Non-State Conflicts, Weak State Capacity and Regime Change Hanna Bugge Department of Political Science Faculty of Social Sciences University of Oslo Spring/May 2014 II Non-state Conflicts, Weak State Capacity and Regime Change Hanna Bugge c Hanna Bugge 2014 Non-State Conflicts, Weak State Capacity and Regime Change Hanna Bugge http://www.duo.uio.no/ Trykk: Kopisten, Oslo II Abstract How does regime change affect non-state conflicts? Within the broader literature coup d'´etats,riots and armed conflict is linked to transition between political regimes. For non- state conflicts there is a lack of systemic inquire about this topic. To investigate this topic I start by examining how states internal conditions put the contexts where violence becomes more or less likely. I argue that states with non-representative institutions and low state capacity put forth conditions where non-state conflicts are likely to erupt. Further, I inves- tigate how regime change alters this institutional set up. The interplay of a state occupied reorganizing and the potential of a different future provide motivation and opportunity for actors dissatisfied with their current situation. If groups fail to display their importance and leverage in the transition period, stakes might be lost when the emerging regime enters office and politics start to consolidate. Using data on non-state conflicts from 1989-2008, I apply a negative binomial regression to test the effect of institutional set up and regime change on non-state conflicts. My analy- ses suggest a relationship between weak state capacity and non-state conflicts. Depending on choice of indicators, and the sample exposed, representative institutions might be an explanation of non-state conflicts. While I fail to find a general relationship between non- state conflicts and regime change, I find a strong relationship when allowing the indicator of regime change to include cases of state collapse. Year to year changes between political regimes cannot explain non-state conflicts, but long periods without a governing body does. III IV Acknowledgements First I want to thank my two supervisors, H˚avard Strand and H˚avard Hegre. Your advices and guidance have been invaluable for me in this process. I also want to thank the Peace Research Institute in Oslo (PRIO) and H˚avard Hegre for offering me a student scholarship and the opportunity to be part of the project: Reassessing the Role of Democracy: Political Institutions and Armed Conflict.1 The opportunity to participate and be part of the intellec- tual and interdisciplinary environment at PRIO, have been highly stimulating. This friendly atmosphere has also made it an enjoyable process. A special thanks goes to all those attending my presentation at PRIO i March. Your com- ments have been a valuable asset when writing this thesis. In addition I want to thank Jonas Nordkvelle for offering unconditional support with statics and programming, and to Ida Rudolfsen for writing an inspiring thesis. For the girls sitting in the attic at PRIO: Ragnhild Belbo, Stine Bergersen and Lina Elter: thank you for making this spring a joyful experience. To my fellows at Blindern, these two years would have been terribly boring without you. To Erling Hess Johnsen, Torkil Dyb Remøy, Ola Vassli and Aleksander Eilertsen: takk for kaffen! All remaining errors are my own. 1RNC project 217995, http://www.prio.org/Projects/Project/?x=972 V VI Contents 1 Introduction 1 1.1 Introduction and Research Questions . .1 1.2 Main findings . .4 1.3 Definitions . .5 1.4 Organization . .9 2 Literature Review 11 2.1 Grievance Based Explanations . 12 2.2 Political Entrepreneurs and the Manipulation of Conflicts . 16 2.3 Opportunity Based Explanations . 17 2.4 Summary and Remaining Research Gaps . 19 3 Theoretical Framework 21 3.1 Representative Institutions: Incentives to Reduce Tension and Solve Conflicts 23 3.2 State Capacity: Capacity to Govern and Provide Order . 25 3.2.1 State Capacity . 25 3.2.2 Bureaucratic and Administrative State Capacity . 27 3.3 Regime Change: Motivation and Opportunity for Conflicts . 29 3.3.1 Regime Change per se . 29 3.3.2 Direction of Regime Change . 31 3.3.3 The Mediating Effect of Regime Change by Bureaucratic and Admin- istrative State Capacity . 33 3.4 Summary . 34 4 Research Design 35 4.1 Justification of a Quantitative Approach . 35 4.2 Statistical Model and Dependent Variable . 36 4.2.1 Count Model: the Negative Binomial Regression Model . 38 VII CONTENTS 4.3 Operationalization . 40 4.3.1 Unit of analysis . 41 4.3.2 Dependent Variable: Occurrence of Non-State Conflict . 41 4.3.3 State Capacity . 50 4.3.4 Representative Political Institutions . 53 4.3.5 Regime Change . 56 4.3.6 Conditional Effects . 