Epigenetic Influences on the Development of the Serotonin System: A Mechanism of Risk for Chronic Aggressive Behaviors in Humans?

Linda Booij, Clinical Psychology, University of Montreal

Research Grant, 2010

Many studies have shown that what happens early in development influences the way the brain develops and someone’s risk to develop behavioral problems later on, including chronic aggression. Studies in animals have shown that adverse factors during a mother’s pregnancy (e.g., malnutrition) or adverse experiences early in life (e.g. child abuse, bullying) can influence the way the child’s genes are expressed through “DNA methylation,” a process in which genes are marked with a chemical coating. This changes the development of certain brain regions and may have consequences for the way the child will develop emotionally, socially, and cognitively later in life.

In studies supported by the Guggenheim Foundation, we studied how early adversity affects the development of the brain, behavior, and the expression of genes that regulate serotonin, a brain chemical important for aggression. Two studies were supported: a study in animals and a study in boys and girls who were 15 years old.

In the animal study, we investigated how stress in rats during the adolescent period affected the brain and neurochemical serotonin, as well as aggression and anxiety. We used the so-called social intruder paradigm, in which a rat is placed in the cage of another rat, thereby creating interpersonal conflict, which is considered an animal analogue to bullying). We used a technique called immunohistochemistry to study the consequences of social defeat in adolescence for the density of the serotonin transporter in the brain in adulthood. We found that social defeat in adolescence increased serotonin transporter density in part of the prefrontal cortex when the rats were adults (Tao et al, 2017). Anxiety was also increased, with no effects of aggression. These results were somewhat different than what was previously observed when adverse experiences occurred earlier in life, and suggests that the effects of adverse experiences on brain, serotonin and behavior may depend on the specific timing of the stressor.

Together, these studies suggest that early adversity is associated with the development of the brain and with the regulation of the serotonin transporter.

In the human study, we studied the impact of early adversity on brain development, DNA methylation in genes that regulate serotonin, and on behaviors. For this study, we tested teenagers that had been followed since birth, and thus we had good documentation of their home environment and childhood experiences. Individuals were genetically identical twins, which allowed us to look at specific environmental factors and control for genetic effects. All individuals underwent brain imaging in combination with an emotion processing task to measure how their brain responded to various types of emotional information. A DNA sample was taken to study DNA methylation.

We found that, while controlling for genetics, prenatal (before-birth) factors but not postnatal (after-birth) factors predicted adolescent brain development. We also found that environmental-induced changes in epigenetic regulation in the serotonin transporter were predictive of neural activation in the Orbitofrontal Cortex and the way this brain region was connected to other regions (e.g. the amygdala) of the so-called limbic network. Associations were only observed when the brain was processing sad and/or fearful stimuli but not when processing angry stimuli.

Together, these studies suggest that early adversity is associated with the development of the brain and with the regulation of the serotonin transporter. Serotonin transporter density (animals) and methylation (humans) was more linked to regulation of sadness/fear than of aggression. The specific effects on brain, expression of genes, and behaviors may also depend on timing and/or type of the exposure to adverse events, genetics, and/or a combination of these.

The Neural Circuitry of Aggression, Sex and Sexual Aggression

David J. Anderson, Tianqiao and Chrissy Chen Institute for Neuroscience, California Institute of Technology

Research Grant, 2014

Mating and aggression are innate (or instinctive) behaviors that are performed without training. Interestingly, among animals, these two seemingly different behaviors appear to be inextricably intertwined: aggressive encounters are often associated with mating, when males exhibit their dominance for sexual opportunities. However, male-female interactions are primarily sexual (mating) and male-male interactions tend to be aggressive, while aggression toward females is more often the exception than the norm. What brain mechanisms are responsible for separating sexual behavior toward females, and violent aggression toward males, under normal conditions?

To investigate the brain mechanisms, we used a technique called microendoscopy that allowed us to image deep-brain (hypothalamic) neuronal activity in male mice engaged in social behaviors. We recorded over two hundred neurons on average in each mouse (total 25 mice), and the mice had no trouble fighting or mating because of the microendoscope neural implant.

In sexually and socially experienced adult male mice, neurons were strongly active during interactions with conspecifics, but not with a toy. It was immediately clear that characteristic, yet separate, ensembles of neurons were active during interactions with male or female conspecifics. But surprisingly, in inexperienced adult males, common populations of neurons were activated by both male and female conspecifics. The sex-specific ensembles gradually emerged as the mice acquired social and sexual experience. These observations indicated that interactions with males and females was required for the distinct representations of males and females in the adult mouse brain.

