Reputation and civil war : why separatist conflicts are so violent / Barbara F. Walter.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Walter, Barbara F.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Civil war.

Insurgency.

Autonomy and independence movements.

Political violence.

Physical Description:

xiv, 255 pages : illustrations, maps ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, UK ; New York : Cambridge University Press, 2009.

Summary:

Of all the different types of civil war, disputes over self-determination are the most likely to escalate into war and resist compromise settlement. Reputation and Civil War argues that this low rate of negotiation is the result of reputation building, in which governments refuse to negotiate with early challengers in order to discourage others from making more costly demands in the future. Jakarta's wars against East Timor and Aceh, for example, were not designed to maintain sovereignty but to signal to Indonesia's other minorities that secession would be costly. Employing data from three different sources - laboratory experiments on undergraduates, statistical analysis of data on self-determination movements, and qualitative analyses of recent history in Indonesia and the Philippines - Barbara F. Walter provides some of the first systematic evidence that reputation strongly influences behavior, particularly between governments and ethnic minorities fighting over territory.

Contents:

Part I Theory 1

1 Introduction 3

2 Reputation building and self-determination movements 20

Part II Empirical tests 39

3 An experimental study of reputation building and deterrence (co-authored with Dustin Tingley) 41

4 Government responses to self-determination movements 66

5 Ethnic groups and the decision to seek self-determination 100

Part III Case studies 133

6 Indonesia: many ethnic groups, few demands 137

7 The Philippines: few ethnic groups, many demands 168

Part IV Conclusions 197

8 Reputation building and deterrence in civil wars 199.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780521763523

0521763525

OCLC:

351325462