63 4.3.7 Control Variables . 65 4.4 Sources of Bias and Methodological Challenges . 67 4.4.1 Endogenity . 67 4.4.2 Multicollinearity . 68 4.4.3 Omitted variable bias . 68 4.4.4 Missing . 69 4.5 Summary . 70 5 Results 73 5.1 Descriptive Statistics . 73 5.2 Multivariate Regression Results . 78 5.2.1 Representative Institutions . 80 5.2.2 Bureaucratic and Administrative State Capacity . 82 5.2.3 Regime Change . 83 5.2.4 Control Variables . 87 5.2.5 Regime Change by Bureaucratic and Administrative State Capacity . 87 5.3 Probing the Results: Quantities of Interest . 90 5.3.1 Regime Change per se: State Collapse . 92 5.3.2 Direction of Change: Autocratization . 94 5.3.3 Direction of Change: Democratization . 97 5.4 Summary . 100 6 Model Diagnostics and Robustness 103 6.1 Measure of Fit . 103 6.1.1 Adequacy of the Model . 104 6.1.2 Temporal and Spatial Dependency Among Observations . 105 6.1.3 Influential Observations . 106 6.2 Alternative Specifications and Estimation Methods . 109 6.2.1 Alternative Operationalizations . 109 6.2.2 Sub-Samples by Organization Level and Region . 112 VIII CONTENTS 6.2.3 Alternative Estimations . 114 6.3 Summary . 114 7 Conclusion 117 7.1 Findings and Non-Findings . 117 7.2 Limitations and Implications . 120 Appendices 139 A Additional Statistics 141 B Model Robustness 147 C Alternative Specifications 155 D Dataset and Syntax-files 163 IX CONTENTS X List of Figures 4.1 Distribution of non-state conflicts 1989-2008 . 39 4.2 Number of fatalities in non-state conflicts, 1989-2008 . 44 4.3 Authority dimension and ideal polity types, 1989-2008 . 56 4.4 Trends in political regimes: global average SIP score, 1989-2008, . 57 4.5 Trends in regime types: frequency share, 1989-2008, . 57 4.6 Decay functions of regime change, Peru . 64 5.1 Trends in non-state conflicts, counts and country years, 1989-2008 . 74 5.2 Distribution of observations by representative institutions . 76 5.3 Distribution of observations by bureaucratic quality . 76 5.4 Frequency of non-state conflicts by types of representative institutions . 77 5.5 Occurrences of non-state violence by bureaucratic quality, histogram of bu- reaucratic levels . 79 5.6 Predicted counts over representative institutions (Model 1) . 82 5.7 Predicted counts over bureaucratic quality (Model 1) . 82 5.8 Predicted counts over of state collapse (Model 1) . 84 5.9 Predicted counts over regime change (Model 2) . 84 5.10 Predicted counts over autocratization (Model 3) . 85 5.11 Predicted counts over democratization (Model 3) . 85 5.12 Marginal effects (Model 3) . 88 5.13 Marginal effects (Model 6) . 88 5.14 Predicted counts over autocratization by bureaucratic quality (Model 6) . 90 5.15 Predicted counts over democratization bureaucratic quality (Model 6) . 90 5.16 Scenario 1: State collapse for a state at high risk . 93 5.17 Scenario 1: State collapse for a state at low risk . 93 5.18 Scenario 2: Autocratization for a state at high risk . 95 5.19 Scenario 2: Autocratization for a state at low risk . 95 XI LIST OF FIGURES 5.20 Scenario 3: Democratization for a state at high risk . 98 5.21 Scenario 3: Democratization for a state not at low risk . 98 6.1 Sensitivity analysis of states' impact on the parameter estimate of bureaucratic quality . 108 A.1 Occurrences of non-state conflicts by state collapse . 146 A.2 Occurrences of non-state conflicts by regime change . 146 A.3 Occurrences of non-state conflicts by democratization . 146 A.4 Occurrences of non-state conflicts by autocratization . 146 XII List of Tables 4.1 Categories of non-state conflicts . 46 4.2 States with most counts of non-state conflicts, 1989-2008 . 47 4.3 Yearly fatalities by type of organization, 1989-2008 . 48 4.4 Sample of non-state conflicts, 1989-2008 . 49 4.5 Polity Index and SIP index: sample values from Afghanistan, Somalia and Peru, 1989-2008 . 59 4.6 Operationalization of regime changes, sample from Peru and Afghanistan . 62 4.7 Descriptive statistics . 71 5.1 Non-state conflicts by representative institutions . 75 5.2 Non-state conflicts by bureaucratic quality . 78 5.3 Non-state conflicts by type of regime change . 80 5.4 Results, non-state conflicts 1989-2008 . 81 5.5 Results conditional model, non-state conflicts 1989-2008 . 89 5.6 Scenario values for states with low and high risk for non-state conflicts . 91 A.1 Duplicated observations . 141 A.2 Missing values on explanatory variables . 142 A.3 States included in analysis . 143 A.4 Correlation matrix - explanatory variables . 144 A.5 Variance inflation factor test . 145 B.1 Basemodels: poisson and negative binomial . 147 B.2 Results from Model 1 with robust standard errors . 148 B.3 Results from Model 2 with robust standard errors . 148 B.4 Results.