Longitudinal and Contextual Analyses of Violent Crime in the European Union

Patricia L. McCall, Sociology, North Carolina State University

Research Grant, 2009, 2010

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The purpose of this research is to explore the extent to which retrenchment in welfare support is related to homicide trends across European countries between 1994 and 2010. Using a longitudinal decomposition design that allows for stronger causal inferences compared to typical cross-sectional designs, we examine these potential linkages between social support spending and homicide with data collected from a heterogeneous sample of European nations, including twenty Western nations and nine less frequently analyzed East-Central nations, during recent years in which European nations generally witnessed substantial changes in homicide rates as well as both economic prosperity and fiscal crisis. Results suggest that even incremental, short-term changes in welfare support spending are associated with short-term reductions in homicide specifically, impacting homicide rates within two to three years for this sample of European nations.

Results suggest that even incremental, short-term changes in welfare support spending are associated with short-term reductions in homicide.

Beijing-Seoul Families and Neighborhoods Study

Clifton R. Emery, School of Social Welfare, Yonsei University

Research Grant, 2011, 2012

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What do neighbors, friends, and extended family members do in response to domestic violence and child abuse, and does it make a difference? Are there cultural differences in this informal social control of family violence, and do such differences explain cultural differences in the prevalence and severity of domestic violence and child maltreatment? These are the principal questions the Families and Neighborhoods Study (FNS) attempts to answer, using newly developed measures of informal social control on random probability samples of cities. The FNS also tests propositions developed from Emery’s (2011) theoretical typology of domestic violence. The principal investigator (PI) received funding from HFG in 2011 and 2012 to carry out the FNS survey in Beijing, China, and Seoul, South Korea. In 2011 the study team interviewed 506 adults in a representative random probability sample of 506 families in Beijing. In 2012 the study team followed up with 541 interviews of adults in a representative random probability sample of families in Seoul. The findings from both cities suggest that whether your neighbors do anything, and especially what they do, may matter. The findings also suggest that the neighborhood collective efficacy measure may not be the best way to capture informal social control of family violence, as the data do not show the expected relationships between collective efficacy and family violence, but do show relationships between the PI’s informal social control measures and family violence.

Based on the promising findings from the HFG-funded study, the FNS has now expanded to include data from representative samples from Beijing, Seoul, Hanoi, Ulaan Baatar, Kathmandu (collected and currently under analysis or review), Philadelphia (collection in progress) and Madrid (planned for summer 2014). In one of the twists of fate that so frequently baffle academics, the findings from the first two cities (Seoul and Beijing) remain in the peer review process while findings from later waves of data collection have already been published. This fact frustratingly prevents a detailed discussion of the Beijing-Seoul findings here. It is hoped that this omission can be corrected soon as the Seoul findings are presently under revision for the Journal of Interpersonal Violence.

The findings from both cities suggest that whether your neighbors do anything, and especially what they do, may matter.

In Hanoi, the FNS found that acts of informal social control by neighbors that try to protect the child are associated with less very severe abuse of the child (Emery, Trung & Wu, 2013). The same study found that when very severe abuse did occur, abuse-related externalizing behavior problems were lower when parents reported protective informal social control by neighbors (ibid). The goals of current data collection include making possible East-West comparisons of informal social control and the assessment of causal relationships via experimental techniques on population-based surveys.

The FNS has also found important relationships between variables suggested by Emery’s (2011) typology and intimate partner violence in Kathmandu and Ulaan Baatar.

Bibliography

1. Emery, C.R., Trung, H. & Wu, S. Neighborhood Informal Social Control of Child Maltreatment: A Comparison of Protective and Punitive Approaches. Child Abuse & Neglect, June, 2013. DOI: 10.1016/j.chiabu.2013.05.002.

2. Emery, C.R. Disorder or Deviant Order? Re-Theorizing Domestic Violence in Terms of Order, Power and Legitimacy. A Typology. Aggression and Violent Behavior, 16(6): 525-540, November-December, 2011.

