Why do governments grant amnesties to rebels after civil wars? Scholars argue that governments use amnesties to signal commitment to peace or prevent spoiling by rebel leaders. However, other reforms are stronger signals of commitment than amnesties and rebel leaders are almost never prosecuted following peace agreements, with or without amnesty. Thus, amnesties do not prevent leaders from undermining the peace. Instead, I argue amnesties protect rank and file rebels from post-war prosecution. When rebel foot soldiers could join another group, they can use the threat of exit to force their leaders to negotiate amnesties and ensure they are implemented. Using data on peace agreement provisions and implementation, coupled with a new measure of substitute rebel groups, I show that governments grant amnesties when faced with multiple similar rebel groups. Finally, I find that implementing amnesties prevents war recurrence when there are substitute groups, but does nothing without them.

Article

Replication Data

Curbstoning, the willful fabrication of survey responses by outside data collectors, threatens the integrity of the inferences drawn from data. Researchers who outsource data collection to survey collection panels, field interviewers, or research assistants should validate whether each collection agent actually collected the data. Our review of the survey auditing literature demonstrates a consistent presence of curbstoning, even at professional levels. This study proposes several general simple survey questions that have statistical distributions known a priori, as a method to detect curbstoning. By exploiting common deficiencies in statistical understanding, survey collectors imputing data to these questions can leverage empirically known distributions to determine deviation from the expected distribution of responses. We examined both authentic and fabricated surveys that included these questions and we compared the observed distributions with the expected distributions. The majority of the proposed methods had Type I error rates near or below the specified alpha level (.05). The methods demonstrated the ability to detect false responses correctly 48%–90% of the time across two samples when surveying at least 50 participants. While the methods varied in effectiveness, combining these methods demonstrated the highest statistical power, with Type I error rates lower than 1%. Additionally, even in situations with smaller sample sizes (e.g., N = 30), combining these methods allows them to be effective in detecting curbstoning. These methods provide a simple and generalizable way for researchers not present during data collection to possess accurate data.

Article

A number of studies find that democracies spend less on their military than non-democracies. Yet there are well known counter-examples, including but not limited to the United States and Israel. We contend that these counter-examples are part of a larger pattern. The relationship between regime type and military spending is conditional on external threat. Among countries that do not perceive a significant external threat to their interests, democracies allocate considerably less to the military than non-democracies. However, democracies with a significant external threat do not allocate less to the military than non-democracies. The reason prior research consistently finds that democracies, on average, spend less on the military, even while controlling for external threat, is that democracies are much less likely to have a high external threat. For example, autocracies are nearly twice as likely as democracies to have a significant external threat in our sample. An empirical analysis of military spending from 1952-2000 is consistent with these expectations. 

Article

How can the United Nations support peace implementation efforts following civil conflict? Prior research shows that third parties can use a variety of conflict management approaches to prevent civil war recurrence and that peace agreement implementation improves peace duration and quality. However, little research connects these two aspects of post-war peace. We argue that United Nations Security Council resolutions are an important tool that can be quickly used to support the peace. These resolutions can shame parties who do not comply with the agreement, deploy and coordinate resources needed for implementation, and empower local actors in post-war settings. Using implementation data for 34 Comprehensive Peace Agreements (CPAs) since 1989, as well as new data on the targets and language of UNSC resolutions, we show that language in a resolution that names and shames actors, connects stakeholders or marshals resources is associated with better compliance with a CPA.

Article and Replication Data

Appendix

How do leaders signal their intentions during a crisis? Scholars frequently use audience costs to explain how accountable leaders communicate, but these have received mixed empirical support. I argue this apparent disconnect between theory and evidence is due to simplistic assumptions about how audiences use their sanctioning power. I contend that supporters balance concerns over consistency and policy outcomes. As such, accountable leaders' ability to credibly communicate depends on their supporters' policy preferences. I apply this insight using casualty sensitivity as a conditioning policy preference. I expect, and find, that audiences only help a leader commit to fight when fighting is low cost, and actually prevent commitment when fighting is high cost. Audiences have countervailing effects on credibility due to their preferences for leaders who are both consistent and avoid costly conflict.

Article

Replication Data

We propose a format for presenting experimental results that combines a graph's strength in facilitating general pattern recognition with a table's strength in displaying numerical results. The format supplements a conventional bar graph with additional text labels and graphics, but can also be based on a dot plot. The resulting enhanced bar graph conveys general patterns about treatment effects, displays point estimates and confidence intervals for all key quantities of interest relevant to testing hypotheses (e.g., first differences in the mean of the dependent variable), and clarifies the interpretation of these quantities as treatment effects. Presenting information in a single figure avoids the need to devote scarce journal space to both a graph and a table. Moreover, an enhanced bar graph prevents readers from having to move back and forth between a graph and a table of numerical results—reducing their cognitive load, and facilitating their understanding of the findings.

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Supplementary Materials

How does fighting improve a third party's ability to facilitate a peaceful agreement among intrastate belligerents? Existing theory cannot explain why third parties can guarantee a war ending bargain but not a war avoiding one. I argue that war breaks out if third parties cannot make a credible promise to enforce a war avoiding agreement. Subsequent military intervention serves as a sunk cost signal of the third party's resolve to enforce an agreement, facilitating peace. I test this theory using a new dataset of treaty terms and duration for civil wars that began between 1944 and 1997. Consistent with the theory, guarantees only prolong the post-war peace when the guarantor intervened in the conflict. Guarantees that were not associated with an intervention do not improve the prospects for peace.