These observations reveal an unexpected requirement of experience for behaviors that were traditionally viewed as "hard-wired" or innate.

We performed another set of experiments where adult male mice were permitted to investigate (touch, smell, etc.) but not mount or attack other female or male mice. In this case, we did not observe female- or male-specific ensembles or divergent representations in the brain, suggesting that sensory exposure itself was insufficient. However, providing male mice with brief sexual experience was sufficient to generate neuronal ensembles that were specific to males and females, divergent neural representations of conspecific sex and aggression towards males. This experiment demonstrated that social interactions are necessary for the formation of male and female specific neuronal ensembles.

These observations reveal an unexpected requirement of experience for behaviors that were traditionally viewed as “hard-wired” or innate. Social experience was required for the formation of neuronal ensembles that themselves control social behavior.

Bibliography

Remedios R, Kennedy A, Zelikowsky M, Grewe BF, Schnitzer MJ, Anderson DJ. (2017) Social Behaviour Shapes Hypothalamic Neural Ensemble Representations Of Conspecific Sex. Nature. In Press.
Kennedy A, Asahina K, Hoopfer E, Inagaki H, Jung Y, Lee H, Remedios R, Anderson DJ. (2015) Internal States and Behavioral Decision-Making: Toward an Integration of Emotion and Cognition. Cold Spring Harb Symp Quant Biol. 79:199-210.

Social Order and the Genesis of Rebellion: A Study of Mutiny in the Royal Navy, 1740–1820

Michael Hechter, Sociology, Arizona State University

Steven Pfaff, Sociology, University of Washington

Research Grant, 2009

Mutinies are part of broader class of rebellion and insurgencies and understanding them sheds light on contentious politics generally. Although there have been many studies of mutiny, for those seeking to understand the causes of naval insurrections, these studies are disappointing. Studies of rebellion are frequently undermined by the tendency to compare instances of rebellion only to one another rather to other cases in which rebellion was possible but did not take place. Unlike every previous study of naval mutiny, ours includes both cases in which documented episodes of mutiny did occur and a larger set of non-mutinous cases randomly selected from the population of all ships at risk during the period 1740 to 1820, the high point of the sailing navy. In addition, our data include observations on thousands of individual seamen who took part in a dozen mutinies, which allow us to assess the individual as well as group-level determinants of mutiny. This design allows us to pinpoint the general causes of mutiny. Some of our findings have been surprising.

Although grievances have largely been disregarded in studies of rebellion, structural grievances—anticipated deprivations imposed on individuals due to their position in the social structure—must be distinguished from incidental ones that arise unexpectedly. In our study, the most important determinant of mutiny was the rate of sickness—an incidental grievance that the crew attributed to poor governance by the ship’s officers.

We show that the failure of governance is the single largest factor that explains the incidence of mutiny in the Royal Navy.

What holds a rebellion together after the situation begins to sour? We find that the rebels’ control over information about the possibility of an amnesty was a critical cause of the resilience of the Nore mass mutiny. Violence was used to maintain order through corporal punishment but only moderate levels of flogging helped to maintain order. At specific thresholds, the frequency and severity of flogging increased the odds of mutiny. Ironically, when commanders perceived insecurity, they punished more harshly. But this harshness provoked resistance.

Finally, social scientists have long debated the role of revolutionary climates as determinants of rebellion. We find that the French Revolution and the Reign of Terror led to a generalized fear on the part of British elites—a group that includes Royal Navy officers—which led to more stringent punishment of sailors for so-called “moral” offenses, rather than those related to performance.

All told, this project has important implications for the study of social order and rebellion in many other settings. We show that the failure of governance is the single largest factor that explains the incidence of mutiny in the Royal Navy. This has a resonance beyond naval history to help us understand why rebellion occurs today in our prisons, in our neighborhoods, and in the outbreak of the radical insurgencies that we face.

Bibliography

“Grievances and the Genesis of Rebellion: Mutiny in the Royal Navy, 1740- 1820,” American Sociological Review 81: 1 (2016): 165-189 (Michael Hechter, Steven Pfaff, and Patrick Underwood).
"The Problem of Solidarity in Insurgent Collective Action: The Nore Mutiny of 1797,” Social Science History 40: 2 (2016): 247-270 (Steven Pfaff, Michael Hechter, and Katie Corcoran).

