estimation results indicate that power sharing is indeed enacted strategically by governments in anticipation of the risk of conflict. However, shedding new light on an ongoing debate, I find that the critics have overstated the case against power sharing: rather than spurring it, power sharing robustly reduces civil conflict. Y1 - 2021 UR - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:b1570-opus4-39905 N1 - This is a preprint version of an article published in International Studies Quarterly. The final authenticated version is available online at: https://doi.org/10.1093/isq/sqab047 VL - 65(4) SP - 1027 EP - 1039 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Wucherpfennig, Julian A1 - Cederman, Lars-Erik T1 - Pre-Colonial and Colonial Origins of Inclusive Peace JF - The Journal of Politics N2 - In a recent contribution to this journal, McAlexander (2020, hereafter McAlexander) seeks to re-analyze Wucherpfennig, Hunziker and Cederman (2016, hereafter WHC) who instrument the effect of ethnic group inclusion on civil conflict by exploiting differences in colonial governance between the French and the British empire. McAlexander proposes a research design that replaces the between-colony dimension of WHC’s comparison with a continuous measure of indirect rule that varies be-tween British colonies. We show that McAlexander’s study hardly poses a viable reanalysis because his approach is compromised by problems of ecological inference and post-treatment confounding, lead-ing to biased inference by design. We propose a more informative reanalysis, indicating that British colonialism built on suitable customary institutions, unlike the French empire. Although tentative, our analytical extension lends support to WHC’s original findings, most importantly that inclusion reduces the risk of post-colonial civil conflict. KW - Ethnic inclusion, civil conflict; colonialism, customary institutions, endogeneity Y1 - 2022 UR - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:b1570-opus4-43555 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Metternich, Nils W. A1 - Wucherpfennig, Julian T1 - Strategic rebels: a spatial econometric approach to rebel fighting durations in civil wars JF - International Interactions N2 - Recent research on multi-actor civil wars highlights that rebel organizations condition their conflict behavior on that of other rebel organizations, with competition and free-riding constituting the core theoretical mechanisms. We provide a new actor-centric approach to explicitly model strategic interdependence in multi-actor civil wars. We argue that rebel organizations have incentives to remain mobilized until the end of a conflict to maintain their power to negotiate, power to spoil, power to enforce, and power to protect. This induces strategic complements that dominate duration dynamics in multi-actor conflicts. Based on a network game-theoretic model, we derive a spatial econometric framework that allows for a direct test of strategic interdependence. We find that the estimated duration interdependence is positive but partially offset in secessionist conflicts where the public goods nature of the incompatibility also induces strategic substitution effects. KW - Civil war, duration analysis; network games; spatial econometrics; strategic interaction Y1 - 2020 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1080/03050629.2020.1737800 VL - 46 IS - 2020 ER - TY - BOOK A1 - Cederman, Lars-Erik A1 - Hug, Simon A1 - Wucherpfennig, Julian T1 - Sharing Power, Securing Peace? Ethnic Inclusion and Civil War. Y1 - 2022 UR - https://www.cambridge.org/de/academic/subjects/politics-international-relations/comparative-politics/sharing-power-securing-peace-ethnic-inclusion-and-civil-war?format=PB SN - 9781108418140 PB - Cambridge University Press CY - Cambridge ER - TY - RPRT A1 - Sorg, Alexander A1 - Wucherpfennig, Julian T1 - Before deploying more U.S. forces to Europe, consider the consequences T2 - War on the Rocks Y1 - 2022 UR - https://warontherocks.com/2022/08/before-deploying-more-u-s-forces-to-europe-consider-the-consequences/ ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Wucherpfennig, Julian A1 - Kachi, Aya A1 - Bormann, Nils-Christian A1 - Hunziker, Philipp T1 - A Fast Estimator for Binary Choice Models with Spatial, Temporal, and Spatio-Temporal Interdependence JF - Political Analysis N2 - Binary outcome models are frequently used in the social sciences and economics. However, such models are difficult to estimate with interdependent data structures, including spatial, temporal, and spatio-temporal autocorrelation because jointly determined error terms in the reduced-form specification are generally analytically intractable. To deal with this problem, simulation-based approaches have been proposed. However, these approaches (i) are computationally intensive and impractical for sizable datasets commonly used in contemporary research, and (ii) rarely address temporal interdependence. As a way forward, we demonstrate how to reduce the computational burden significantly by (i) introducing analytically-tractable pseudo maximum likelihood estimators for latent binary choice models that exhibit interdependence across space and time and by (ii) proposing an implementation strategy that increases computational efficiency considerably. Monte Carlo experiments show that our estimators recover the parameter values as good as commonly used estimation alternatives and require only a fraction of the computational cost. Y1 - 2021 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1017/pan.2020.54 VL - 29(4) SP - 570 EP - 576 ER -