When and why do governments and dissidents escalate and de-escalate their hostility towards one another? This project develops a theory to answer this question and specifies empirical time series models to test a number of hypotheses implied by the theory. Specifically, the project advances new theory focusing on government and dissident leaders and the impact that their motivations have on tactical decisions over the course of a civil conflict. Drawing on theories of leadership and political survival, behavioral rules are deduced that lead actors to make certain tactical choices under given contextual conditions. Second, the theory is expanded to analyze behavioral exchanges among multiple dissident groups in competition with a government. Recent data produced from Project Civil Strife (PCS) is able to overcome present data limitations by collecting information on the levels of behavior exchanged among multiple domestic actors. Third, the project analyzes how outcomes of government-dissident interactions affect the propensity of leader turnover and how critical events such as leader turnover, coup d'etats, and regime changes affect government-dissident interactions. Such empirical work aids in forecasting the escalation and de-escalation of conflict and developing policy prescriptions to reduce tensions between social actors and the government. Finally, the project directly analyzes the relationship between leaders and their coalitions and tests if and how leaders' tactical choices are influenced by their coalitions' desires.
Broader Social Value: The study will make contributions in both the academic and policy arenas ranging from improved academic understanding of government and dissident leaders' tactical decisions in domestic conflict to informing the efforts of practitioners involved in confronting domestic challenges. As a secondary objective, the project also develops research tools and data sets that can be used in a variety of other research projects such as those focusing on trade and conflict, investment and conflict, forced migration, and domestic-international conflict linkages.