Organization and Community: The Determinants of Insurgent Military Effectiveness

Alec Worsnop, School of Public Policy, University of Maryland, College Park

Dissertation Fellowship, 2014

The United States and other members of the international community have lost thousands of lives and expended significant resources confronting insurgent organizations across the world. Strikingly, however, there has been little systematic analysis of how some insurgents have developed the military capacity to challenge superior forces. This puzzle has played out in Afghanistan, where the Taliban’s success has continually confounded analysts; in Syria and Mali, where insurgents pose significant challenges to stability; and most recently in Iraq, where the Islamic State operated with military prowess. In response, this research project studies the development and military capacity of insurgent groups.

First, the project constructs a novel conception of military effectiveness fitting for the types of combat common in civil war, including the (in)ability to keep ceasefires, to control who is targeted by violence, or to employ increasingly complex guerrilla or conventional tactics. Next, it develops a theory arguing that it is not the structural conditions in which organizations operate—such as access to material resources or strong social networks—that determine effectiveness, but how well insurgents’ organizational composition allows them to leverage those conditions. It is what insurgents do with what they have that matters. Like in all militaries, insurgent organizations must deliberately generate esprit de corps and military skill through training, indoctrination, well-designed command and control systems, and the formation of a competent set of lower-level officers.

While social and material factors must be taken into account, some organizations become militarily effective without these endowments while some well-endowed organizations fail despite these advantages.

To test the theory and isolate the importance of organizational versus structural factors, the project adopts a two-stage approach. First, I use a set of statistical models to demonstrate that structural variables are poor predictors of insurgent organizational composition. Second, I conduct in-depth case studies of ten organizations in Vietnam (1940–1975) and fifteen organizations in Iraq (2003–present). These two countries represent promising areas of study because there is a high degree of variation in structural and organizational factors as well as in military effectiveness. To evaluate the detailed hypotheses generated by the theory, I collected precise information about the internal dynamics of insurgents through archival research, interviews with ex-combatants, and secondary sources. For example, during nearly five months at the National Archives II in HÓ Chí Minh City, Vietnam, I reviewed thousands of documents including internal memoranda from rebel organizations along with French interrogations and intelligence reporting.

By demonstrating the centrality of organizational processes to insurgent military effectiveness, the project underscores that insurgent forces are not sui generis, but fit within the broader spectrum of military organizations attempting to use violence in a calibrated manner. Thus, the project highlights the importance for policymakers of explicitly assessing organizational capacity rather than treating all insurgent or terrorist groups as like entities or overvaluing the effect of social networks and material resources. While some insurgent groups can only be defeated with involved and costly tactics—including major ground combat—the project also shows that many seemingly weaker groups are still able to reliably maintain ceasefires. As a result, rather than risk escalating violence by militarily destroying such groups, conflict mediators can work to craft peace agreements by identifying the actors that can be brought to the negotiating table. Similarly, while social and material factors must be taken into account, some organizations become militarily effective without these endowments while some well-endowed organizations fail despite these advantages.

An Education in Violence: Teaching and Learning to Kill in Central Texas

Harel Shapira, Department of Sociology, University of Texas at Austin

Research Grant, 2015

This research examined a relatively new and growing population: people who have obtained concealed handgun licenses and carry their guns with them on a regular basis. Drawing on field work at gun schools and in-depth interviews with concealed handgun license holders, the research examined two aspects of gun ownership that have been given insufficient attention in existing scholarship: first, the process by which people are socialized into gun ownership; and second, the embodied, everyday practice of gun ownership.

The research showed that becoming a gun owner involves a learning process in which both the mind and body are trained to feel comfortable with, and need, guns. Cognitively, it means developing interpretative frames for thinking about guns, safety, and violence. Specifically, one must learn to think that they need guns, that guns are safe, and that killing another human being can sometimes be a moral action.

Gun owners train their bodies to feel comfortable with guns through habit formation, making the experience of holding, shooting, and carrying a gun so normal that the violence contained within the gun is rendered banal.

