Volume 26, Issue 1

This article studies the forcible relocation of large segments of the society in times of war. Theoretically, our work is based on the hearts-and-minds approach for explaining counterinsurgents’ strategies. We link this general framework to two more specific factors: insurgents’ external support and the incumbent’s status as a foreign occupier. The main contribution of our research is given by the cross-country empirical analysis, where we combine data on population displacement and counterinsurgency campaigns after World War II. We show that insurgents’ external support and incumbents’ status as a foreign occupier are among the main factors raising the risk of forced population resettlement. This article is a systematic, quantitative study of forced displacement across a large set of conflicts, and we demonstrate that the mechanisms behind forcible relocation as an indiscriminate strategy follow major trends across insurgencies.

Unemployment is considered a significant driver behind the so-called Arab Spring, and more generally behind protests, rebellions, and civil wars. However, the empirical evidence of this hypothesised link between unemployment and political instability is scant and contradictory. This article contributes to filling this gap. In addition, this is the first study which will concentrate on the role of unemployment in the case of the Arab Spring uprisings. The study utilises regression analysis and several survey data sets. The results show that compared to the employed, the unemployed are not more likely to have participated in the Arab Spring unrests or protests in the Arab world in general. Further analyses reveal that, as expected, the unemployed are less satisfied with life and not particularly interested in politics. In turn, being dissatisfied with life does not influence the likelihood that an individual revolts, but those interested in politics are considerably more active protesters. Taken together, the results indicate that the Arab unemployed were unhappy, but due to their low interest in politics this dissatisfaction did not drive them to the streets. These findings together with some earlier results from different corners of the world suggest that the linkage of unemployment and political instability is remarkably weaker than often assumed.

Scholars debate the effects of foreign direct investment (FDI) on poor societies. Apparently, FDI could embolden governments to securitize rather than reform, an argument put forth recently by (Kishi, Roudabeh, Maggio, Guiseppe, & Raleigh, Clionadh. (2017). Foreign investment and state conflicts in Africa. Peace Economics, Peace Science and Public Policy , 23 (3), https://doi.org/10.1515/peps-2017-0007) who supply evidence within a sample of Sub Saharan African countries showing that FDI increases the number of conflict events. This study takes a critical view of their argument on conceptual and methodological grounds. Using new data for the entire world as well as a sample of developing countries, this study directly tests securitization as militarization measured as military spending and the size of armed forces and finds that several alternative measurements of the stock and flow of FDI reduces militarization, results that are robust to fixed effects estimations, Heckman selection models, and models with and without controls for ongoing armed conflict and interstate tension. Testing an Africa-only sample yields no statistically significant effects either way, but compared to the global sample, an interaction of FDI in Africa does show a positive effect. This result, however, is substantively very slight compared with the net effect of the African region where military spending is unusually greater than in other regions, but size of armed forces are smaller. These results are replicated using a measure of societal security capturing more than just the absence of war as measured by the World Economic Forum’s data. If FDI increases security without increasing militarization, then FDI is potentially a sound source of finance for poor countries. Case-study-based research might usefully unpack the political economy of defence spending in Africa and identify precisely how TNCs can be implicated in the story. Our results show, however, that generally, FDI might actually reduce militarization while increasing societal security beyond just the absence of armed violence.

This study investigates the degree of convergence in military expenditure and security outcome for the eight regional economic communities (RECs) of Africa spanning 1995–2015. We utilise the methodology of the Phillips and Sul convergence test to each of the region’s military expenditure and security outcome. The results of this study suggest that the convergence club of military expenditure and security outcome cannot be generalised across the RECs of African countries, and likewise for the overall convergence of the regions. The nonconvergence of the full sample and the presence of the different subgroup convergence clubs for both variables imply that RECs of African countries are characterised by individual factors which in turn determine an idiosyncratic course of their own path for defence and security policies. The empirics further confirm that the regions appear to have chosen dissimilar paths for their defence and security measures. Considering the cross-border and multiple security challenges facing the continent, this study recommend that African RECs harmonise their defence and security policies in order to achieve a convergence for a concerted security threats facing the regions.

Recording of crimes as terror incidents often falls in an unclear/fuzzy area due to overlaps with other crimes such as hate crimes, drug or mental health-related crimes, etc. This paper addresses the recording of crimes as terror crimes across US states, alternately considering both the prevalence and intensity of such crimes. Placing the explanatory variables under institutional, economic, social, political and enforcement categories, results show that weak institutions, ceteris paribus, undermine the recording of terror crimes. In other significant influences, states with greater ethnic homogeneity were less likely to have recorded terror crimes and more populous states had greater incidence (but not greater intensity) of recorded terror activity. Some implications for policy are discussed.