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      Power politics: Armed non-state actors and the capture of public electricity in post-invasion Baghdad

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      Journal of Peace Research
      SAGE Publications

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          Abstract

          Scholars observe that armed non-state actors (NSAs) often provide social services to reinforce their popular support and legitimacy as guarantors of local order. On the other hand, NSAs usually face funding constraints that make the independent provision of distributive goods difficult. This article argues that armed NSAs employ an alternative, more cost-effective tactic to deliver services. It argues that militant groups can leverage their armed capacity to capture control of and monopolize access to state-sponsored services. As an example, it documents the capture of public electricity infrastructure that took place in post-invasion Baghdad under the Sadrist Movement, an armed group formed shortly after the ouster of the Ba’athist state. Using local-level information about the location of Sadrist offices and remote sensing data, it estimates that Sadrist-affiliated neighborhoods in Baghdad saw an average increase in access to electricity between 2003 and 2006 that was significantly greater than in other areas of the city. The article concludes by addressing threats to inference, showing that these differences are not alternatively explained by demographic differences or changes therein due to ongoing conflict. It also discusses how this NSA strategy might contribute to an equilibrium of low state legitimacy and weak capacity in fragile contexts like that of post-2003 Iraq.

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          Most cited references36

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          Explaining Interethnic Cooperation

          Though both journalists and the academic literature on ethnic conflict give the opposite impression, peaceful and even cooperative relations between ethnic groups are far more common than is large-scale violence. We seek to explain this norm of interethnic peace and how it occasionally breaks down, arguing that formal and informal institutions usually work to contain or “cauterize” disputes between individual members of different groups. Using a social matching game model, we show that local-level interethnic cooperation can be supported in essentially two ways. Inspiral equilibria, disputes between individuals are correctly expected to spiral rapidly beyond the two parties, and fear of this induces cooperation “on the equilibrium path.” Inin-group policing equilibria, individuals ignore transgressions by members of the other group, correctly expecting that the culprits will be identified and sanctioned by their own ethnic brethren. A range of examples suggests that both equilibria occur empirically and have properties expected from the theoretical analysis.
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            Can Hearts and Minds Be Bought? The Economics of Counterinsurgency in Iraq

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              Conceptualizing Legitimacy, Measuring Legitimating Beliefs

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                Author and article information

                Contributors
                (View ORCID Profile)
                Journal
                Journal of Peace Research
                Journal of Peace Research
                SAGE Publications
                0022-3433
                1460-3578
                September 28 2020
                : 002234332094076
                Affiliations
                [1 ]Department of Political Science, Stanford University
                Article
                10.1177/0022343320940768
                6a3e674d-4a8b-4c90-9315-881280c309e8
                © 2020

                http://journals.sagepub.com/page/policies/text-and-data-mining-license

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