While one must become ideologically comfortable with guns, a person must also learn to be physically comfortable with guns, and ultimately have positive experiences holding, shooting, and carrying guns. Although such embodied experiences are enabled by the above interpretative frames, they are not directly produced by them and require physical training. Gun owners train their bodies to feel comfortable with guns through habit formation, making the experience of holding, shooting, and carrying a gun so normal that the violence contained within the gun is rendered banal. These learned interpretive frames and the embodied pleasures that gun owners experience with guns are co-constitutive, so that the interpretive frames enable and are simultaneously enabled by a set of embodied experiences, and vice-versa.

Bibliography

Shapira, H. and Simon, S.J. (2018) “Learning to Need a Gun.” Qualitative Sociology 41(1): 1-20.

A Sea of Blood and Tears: Ethnicity, Identity and Survival in Nazi-Occupied Volhynia, Ukraine 1941-44

Jared McBride, University of California, Los Angeles

Dissertation Fellowship, 2013

My dissertation, “A Sea of Blood and Tears”: Ethnic Diversity and Mass Violence in Nazi-Occupied Volhynia, Ukraine 1941-1944, examines the region of Volhynia in western Ukraine under Nazi occupation. Volhynia was one of the most violent regions during World War II in all of Eastern Europe, as it was home to Soviet partisan warfare, a Ukrainian nationalist uprising, brutal Nazi occupation policies, the genocide of Jews, and widespread inter-ethnic violence. What once was a mosaic of ethno-religious communities living in relative stability until the 20th century had dissolved into civil war by 1941. By 1944, roughly one quarter of its population was dead and many others displaced.

My project explains how individuals who once peacefully co-existed as neighbors became involved in political violence during the Nazi occupation. In short, it asks how an average Volhynian who has never harmed anyone in his or her life prior to the war becomes an ethnic cleanser or genocidaire. Drawing on ten years of research in five countries, the study employs a “bottom-up” view of this time period by using newly available archival sources, including previously classified KGB documents, to recreate the biographies of various Volhynian participants and dissect the membership of local political groups involved in violence.

In researching Ukrainian or Polish nationalist formations, Soviet partisan groups, collaborators in the Nazi auxiliary police, or peasants involved in ethnic cleansing, I consider participants’ social and political background as well as their actions during the occupation, in order to uncover their motivations for participation in violence. Additionally, the project questions the role of ideologies, whether ethno-nationalism or Soviet communism, in influencing the actions of average Volhynians.

The findings of this research challenge static conceptualizations of political and social groups during times of war and unrest, as well as the analytical triad of perpetrators, victims, and bystanders found in research on ethnic violence. Historically, these studies have tended to essentialize identities and conceive of group formation as pre-determined. In contrast, I show that although ideologies such as nationalism and communism influenced the decision-making processes of some Volhynians, many more became involved in violence as a result of social upheaval, material needs, forms of coercion, and pre-war social networks. Moreover, as a result of my biographical tracing, I demonstrate how Volhynians often shifted their identities and group associations, as well as their stances toward violence, throughout the occupation. These findings move the onus from purely cultural (tribal or ethnic hatreds) or ideological (people are programmed to kill) motivations for violence to a more nuanced understanding that takes social interaction into account and understands subjects as dynamic individuals. As such, A Sea of Blood and Tears can inform future studies of ethnic and political violence in borderland regions beyond Ukraine as well as contribute to discussions in genocide studies and social scientific research on political violence.

The Diffusion of Lethal and Nonlethal Violence in Gang Networks

Andrew V. Papachristos, Sociology, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

Research Grant, 2010, 2011

Gangs conjure a general sense of fear among the public and policymakers alike. In part, this fear stems from the nature of gang activities, which, as the term “street gang” suggests, most often occur on the street or other public spaces. What’s more, gang violence is more likely to involve the use of firearms and involve a greater number of participants. Drive-by shootings, for example, harm not just those struck by bullets, but also other residents of the community who fear for their family’s safety, lock their doors, or otherwise withdraw from community life.

In truth, however, the majority of gang violence is far from random. Gang violence most often occurs among gang members themselves, the result of prior intergroup conflict resulting from disputes over status, honor, or respect. Criminologists and sociologists have long known that violence tends to concentrate within certain populations and geographic locations, but a growing body of research finds that gun and gang violence is even more severely concentrated within social networks. This HFG-funded research explored the role that social networks play in the decidedly nonrandom nature of gang violence in two U.S. cities: Chicago and Boston. In particular, this project analyzed the ways in which gang networks contribute to the spread of violence both within a population of gangs and gang members as well as outwards into the general public. The main findings of this research underscore the importance of networks in understanding the diffusion of gun and gang violence.

