Jason Lyall
Biographic Data
| ID | 3628735 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Jason Lyall |
| GIVEN NAMES | Jason |
| FAMILY NAME | Lyall |
| SIGNATURE | LYALL J |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 11 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 875 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 11 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2006 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2020 |
| H-INDEX | 10 |
Divided Armies: Inequality and Battlefield Performance in Modern War
How do armies fight and what makes them victorious on the modern battlefield? This book challenges long-standing answers to this classic question by linking the fate of armies to their levels of inequality. Introducing the concept of military inequality, the book demonstrates how a state's prewar choices about the citizenship status of ethnic groups within its population determine subsequent battlefield performance. Treating certain ethnic groups…
Divided Armies: Inequality and Battlefield Performance in Modern War
Can civilian attitudes predict insurgent violence? Ideology and insurgent tactical choice in civil war
Are civilian attitudes a useful predictor of patterns of violence in civil wars? A prominent debate has emerged among scholars and practitioners about the importance of winning civilian 'hearts and minds' for influencing their wartime behavior. We argue that such efforts may have a dark side: insurgents can use pro-counterinsurgent attitudes as cues to select their targets and tactics. We conduct an original survey experiment in 204 Afghan villag…
Coethnic Bias and Wartime Informing
Information about insurgent groups is a central resource in civil wars: counterinsurgents seek it, insurgents safeguard it, and civilians often trade it. Yet despite its essential role in civil war dynamics, the act of informing is still poorly understood, due mostly to the classified nature of informant "tips." As an alternative research strategy, we use an original 2,700 respondent survey experiment in 100 villages to examine attitudes toward t…
From cell phones to conflict? Reflections on the emerging ICT-political conflict research agenda
From mobilizing masses to monitoring rebels, information and communication technologies (ICT) are transforming political conflict. We reflect on the contributions made by the articles of this special issue to the emerging ICT-political conflict research agenda, highlighting strengths of these articles, and offering suggestions for moving forward. Elaborate theory is crucial: it informs our standards of evidence, our choice of statistical models, …
Comparing and Combining List and Endorsement Experiments: Evidence from Afghanistan
List and endorsement experiments are becoming increasingly popular among social scientists as indirect survey techniques for sensitive questions. When studying issues such as racial prejudice and support for militant groups, these survey methodologies may improve the validity of measurements by reducing nonresponse and social desirability biases. We develop a statistical test and multivariate regression models for comparing and combining the resu…
Explaining Support for Combatants during Wartime: A Survey Experiment in Afghanistan
How are civilian attitudes toward combatants affected by wartime victimization? Are these effects conditional on which combatant inflicted the harm? We investigate the determinants of wartime civilian attitudes towards combatants using a survey experiment across 204 villages in five Pashtun-dominated provinces of Afghanistan-the heart of the Taliban insurgency. We use endorsement experiments to indirectly elicit truthful answers to sensitive ques…
Do Democracies Make Inferior Counterinsurgents? Reassessing Democracy's Impact on War Outcomes and Duration
A core proposition from decades of research on internal wars asserts that democracies, with their casualty-averse publics, accountable leaders, and free media, are uniquely prone to losing counterinsurgency (COIN) wars. Yet one should question this finding, for two reasons. First, existing studies overwhelmingly adopt no-variance research designs that only examine democracies, leaving them unable to assess their performance relative to autocracie…
Are Coethnics More Effective Counterinsurgents? Evidence from the Second Chechen War
Does ethnicity matter for explaining violence during civil wars? I exploit variation in the identity of soldiers who conducted so-called "sweep" operations (zachistki) in Chechnya (2000-5) as an empirical strategy for testing the link between ethnicity and violence. Evidence suggests that the intensity and timing of insurgent attacks are conditional on who "swept" a particular village. For example, attacks decreased by about 40% after pro-Russian…
Does Indiscriminate Violence Incite Insurgent Attacks: Evidence from Chechnya
Does a state's use of indiscriminate violence incite insurgent attacks? To date, most existing theories and empirical studies have concluded that such violence is highly counterproductive because it creates new grievances while forcing victims to seek security, if not safety, in rebel arms. This proposition is tested using Russian artillery fire in Chechnya (2000 to 2005) to estimate indiscriminate violence's effect on subsequent patterns of insu…
Pocket Protests: Rhetorical Coercion and the Micropolitics of Collective Action in Semiauthoritarian Regimes