Ethnic Violence vs. Imperial Segregations: Multinational Criminality in the Russian Imperial City as a Space of Conflict and Cooperation

Ilya V. Gerasimov, Center for the Study of Nationalism and Empire

Research Grant, 2011

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For over two decades, I’ve been studying a variety of topics in the history of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union. As I see now, all of them have one thing in common: they address different aspects of the phenomenon of societal self-organization, involving various social groups in diverse historical circumstances. The research project that resulted in the writing up of the book manuscript with the support by the foundation began in the late 1990s, and was conducted in archives and libraries in five countries. Focusing on case studies of four Russian imperial cities (Vilna [Vilnius], Odessa, Kazan, and Nizhny Novgorod), I was trying to reconstruct the peculiar worldview of the majority (close to 90 percent) of the urban population in Imperial Russia that can be cautiously identified as plebeian society: i.e., all those who did not belong to the fairly well-studied privileged and middle classes. The collected materials revealed a paradoxical situation: in the early twentieth century, when the population of urban centers was swelling at an astonishing pace (mainly due to migrants from the countryside), both the outdated legal norms and the modern hegemonic public discourses failed to regulate the bulk of the urban society. The imperial legislation did not fit the realities of the rising mass society, while the majority could not culturally, socially, and even technically (e.g. in terms of availability of the produced print runs of newspapers) belong to any public sphere. And yet, this rising mass plebeian society displayed a surprisingly high coherence and even standardization that can be seen in all four very different and distant cities that were used as case studies in my research. How was this coherence achieved in a society in flux, contrary to the inertia of social institutions and traditions, in violation of the legal norms of the well-ordered police state, and beyond the reach of public discourses?

Ethnically marked criminal violence emerged not only as a socially menacing phenomenon but also as an important indicator of intergroup boundary realignments.

I argue that there was in fact a common language of communication within that society, and self-representation of that society, only it was nontextual (nondiscursive). Social practices can be viewed as such a distinctive language of social self-description and self-representation. I identify three such main social practices: patriarchality (that helped people to sustain stability by pretending to be unaware of the competing projects of political or national mobilization); the middle ground (a peculiar mechanism of creative mutual misunderstanding); and criminal violence. In particular, ethnically marked criminal violence emerged not only as a socially menacing phenomenon but also as an important indicator of intergroup boundary realignments, and a side-effect of new patterns of emerging social solidarity. Violence can be senseless but is never meaningless, and my study elaborates on discovering those context-sensitive meanings of violence used by plebeian social groups that had no means or skills to express their interests and concerns through any elaborated public discourse and therefore relied on direct action.

Seeing Like a Peacebuilder: An Ethnography of International Intervention

Séverine Autesserre, Political Science, Barnard College

Research Grant, 2010, 2011

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Why do international peace interventions so often fail to reach their full potential? To answer this question, I conducted several years of research in conflict zones around the world, including in Burundi, Congo, Israel and the Palestinian Territories, South Sudan, and Timor-Leste. My main finding is that everyday elements such as the expatriates’ social habits, standard security procedures, and habitual approaches to collecting information on violence strongly impact the effectiveness of intervention efforts.

A number of interveners challenge the dominant modes of thinking and acting.

The publications based on this research demonstrate that individuals from all parts of the world and all walks of life, who would have little in common outside of the peacebuilding arena, share a number of practices, habits, and narratives when they serve as interveners in conflict zones. These shared modes of operation enable foreign peacebuilders to function in the field, but they often have unintended consequences that decrease the effectiveness of international efforts. The way that interveners construct knowledge of their areas of deployment prevents them from fully grasping the contexts in which they work. Consequently, they tend to rely on overly simplistic narratives that obscure the complex causes of and potential solutions to violence. The foreign peacebuilders’ everyday practices also create and perpetuate firm boundaries and a wide power disparity between themselves and local people. These dynamics create numerous obstacles to the peace efforts and frequently prompt local counterparts to evade, resist, or reject international initiatives.

A number of interveners challenge the dominant modes of thinking and acting. Their peacebuilding efforts are usually more effective than those of their peers who follow the prevailing practices. However, these individuals often end up either forced to conform or so frustrated that they change careers and leave the peacebuilding field. Despite their marginalization, these dissenters are tremendously important: By looking at their alternative modes of operation, we can begin to specify the conditions under which peace interventions can be more effective.