The most important drivers of gang violence appear to be the ways in which reciprocity and status-seeking violence unfold within such conflict networks.

This project’s main findings can be summarized as follows:

Fatal and nonfatal gun violence is severely concentrated within small social networks.
One of the most significant findings from this research is just how concentrated gun violence is within social networks. For example, in a study of one high-crime Boston community, this research found that 85 percent of all fatal and nonfatal gunshot injuries occurred within a network comprising just 763 individuals—less than 5 percent of the community’s totally population. Moreover, this study demonstrated the gunshot victims could be located with fairly high accuracy within such networks, and that network maps can provide excellent visualizations of such risk within a population.
Exposure to gun violence matters—a lot.
Not only does gun violence concentrate within social networks, but exposure to violence in one’s social network matters in predicting subsequent victimization; in fact, it matters more than more traditional individual and neighborhood-level risk factors. Estimates from this research suggest that the closer one is to a gunshot victim, the higher one’s own probability of getting shot. More precisely, estimates from the Boston study suggest that each handshake away one is from a gunshot victim reduces one’s probability of being a victim by approximately 25 percent. The effect is greater for gang members, in large part because being in a gang sharply determines the contours of one’s network. Gang networks, then, play an important role in shaping how risk is distributed within social networks, especially as it relates to exposure to gun violence.
The corner and the crew: the importance of geographic space and gang networks
The results from a comparative study of gang violence in Chicago and Boston found that one of the most important factors influencing observed patterns of gang violence—literally, who shoots whom—involves larger networks of conflict and violence between gangs. Gangs are not myopic, and gangs (especially in Chicago) have long organizational memories. In both Chicago and Boston, one of the most robust predictors of gang violence is the network structure of any gang’s past conflicts and battles. Put another way, understanding a gang’s prior pattern of conflict and violence goes far in predicting whom the gang will engage next. Such gang networks are influenced by geographic space as well. But the most important drivers of gang violence appear to be the ways in which reciprocity and status-seeking violence unfold within such conflict networks. In fact, in both Chicago and Boston, individual incidents of violence between gangs string together to form a social network that appears to exert enduring effects on subsequent acts of violence.

Bibliography

Papachristos, A.V., A.A. Braga, and D. Hureau, Social Networks and the Risk of Gunshot Injury. Journal of Urban Health, 2012. 89(6): p. 992-1003.
Papachristos, A.V., D.M. Hureau, and A.A. Braga, The Corner and the Crew: The Influence of Geography and Social Networks on Gang Violence. American Sociological Review, 2013. 78(3): p. 417-447.

Drug Violence, Fear of Crime, and the Transformation of Everyday Life in the Mexican Metropolis

Ana Villarreal, Sociology, University of California-Berkeley

Dissertation Fellowship, 2014

My dissertation, “Drug Violence, Fear of Crime and the Transformation of Everyday Life in the Mexican Metropolis,” is an ethnography of how and why increased criminal violence and fear have prompted a new form of urban seclusion and governance in contemporary Latin America. Most of the research we have on violence and urban inequality focuses on the living conditions of the urban poor in favelas, barrios marginados, and the inner-city. In stark contrast, this book examines the impact of a tidal wave of gruesome violence on one of Latin America’s wealthiest cities: San Pedro in Monterrey, Mexico. As a San Pedro native, I had unique access to observe the responses of the wealthy to horrific criminal turf wars over cocaine and human trafficking routes in recent years. In brief, the upper class leveraged private and state resources to make of San Pedro a city-within-a-city.

The upper class is not only relying on private security, but on the public security apparatus to create an "armored city" in detriment of the rest of the metropolis.

A similar phenomenon took place in Caracas in the aftermath of the violent riots of the Caracazo in 1989 when the upper class created the municipality of Chacao. Although researchers have shown that the upper class is more and more likely to enclose living, leisure and work spaces in Latin America and beyond, these cases are different. Here, the upper class is not only relying on private security, but on the public security apparatus to create an “armored city” in detriment of the rest of the metropolis. This book will make a unique contribution to the fields of urban and political sociology by revealing this new pattern of exacerbated urban inequality raising new challenges for urban inclusion and democracy in Latin America.