This article examines how repression in semiauthoritarian regimes affects collective action by comparing antiwar protesting during Russia's first (1994–96) and second (1999–) Chechen wars. Vladimir Putin's creeping authoritarianism acts as a "natural experiment" where we can study collective action before, during, and after the introduction of restrictive measures. Two key findings emerge. First, despite the Kremlin's increasingly heavy hand, ant…
Does Indiscriminate Violence Incite Insurgent Attacks: Evidence from Chechnya
Does a state's use of indiscriminate violence incite insurgent attacks? To date, most existing theories and empirical studies have concluded that such violence is highly counterproductive because it creates new grievances while forcing victims to seek security, if not safety, in rebel arms. This proposition is tested using Russian artillery fire in Chechnya (2000 to 2005) to estimate indiscriminate violence's effect on subsequent patterns of insu…
Explaining Support for Combatants during Wartime: A Survey Experiment in Afghanistan
How are civilian attitudes toward combatants affected by wartime victimization? Are these effects conditional on which combatant inflicted the harm? We investigate the determinants of wartime civilian attitudes towards combatants using a survey experiment across 204 villages in five Pashtun-dominated provinces of Afghanistan-the heart of the Taliban insurgency. We use endorsement experiments to indirectly elicit truthful answers to sensitive ques…
Are Coethnics More Effective Counterinsurgents? Evidence from the Second Chechen War
Does ethnicity matter for explaining violence during civil wars? I exploit variation in the identity of soldiers who conducted so-called "sweep" operations (zachistki) in Chechnya (2000-5) as an empirical strategy for testing the link between ethnicity and violence. Evidence suggests that the intensity and timing of insurgent attacks are conditional on who "swept" a particular village. For example, attacks decreased by about 40% after pro-Russian…
Comparing and Combining List and Endorsement Experiments: Evidence from Afghanistan
List and endorsement experiments are becoming increasingly popular among social scientists as indirect survey techniques for sensitive questions. When studying issues such as racial prejudice and support for militant groups, these survey methodologies may improve the validity of measurements by reducing nonresponse and social desirability biases. We develop a statistical test and multivariate regression models for comparing and combining the resu…
Do Democracies Make Inferior Counterinsurgents? Reassessing Democracy's Impact on War Outcomes and Duration
A core proposition from decades of research on internal wars asserts that democracies, with their casualty-averse publics, accountable leaders, and free media, are uniquely prone to losing counterinsurgency (COIN) wars. Yet one should question this finding, for two reasons. First, existing studies overwhelmingly adopt no-variance research designs that only examine democracies, leaving them unable to assess their performance relative to autocracie…
Coethnic Bias and Wartime Informing
Information about insurgent groups is a central resource in civil wars: counterinsurgents seek it, insurgents safeguard it, and civilians often trade it. Yet despite its essential role in civil war dynamics, the act of informing is still poorly understood, due mostly to the classified nature of informant "tips." As an alternative research strategy, we use an original 2,700 respondent survey experiment in 100 villages to examine attitudes toward t…
Pocket Protests: Rhetorical Coercion and the Micropolitics of Collective Action in Semiauthoritarian Regimes
This article examines how repression in semiauthoritarian regimes affects collective action by comparing antiwar protesting during Russia's first (1994–96) and second (1999–) Chechen wars. Vladimir Putin's creeping authoritarianism acts as a "natural experiment" where we can study collective action before, during, and after the introduction of restrictive measures. Two key findings emerge. First, despite the Kremlin's increasingly heavy hand, ant…
Can civilian attitudes predict insurgent violence? Ideology and insurgent tactical choice in civil war
Are civilian attitudes a useful predictor of patterns of violence in civil wars? A prominent debate has emerged among scholars and practitioners about the importance of winning civilian 'hearts and minds' for influencing their wartime behavior. We argue that such efforts may have a dark side: insurgents can use pro-counterinsurgent attitudes as cues to select their targets and tactics. We conduct an original survey experiment in 204 Afghan villag…
From cell phones to conflict? Reflections on the emerging ICT-political conflict research agenda
From mobilizing masses to monitoring rebels, information and communication technologies (ICT) are transforming political conflict. We reflect on the contributions made by the articles of this special issue to the emerging ICT-political conflict research agenda, highlighting strengths of these articles, and offering suggestions for moving forward. Elaborate theory is crucial: it informs our standards of evidence, our choice of statistical models, …
Divided Armies: Inequality and Battlefield Performance in Modern War
Pocket Protests: Rhetorical Coercion and the Micropolitics of Collective Action in Semiauthoritarian Regimes
