Suchergebnisse

Research on socialization can obscure the agency of its targets, presenting socialization as a uni-directional process shaping beliefs and behaviors. This assumption is even stronger for the military, a totalizing institution often portrayed as fashioning its members into violence professionals through a top-down process of domination. In contrast, this article argues that even powerful socialization processes are not omnipotent, and that individuals retain a measure of agency even under pervasive social control. Drawing on the case of the Israel Defense Force during the Second Intifada, it shows that norms inculcated during military socialization can be undermined by the more ambiguous conditions of deployment. When soldiers also subscribe to competing norms and receive social support for their dissent, resistance can emerge, increase, and become more overt. Analysis of resistance to violence underscores the power of military socialization while drawing attention to its limits. It therefore challenges homogenizing views of soldiers, illuminating the processes through which military violence is produced and curbed.

Patterns of military violence against civilians vary considerably, between conflicts and within them. This article explores why some combatants are more likely than others to engage in violence against civilians, focusing on a particular subset of such violence, violence that is not planned or authorized by military superiors, termed opportunistic violence. In a sample of Israeli combat soldiers from the Second Intifada, opportunistic violence was found to be strongly associated with duration of deployment among civilians. Long deployments erode social and moral norms, raising the likelihood that combatants will act opportunistically. However, the relationship between deployment duration and opportunistic violence was moderated by unit structure, such that long deployments were more likely to cause opportunistic violence in units with weak command structures. These findings suggest that the deleterious effects of long deployments are not inevitable but can be limited to a large extent through well-functioning structures of command and discipline.

What explains differences in soldier participation in violence during irregular war? How do ordinary men become professional wielders of force, and when does this transformation falter or fail? Regular Soldiers, Irregular War presents a theoretical framework for understanding the various forms of behavior in which soldiers engage during counterinsurgency campaigns - compliance and shirking, abuse and restraint, as well as the creation of new violent practices. Through an in-depth study of the Israeli Defense Forces' repression of the Second Palestinian Intifada of 2000-2005, including in-depth interviews with and a survey of former combatants, Devorah Manekin examines how soldiers come both to unleash and to curb violence against civilians in a counterinsurgency campaign. Manekin argues that variation in soldiers' behavior is best explained by the effectiveness of the control mechanisms put in place to ensure combatant violence reflects the strategies and preferences of military elites, primarily at the small-unit level. Furthermore, she develops and analyzes soldier participation in three categories of violence: strategic violence authorized by military elites; opportunistic or unauthorized violence; and "entrepreneurial violence" - violence initiated from below to advance organizational aims when leaders are ambiguous about what will best serve those aims. By going inside military field units and exploring their patterns of command and control, Regular Soldiers, Irregular War, sheds new light on the dynamics of violence and restraint in counterinsurgency.

Theories of violence against civilians in conflict have tended to view combatants in homogenous terms, as the obedient pawns of military elites, or as uniformly prone to violence due to passionate emotions or economic opportunism. In contrast, this study shows that combatant participation in violence is variable: While in some circumstances soldiers embrace violence eagerly, in others they attempt to shirk it or refuse to commit it outright. What accounts for this variation in violence and restraint? Why are some individuals, and some combat units, more likely to act violently than others? This dissertation examines these questions through a study of Israeli soldiers in the Second Intifada, employing interview, survey, and observational data. The core argument is that variation in combatant violence and restraint is a consequence of organizational control within the military. Drawing on theories in organizational and management studies, I define organizational control broadly to include not only formal mechanisms such as rules, discipline, and enforcement, but also informal mechanisms, such as the inculcation of values, norms, and beliefs through training and leadership. Through organizational control, the military seeks to align the preferences and beliefs of combatants regarding the use of violence with those of military leaders, ensuring that combatants both produce the violence demanded of them (strategic violence) and at the same time do not surpass or subvert such violence so that it no longer serves military interests but their own (opportunistic violence). I show that effective organizational control leads to participation patterns consistent with the preferences of armed group leaders - maximal participation in strategic violence and minimal participation in opportunistic violence. In contrast, weak control leads to participation patterns inconsistent with the preferences of armed group leaders - reduced participation in strategic violence and increased participation in opportunistic violence. When leader preferences are uncertain and control is ambiguous, new, entrepreneurial forms of violence emerge from the military's lower levels.