Bibliography

1. Peaceland: Conflict Resolution and the Everyday Politics of International Intervention (Cambridge University Press, 2014). Publisher's webpage for the book

2. "Dangerous Tales: Dominant Narratives on the Congo and their Unintended Consequences," African Affairs 111 (443), pp. 202-222, Spring 2012.

Diaspora and Conflict: The Liberians of Staten Island

Jonny Steinberg, Institute for Security Studies, Pretoria

Research Grant, 2008, 2009

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This is a study of a community of Liberian refugees and economic migrants in a housing project in the New York City borough of Staten Island. The purpose was to examine the ways in which a diaspora takes conflict from home with it, and, in particular, the ways in which diasporas, frozen in the moment of their flight and caught up in old resentments, might transmit conflict back to the home country.

The research results were published in two forms. The first was a book titled Little Liberia: An African Odyssey in New York City. It documented and analyzed a conflict that raged in Staten Island’s Liberian community from 2003 to 2008. I argued that the community had erected a stage on which it had played out, in miniature, so to speak, its deep fears about the nature of the postwar settlement taking shape back home. The very distance from home is what gave the theater its credibility; in the mutual anonymity of exile, people invented horrendous histories for their neighbors, such that it appeared that the most horrendous of the characters who had prosecuted the war back home were living on Staten Island. The conflict was thus incubated in exile. It was not, though, to the best of my knowledge, transmitted back home inasmuch as I saw no evidence of Staten Islanders funding conflict in Liberia.

The conflict was thus incubated in exile.

The second research product was an article published in the journal African Affairs; it documented and interpreted the Liberian Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s (TRC) work among the Liberian diaspora in the United States. The TRC undertook this work on the grounds that the diaspora was intimately involved in Liberia’s civil war and that no process of reconciliation would be complete without its involvement. I argued that the TRC’s diaspora project failed, in large part because the body’s work was seen as a substitute for an endeavor to bring to justice those who had prosecuted the war.

Bibliography

1. Jonny Steinberg, Little Liberia: An African Odyssey in New York, London and Johannesburg, 2011.

2. Jonny Steinberg, "A Truth Commission Goes Abroad: Liberian Transitional Justice in New York," African Affairs, 110 (2011), pp. 35-53

War and Economic Development in Vietnam and Sierra Leone

Edward Miguel, Economics, University of California, Berkeley

Research Grant, 2006

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The negative consequences of war on society are severe. Armed conflict displaces populations, destroys capital and infrastructure, damages the social fabric of communities, endangers civil liberties, and can create health and famine crises. There is currently a large literature on the conditions that lead to the outbreak of armed violence, but the long-term economic impacts of war remain relatively understudied empirically. The goal of this research project was to investigate both the short- and long-run legacies of armed conflict resulting from the U.S. bombing of Vietnam in the 1960s and 1970s and from the 1991–1992 civil war in Sierra Leone.

One publication that resulted from this project is “The Long Run Impact of Bombing Vietnam” (co-author Gerard Roland), forthcoming in the Journal of Development Economics. Many poverty trap models of economic growth predict that sufficiently severe war damage to the capital stock could lead to a “conflict trap” that condemns an economy to long-term underdevelopment. Despite this prediction, results from our research suggest that this is not necessarily always the case. We find no long-run impacts of U.S. bombing on local Vietnamese poverty rates, consumption levels, or population density over twenty-five years after the end of wartime bombing. Vietnam was able to recover largely due to the central government’s heavy postwar investment in both physical and human capital and reallocation of resources toward the most heavily bombed regions.

We find no long-run impacts of U.S. bombing on local Vietnamese poverty rates, consumption levels, or population density over twenty-five years after the end of wartime bombing.