This article examines how repression in semiauthoritarian regimes affects collective action by comparing antiwar protesting during Russia's first (1994–96) and second (1999–) Chechen wars. Vladimir Putin's creeping authoritarianism acts as a "natural experiment" where we can study collective action before, during, and after the introduction of restrictive measures. Two key findings emerge. First, despite the Kremlin's increasingly heavy hand, ant…
Does Indiscriminate Violence Incite Insurgent Attacks: Evidence from Chechnya
Does a state's use of indiscriminate violence incite insurgent attacks? To date, most existing theories and empirical studies have concluded that such violence is highly counterproductive because it creates new grievances while forcing victims to seek security, if not safety, in rebel arms. This proposition is tested using Russian artillery fire in Chechnya (2000 to 2005) to estimate indiscriminate violence's effect on subsequent patterns of insu…
Do Democracies Make Inferior Counterinsurgents? Reassessing Democracy's Impact on War Outcomes and Duration
A core proposition from decades of research on internal wars asserts that democracies, with their casualty-averse publics, accountable leaders, and free media, are uniquely prone to losing counterinsurgency (COIN) wars. Yet one should question this finding, for two reasons. First, existing studies overwhelmingly adopt no-variance research designs that only examine democracies, leaving them unable to assess their performance relative to autocracie…
Are Coethnics More Effective Counterinsurgents? Evidence from the Second Chechen War
Does ethnicity matter for explaining violence during civil wars? I exploit variation in the identity of soldiers who conducted so-called "sweep" operations (zachistki) in Chechnya (2000-5) as an empirical strategy for testing the link between ethnicity and violence. Evidence suggests that the intensity and timing of insurgent attacks are conditional on who "swept" a particular village. For example, attacks decreased by about 40% after pro-Russian…
Explaining Support for Combatants during Wartime: A Survey Experiment in Afghanistan
How are civilian attitudes toward combatants affected by wartime victimization? Are these effects conditional on which combatant inflicted the harm? We investigate the determinants of wartime civilian attitudes towards combatants using a survey experiment across 204 villages in five Pashtun-dominated provinces of Afghanistan-the heart of the Taliban insurgency. We use endorsement experiments to indirectly elicit truthful answers to sensitive ques…
Comparing and Combining List and Endorsement Experiments: Evidence from Afghanistan
List and endorsement experiments are becoming increasingly popular among social scientists as indirect survey techniques for sensitive questions. When studying issues such as racial prejudice and support for militant groups, these survey methodologies may improve the validity of measurements by reducing nonresponse and social desirability biases. We develop a statistical test and multivariate regression models for comparing and combining the resu…
Coethnic Bias and Wartime Informing
Information about insurgent groups is a central resource in civil wars: counterinsurgents seek it, insurgents safeguard it, and civilians often trade it. Yet despite its essential role in civil war dynamics, the act of informing is still poorly understood, due mostly to the classified nature of informant "tips." As an alternative research strategy, we use an original 2,700 respondent survey experiment in 100 villages to examine attitudes toward t…
From cell phones to conflict? Reflections on the emerging ICT-political conflict research agenda
From mobilizing masses to monitoring rebels, information and communication technologies (ICT) are transforming political conflict. We reflect on the contributions made by the articles of this special issue to the emerging ICT-political conflict research agenda, highlighting strengths of these articles, and offering suggestions for moving forward. Elaborate theory is crucial: it informs our standards of evidence, our choice of statistical models, …
Can civilian attitudes predict insurgent violence? Ideology and insurgent tactical choice in civil war
Are civilian attitudes a useful predictor of patterns of violence in civil wars? A prominent debate has emerged among scholars and practitioners about the importance of winning civilian 'hearts and minds' for influencing their wartime behavior. We argue that such efforts may have a dark side: insurgents can use pro-counterinsurgent attitudes as cues to select their targets and tactics. We conduct an original survey experiment in 204 Afghan villag…
Divided Armies: Inequality and Battlefield Performance in Modern War
How do armies fight and what makes them victorious on the modern battlefield? This book challenges long-standing answers to this classic question by linking the fate of armies to their levels of inequality. Introducing the concept of military inequality, the book demonstrates how a state's prewar choices about the citizenship status of ethnic groups within its population determine subsequent battlefield performance. Treating certain ethnic groups…
Divided Armies: Inequality and Battlefield Performance in Modern War
Political science (10 works) · Politics (9 works) · Law (8 works) · Political Conflict and Governance (8 works) · Psychology (8 works) · Social Psychology (7 works) · Law (6 works) · Terrorism, Counterterrorism, and Political Violence (6 works) · Computer Science (5 works) · Social Psychology (5 works)