A growing literature finds that nonviolence is more successful than violence in effecting political change. We suggest that a focus on this association is incomplete, because it obscures the crucial influence of ethnic identity on campaign outcomes. We argue that because of prevalent negative stereotypes associating minority ethnic groups with violence, such groups are perceived as more violent even when resisting nonviolently, increasing support for their repression and ultimately hampering campaign success. We show that, cross-nationally, the effect of nonviolence on outcomes is significantly moderated by ethnicity, with nonviolence increasing success only for dominant groups. We then test our argument using two experiments in the United States and Israel. Study 1 finds that nonviolent resistance by ethnic minorities is perceived as more violent and requiring more policing than identical resistance by majorities. Study 2 replicates and extends the results, leveraging the wave of racial justice protests across the US in June 2020 to find that white participants are perceived as less violent than Black participants when protesting for the same goals. These findings highlight the importance of ethnic identity in shaping campaign perceptions and outcomes, underscoring the obstacles that widespread biases pose to nonviolent mobilization.

Female combatants play a central role in rebel efforts to cultivate and disseminate positive narratives regarding the movement and its political goals. Yet, the effectiveness of such strategies in shaping audience attitudes or generating tangible benefits for the group remains unclear. We propose and test a theory regarding the channels through which female fighters advance rebel goals. We argue that female fighters positively influence audience attitudes toward rebel groups by strengthening observers' beliefs about their legitimacy and their decision to use armed tactics. We further contend that these effects directly help them secure support from transnational non-state actors and indirectly promote state support. We assess our arguments by combining a novel survey experiment in two countries with analyses of new cross-national data on female combatants and information about transnational support for rebels. The empirical results support our arguments and demonstrate the impact of gender framing on rebel efforts to secure support.

Female combatants play a central role in rebel efforts to cultivate and disseminate positive narratives regarding the movement and its political goals. Yet, the effectiveness of such strategies in shaping audience attitudes or generating tangible benefits for the group remains unclear. We propose and test a theory regarding the channels through which female fighters advance rebel goals. We argue that female fighters positively influence audience attitudes toward rebel groups by strengthening observers' beliefs about their legitimacy and their decision to use armed tactics. We further contend that these effects directly help them secure support from transnational nonstate actors and indirectly promote state support. We assess our arguments by combining a novel survey experiment in two countries with analyses of new cross-national data on female combatants and information about transnational support for rebels. The empirical results support our arguments and demonstrate the impact of gender framing on rebel efforts to secure support.

Territorial disputes are prone to conflict because of the value of territory to publics, whether due to its strategic and material worth, or to its intangible, symbolic value. Yet despite the implications of the distinction for both theory and policy, empirically disentangling the material from the symbolic has posed formidable methodological challenges. We propose a set of tools for assessing the nature of individual territorial attachment, drawing on a series of survey experiments in Israel. Using these tools, we find that a substantial segment of the Jewish population is attached to the disputed West Bank territory for intangible reasons, consisting not only of far-right voters but also of voters of moderate-right and centrist parties. This distribution considerably narrows the bargaining space of leaders regardless of coalitional configurations. Our empirical analysis thus illustrates how the distribution of territorial preferences in the domestic population can have powerful implications for conflict and its resolution.

How do economic sanctions affect the political attitudes of individuals in targeted countries? Do they reduce or increase support for policy change? Are targeted, "smart" sanctions more effective in generating public support? Despite the importance of these questions for understanding the effectiveness of sanctions, they have received little systematic attention. We address them drawing on original data from Israel, where the threat of economic sanctions has sparked a contentious policy debate. We first examine the political effects of the European Union's (EU) 2015 decision to label goods produced in the West Bank, and then expand our analysis by employing a survey experiment that allows us to test the differential impact of sanction type and sender identity. We find that the EU's decision produced a backlash effect, increasing support for hardline policies and raising hostility toward Europe. Our findings further reveal that individuals are likely to support concessions only in the most extreme and unlikely of circumstances—a comprehensive boycott imposed by a sender perceived as a key strategic ally. These results offer theoretical and policy implications for the study of the effects of economic sanctions.

AbstractRecent research has highlighted combat's positive effects for political behavior, but it is unclear whether they extend to attitudes toward the conflict itself. We exploit the assignment of health rankings determining combat eligibility in the Israel Defense Forces to examine the effect of combat exposure on support for peaceful conflict resolution. Given the centrality of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to global affairs, and its apparent intractability, the political consequences of combat become all the more pressing. We find that exposure to combat hardens attitudes toward the rival and reduces support for negotiation and compromise. Importantly, these attitudes translate into voting behavior: combatants are likely to vote for more hawkish parties. These findings call for caution in emphasizing the benign effects of combat and underscore the importance of reintegrating combatants during the transition from conflict to peace.