The Ba'athist blackout? Selective goods provision and political violence in the Syrian civil war

Datos Bibliográficos

ID3916714
AutoresAlexander De Juan (0000-0002-6649-5064, German Institute for Global and Area Studies, autor de correspondencia), André Bank (0009-0007-9085-2897, German Institute for Global and Area Studies)
Año2015
Volumen52
Número1
Páginas91-104
Fecha de publicación2015-01-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaJournal of Peace Research (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0022-3433 • E-ISSN: 1460-3578
EditorialSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/0022343314559437
OpenAlexW2079668072
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas26
Referencias citadas30

Many authoritarian regimes selectively provide critical segments of the population with privileged access to goods and services, expecting political support in return. This article is interested in the effects of this regime strategy: Is violent opposition less likely to occur in subnational regions bound to the ruling elite through such patron-client networks? For its empirical analysis, the article makes use of crowdsourcing data on the number and geospatial distribution of fatalities in the Syrian civil war from March 2011 to November 2012. In terms of selective goods provision, the focus is on the electricity sector. Satellite images of the earth at night are used to proxy spatial variations in the public distribution of electricity in times of power shortages. These data are complemented with information from the last Syrian population census of 2004. Estimations from fixed effect logit models lend support to the hypothesis that the risk of violence has been lower in subdistricts that have been favored by the ruling regime in terms of preferential access to material goods. This hypothesis is further corroborated with qualitative evidence from Syrian localities

Authoritarianism · Civil Conflict · Computer security · Democracy · Development economics · Economics · Elite · Environmental health · Geography · Geospatial analysis · Microeconomics · Opposition (politics) · Poison control · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Population · Public good · Sociology · Spanish Civil War · Computer Science · Crime, Illicit Activities, and Governance · Demography · Law · Medicine · Political Conflict and Governance · Terrorism, Counterterrorism, and Political Violence