Bibliography

Villarreal, Ana. 2015. "Fear and the Spectacular Drug Violence in Monterrey" in Violence at the Urban Margins, edited by Javier Auyero, Phillipe Bourgois, and Nancy Scheper-Hughes. Oxford University Press.

Dynamics of Violence in Conventional Civil Wars

Laia Balcells, Institut d’Analisi Economia, CSIC

Research Grant, 2011

What explains violence against civilians in civil wars? Why do armed groups use violence in some places but not in neighboring places with similar characteristics? Why do they kill more civilians in some places than in others? More specifically, why do groups kill civilians in areas where they have full military control and their rivals have no military presence? This research project explores the determinants of violence against civilians in the context of conventional civil wars, which are fought between armies, as opposed to civil wars fought between a state and irregular armed groups. Conventional civil wars are much more common than thought and display markedly different characteristics than insurgencies or guerrilla wars.

The theoretical argument in this project incorporates political factors in a strategic explanation of violence. I contend that armed groups target civilians who are strong supporters of the enemy, either to strengthen control over territory they already occupy or to weaken the enemy in territory the enemy occupies. Violence takes two forms, direct or indirect, depending on the location of civilian supporters of the enemy. While direct violence occurs when enemy supporters are located in zones controlled by the armed group, indirect violence occurs when enemy supporters are located in zones controlled by the adversary (provided the armed group possesses the military technology to carry out attacks in these areas). The key difference between the two forms of violence is that the armed group’s own supporters can constrain direct violence in zones of control, whereas they cannot do so in zones of enemy control.

Direct and indirect violence imply different strategies. When targeting enemy supporters behind enemy lines, the armed group aims to kill as many of them as possible, hence they target locations with high concentrations of enemy supporters. In territory the armed group controls, in contrast, the group must take into account the preferences of their own supporters, who know the identity of the rival’s supporters and can choose whether or not to collaborate with the group’s militants. Group supporters are likely to collaborate with the armed group and identify enemy supporters if and only if it is in their own interest to do so, which is the case when eliminating enemy supporters can decisively shift the local demographic balance and help them gain or consolidate political control of the locality. Thus, direct violence is likely to occur where the balance between group supporters and enemy supporters is relatively even. Indeed, in places where the group’s supporters are already predominant, violence is unnecessary, whereas in places where enemy supporters dominate, violence would have to be massive (hence too costly) to make a difference. The prediction is thus that indirect violence increases with rival supporters’ domination of a locality whereas direct violence increases with parity between supporters of the two rival groups.

Conventional civil wars without meaningful prewar mobilization should not be the sites of mass violence against civilians.

Violence against civilians is only likely to occur, however, where there have been high levels of prewar mobilization along the cleavage line that divides the two groups, whether being ethnicity, religion, or ideology. This mobilization is what leads people to identify as strong supporters of one side or the other. Put differently, conventional civil wars without meaningful prewar mobilization should not be the sites of mass violence against civilians.

The empirical strategy of this project is multimethod: I use quantitative methods in combination with qualitative analyses. Following a recent trend in political science, the research design consists of systematically exploring intracountry variation (with large-n subnational data) and combining it with additional secondary evidence from other cases in order to provide external validity. I combine insights from two novel subnational datasets (i.e., Spain and Côte d’Ivoire) with a crossnational test of implications and secondary evidence from other cases (e.g. Bosnia, Northern Ireland). In addition, for the case of Spain, I use evidence collected from oral sources (i.e., sixty civil war testimonies) and from over a hundred published sources, including general history books, as well as regional and local studies.

The Spanish Civil War is the main case study of the book; this is, together with the US Civil War, a paradigmatic case of a conventional civil war. Using this civil war constitutes a dispute to the neglect of historical cases in the study of civil war violence, which risks generating wrong conceptualizations of the phenomenon. The Spanish Civil War has a special relevance on its own because it was a crucial conflict in the West European interwar period and it was a particularly severe conflict. The case of the recent Ivorian civil war permits us to test the observable implications of the theory with a recent civil war that was fought along ethnic lines. Thanks to the HFG research grant, I was able to build a provincial level dataset on violence during the armed conflict in Côte d’Ivoire (2002–2011), which also includes data on electoral results, ethnic composition, natural resources, and geographical characteristics of the provinces. I also gathered data on violence across the neighborhoods of the capital of the country, Abidjan. The results for the Ivorian Civil War are broadly consistent with those obtained for the Spanish Civil War, showing that direct violence increases with levels of parity between rival groups. Although the Spanish and the Ivorian civil wars are very dissimilar, the comparison of the two cases yields valuable insights. Importantly, the combination of evidence from an old and ideological civil war (Spain) and a new and ethnic civil war (Côte d’Ivoire) adds external validity to the theory put forward in this project.