A second publication, “War and Local Collective Action in Sierra Leone” (co-author John Bellows), in the Journal of Public Economics in 2009, carries out statistical analysis in Sierra Leone and similarly shows that despite war’s horrific humanitarian costs, the legacies of civil conflict are not always catastrophic. We find that individual exposure to the brutal civil war in Sierra Leone has lead to increased political participation, community activism, and local public good provision. This political mobilization has been coupled with, and may partially explain, the economic expansion Sierra Leone has experienced in early postwar years. These results run counter to the claims that civil war’s legacies are always major long-run impediments to African economic and political development. Moreover, since Sub-Saharan Africa is the most conflict-prone region today, these results offer some hope that even the poorest and most violent African nations can avoid the persistent negative economic and social consequences that civil conflict can potentially lead to.

However, caution must be called for in drawing broad lessons from this research regarding war’s impacts on economic growth in general. Unlike many other poor countries, postwar Vietnam benefited from relatively strong and centralized political institutions with the power to mobilize human and material resources in the reconstruction effort. Sierra Leone may be a special case of civil conflict as well; the war there was not fought along ethnic or religious lines. Though our findings may help make sense of the rapid economic growth and political consolidation that some countries have experienced following protracted armed conflict, more empirical evidence is needed before general claims about the effects of war on long-run economic performance can be made with confidence.

The research that resulted from the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation grant also provided key material for two books that I have written in recent years, Economic Gangsters (Princeton University Press, 2008, co-author Raymond Fisman) and Africa’s Turn? (MIT Press, 2009). Both books emphasize the important role that violence and war have played in shaping contemporary economic and political development patterns around the world. I also recently wrote a literature survey article entitled “Civil War” (co-author Chris Blattman), for the Journal of Economic Literature in 2010.

Irish Religious Demography and Conflict, 1659–1926

Kerby A. Miller, History, University of Missouri

Research Grant, 2006

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The goal of this project was to collect and analyze historical data (official and unofficial) on the numbers of Irish Catholics and Protestants (the latter divided between Anglicans and Dissenters), who inhabited Ireland’s various administrative and census districts (townlands, parishes, baronies, counties, and provinces), to better understand how and why their geographical and demographic relationships changed between the mid-17th and early 20th centuries. My collaborators—Professor Liam Kennedy of the Queen’s University of Belfast and Dr. Brian Gurrin of the National University of Ireland at Maynooth—and I have found that:

(1) The demographic experiences of the Anglicans and Presbyterians in Ulster, Ireland’s only northern province (most of which now comprises Northern Ireland) were significantly and often dramatically different, at least from the early 1700s through the 1880s. In various, fundamental ways, these findings challenge the notion that Irish history is the story of only two [different and antagonistic] traditions—one homogenously Protestant, the other Catholic—particularly since the Ulster Presbyterian experiences of mass emigration (and even susceptibility to the Great Famine of 1845–52) often appear to be much more similar to those of Ireland’s Catholics than to those of the members of the Church of Ireland (the island’s legally established religion until 1869).

These findings challenge the notion that Irish history is the story of only two [different and antagonistic] traditions—one homogenously Protestant, the other Catholic.

(2) the demographic data from Ireland’s three southern provinces (Leinster, Munster, and Connacht) indicate that the proportional and even the absolute sizes of their Protestant populations (overwhelmingly Anglican) declined in the mid-18th century. These findings challenge the argument that the decline of the southern Irish Protestant population was related directly to the rise of Irish Catholic nationalism, which was not pronounced until the early 19th century.

Because of its immense size and complexity, this is an ongoing project. Only a small proportion of our findings have been published to date (March, 2011). However, one book and several major articles are now in progress; and we anticipate many more to follow.

Criminal Retaliation: A Qualitative Study of Social Control Beyond the Law

Bruce A. Jacobs, Criminology, University of Missouri, St. Louis

Research Grant, 2003

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Despite its preeminent role in regulating disputes between and among street criminals, retaliation has received scant attention from criminological researchers. Existing studies explore retaliation only tangentially, with little or no consideration of its situational and contextual dynamics. Even when retaliation is examined in its own right, the circumstances in which payback is enacted typically receive less attention than the factors that mediate the availability of law. As a result, the structure, process, and forms of retaliation in the real world setting of urban American street crime remain poorly understood. This study explores the face of modern day retaliation from the perspective of currently active criminals who have experienced it first-hand, as offenders, victims, or both. The study explores the retaliatory ethic among street criminals and the vocabularies of motive that offenders adopt to justify its role as the preferred mode of extralegal social control. It also examines the structure, process, and contingent forms of retaliation, offering a typology to organize the data. Part of this examination is the ways in which gender shapes the context and dynamics of retaliatory events for both male and female street criminals. The study also investigates the phenomenon of imperfect retaliation—acts of reprisal committed against parties not responsible for the instigating affront. The reasons for imperfect retaliation and their implications for crime displacement beyond the law are specifically explored.

Qualitative analysis revealed the importance of two axial factors around which retaliatory strikes could best be understood: whether such strikes occur immediately after the affront, and whether the strikes involve face-to-face contact with the person responsible for the affront.

Qualitative analysis revealed the importance of two axial factors around which retaliatory strikes could best be understood: whether such strikes occur immediately after the affront, and whether the strikes involve face-to-face contact with the person responsible for the affront. Immediate reprisal that involves face-to-face contact was called reflexive retaliation. Immediate reprisal that involves no face-to-face contact was called reflexively displaced retaliation. When retaliation is delayed, an added contingency appears—whether or not the delay is desired by the retaliating party. This permits four additional possibilities. Face-to-face retaliation where the delay is desired was called calculated retaliation. Face-to-face retaliation where the delay is not desired was called deferred retaliation. Retaliation without face-to-face contact where the delay is desired was called sneaky retaliation. Retaliation without face-to-face contact with the violator where the delay was undesired by the retaliating party is called imperfect retaliation.

Ethnic Identity, Collective Action and Conflict: An Experimental Approach

Macartan Humphreys, Political Science, Harvard University

Research Grant, 2003

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A large literature shows that ethnically homogenous communities often do a better job than diverse communities of producing satisfactory schools and health care, adequate sanitation, low levels of crime, and other essential outcomes that depend on community-wide cooperation. This project seeks to find out why. The research indicates that the principal obstacle to cooperation in diverse groups is not ethnic favoritism or a lack of consensus on what should be done but rather the stronger expectations of reciprocity that exist within than across ethnic communities. The results offer important lessons for policymakers committed to improving the welfare of people living in diverse communities.

The study was conducted in a neighborhood of Kampala, Uganda, that has both high levels of diversity and low levels of public goods provision. The researchers used behavioral games to explore how the ethnicity of the person with whom one is interacting shapes social behavior. Hundreds of local participants interacted with various partners in strategic games involving the allocation of money and the completion of joint tasks. Each game was designed to capture a different channel through which ethnic diversity might affect social cooperation. Many of the subsequent findings debunk long-standing explanations for diversity’s adverse effects.

When given the opportunity to act altruistically in an anonymous fashion, individuals did not choose to benefit coethnics disproportionately. Yet when anonymity was removed, subjects behaved very differently.

Contrary to the prevalent notion that shared preferences facilitate collective action within ethnic groups, differences in goals and priorities among participants were not found to be structured along ethnic lines. Nor was there evidence that subjects favored the welfare of their coethnics over that of non-coethnics. When given the opportunity to act altruistically in an anonymous fashion, individuals did not choose to benefit coethnics disproportionately. Yet when anonymity was removed, subjects behaved very differently. With their actions publicly observed, subjects gave significantly more to coethnics, expected their partners to reciprocate, and expected that they would be sanctioned for a failure to cooperate. This effect was most pronounced among individuals who were otherwise least likely to cooperate.

These results suggest that what may look like ethnic favoritism is, in fact, a set of reciprocity norms—stronger among coethnics than among non-coethnics—that make it possible for members of more homogeneous communities to take risks, invest, and cooperate without the fear of getting cheated. Such norms may be more subject to change than deeply held ethnic antipathies—a powerful finding for policymakers seeking to design social institutions and promote development in diverse societies.

Bibliography

1. Humphreys, Macartan. Coethnicity: Diversity and the Dilemmas of Collective Action (with J Habyarimana, D Posner, and J Weinstein). New York: Russell Sage Press, 2009.