Bibliography

Balcells, Laia. 2017. Rivalry and Revenge: the Politics of Violence during Civil War. New York: Cambridge University Press (Cambridge Studies in Comparative Politics).
Balcells, Laia and Abbey Steele. 2016. “Warfare, Political Identities, and Displacement in Spain and Colombia.” Political Geography 51: 15-29.
Balcells, Laia, Lesley-Ann Daniels, and Abel Escribà-Folch. 2016. “The Determinants of Low-intensity Intergroup Violence. The Case of Northern Ireland.” Journal of Peace Research 53: 33-48.
Balcells, Laia and Stathis Kalyvas. 2014. “Does Warfare Matter? Severity, Duration, and Outcomes of Civil Wars.” Journal of Conflict Resolution 58(8): 1390-1418.

Killing Campaigns: The Origins and Dynamics of Mass Violence in Africa

Scott Straus, Political Science, University of Wisconsin, Madison

Research Grant, 2008

I received a grant from the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation at the early stages of what became an eight-year-long inquiry into the causes of mass violence against civilians, in particular genocide. The project’s methodological premise was that scholars (and policymakers) should seek to learn from “negative cases,” that is, situations where theory would predict genocide to occur but where it did not. The early stages of my research, which HFG funded, focused on intensive study of Côte d’Ivoire in West Africa as well as on understanding the range of variation in violence across sub-Saharan Africa since independence.

The initial research in Côte d’Ivoire prompted two developments. One was a set of new hypotheses about the determinants and dynamics of mass violence. Second was some expertise on the country. In turn, when an electoral crisis broke in 2010 in Côte d’Ivoire, I became engaged in public commentary on the country via the Huffington Post, and I published accessible academic articles in Foreign Affairs and African Affairs. In the former, Tom Bassett and I argued for the central importance of regional organizations in the management of the Ivorian violent crisis. In the latter, I demonstrated patterns of violence in the electoral crisis and distinguished the logic of electoral violence from that of exterminatory and civil war violence.

The intensity of war—specifically threat perception—shapes leaders’ willingness to use mass violence and the public’s acceptance of it.

The Ivoirian crisis, as well as my survey of violence in postindependence Africa, led to an inquiry into the dynamics of electoral violence more broadly. With Charlie Taylor, I assembled a dataset on electoral violence in Africa since the transition to multipartyism in the early 1990s. The dataset, the African Electoral Violence Dataset, uncovered a set of patterns that were unexpected given our prior assumptions. We found, for example, that about one in five African elections resulted in serious violence; that violence after war was less common than if a country had not experienced war; that income level was not correlated to electoral violence; that incumbents committed the majority of electoral violence; and that the dynamics of prevote violence differed from postvote violence. Those findings were published in an influential volume edited by Dorina Bekoe of the United States Institute for Peace. Charlie, Jon Pevehouse, and I also published an article in the Journal of Peace Research, in which we show through a battery of regression analyses that incumbent running is the strongest predictor of significant African elections.

The HFG research also launched the broader, longer project examining why genocide took place in some conflicts but not others. That project culminated in a book published by Cornell University Press in 2015, entitled Making and Unmaking Nations: War, Leadership, and Genocide in Modern Africa. Three findings stand out and all relate to the initial findings from the HFG-funded research in Côte d’Ivoire. First, the intensity of war—specifically threat perception—shapes leaders’ willingness to use mass violence and the public’s acceptance of it. Second, ideological constructs—what I label “founding narratives”—influence the ways in which political and military leaders devise strategies of violence in war. Third, other sources of restraint—such as certain kinds of economic structures—can create incentives to moderate violence. I extend the empirical analysis to Senegal, Mali, Rwanda, and Sudan, each occupying case study chapters in the book. The book has won four awards, including the 2018 Grawemeyer Award for Ideas Improving World Order.

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