By Bethany Lacina

The vast majority of political violence is within rather than between states. How do national politics—that is, the central government’s attempts to stay in office—make civil violence more or less likely? Social science has ignored that question in favor of debate, catalyzed by scholars at the World Bank, over whether “greed’’ or ‘’grievance” most motivates militants. There, governments are not actors but background conditions. To challenge that approach, I studied violence during one of the largest and most complicated domestic policy reforms in recent history, the reorganization of the Indian federation in the 1950s. Activists’ decisions to engage in violence were related to how they expected the government to act. Those expectations depended on electoral politics. Ironically, the most militant ethnic groups were not the most aggrieved groups. Instead, militants were from reasonably large, powerful ethnic groups that needed violence to overcome a modest disadvantage in partisan politics.

In the 1950s, Indian states’ borders were redrawn to roughly conform to (some) language borders. In theory, any language that had an area of territorial concentration could have had a new state boundary drawn around that area. The majority language group in the new state would be able to set the state language, be powerful in state politics, and thus be privileged in education, civil service, and state-run firms there. Other interests would be losers: some people would end up as linguistic minorities and/or the new state would siphon off resources from an existing state. Thus, each possible change to the federation defined a unique coalition of ethnic interests in favor and opposed.

The central government was controlled by the Indian National Congress (INC). The strength of the party’s organization and its popularity among voters varied across ethnic groups and regions of the country. The national government was happy to endorse new states where statehood proponents were a valuable INC constituency and statehood opponents were either too few to matter much to the INC’s future electoral fortunes or were firmly in the column of a rival party. Regional elites knew whether they had this kind of advantage with the INC government. If they did, they had no reason to mobilize their followers for violence. I show that these “peacefully accommodated” statehood proponents had recently elected a large number of INC representatives relative to the number sent by rival anti-statehood interests.

Other regional elites did not mobilize violent statehood campaigns, but for opposite reasons. These elites were from ethnic groups that could have benefitted from a newly carved federal state. However, the group’s representation in the INC compared very unfavorably to the representation of anti-statehood groups. Statehood proponents could not expect to succeed through violence. The national executive would put down militancy rather than compromise at the expense of a valuable INC constituency.

Thus, there was no such direct relationship between unhappiness with existing federal borders and violence. Instead, some of the most disadvantaged ethnic groups in the country—particularly the “tribes” of central India—were not militant because they happened to be located where a powerful Congress bloc favored the status quo.

Violent statehood movements did succeed in parts of India. Statehood proponents mobilized for violence and won concessions in regions where they were not too disadvantaged in the Congress party relative to opponents of statehood. Violence transformed parochial statehood disputes into national crises. With crisis underway, the center compromised with the pro-statehood militants.

A connection between violence and domestic politics almost certainly exists outside India and beyond the realms of ethnic or territorial conflict. Part of the logic is intuitive: some interests are peacefully accommodated because of their political importance to the national government. A more provocative claim is that there are ethnic groups, economic classes, and interests that are not violent because the constituencies opposed to their goals are so close to the central executive. Anticipation of government repression deters violence. The ironic implication is that the interests that use militancy are not that much weaker, politically, than the opponents of their policy goals. There is no linear relationship between objective measures of grievance and militancy because domestic politics gives governments a credible threat of repression against the most marginalized.

About the Author: Bethany Lacina is an assistant professor at the University of Rochester and a research associate at the Centre for the Study of Civil War at the International Peace Research Institute in Oslo. Her article, “How Governments Shape the Risk of Civil Violence: India’s Federal Reorganization, 1950–56” appeared in the July 2014 issue of the American Journal of Political Science.

By Gwyneth McClendon

Why do individuals participate in non-voting forms of collective political action? The last few years have been rife with examples of rallies, protests and demonstrations: from student protests in Hong Kong, to the “Black Lives Matter” demonstrations in the United States, to mass rallies in the Ukraine. While we can ask questions about why such contentious events happen in some places and times and not in others, we might also want to understand more about the motivations pulling individuals into the fray. What motivates an ordinary citizen to join in?

It can be difficult to answer this question empirically. Individual participation in rallies and protests is usually not systematically recorded. Unlike voter turnout or campaign donations, lists of individual participants are rarely compiled. Individuals may also not be reliable narrators about their own motivations for participating or not participating. Observational differences between those who take to the streets and those who do not may be spurious rather than direct causes of participation.

With these challenges in mind, I took an experimental approach to investigating factors pulling individuals into collective political events. Specifically, I worked closely with a U.S.-based non-governmental advocacy organization that was organizing a Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) rally for marriage equality and other LGBT issues in 2011. We randomly assigned potential participants to receive differently-worded email invitations to attend the rally and then compared rates of intended, actual and reported participation across treatment conditions. We came up with novel ways of capturing intended participation (through RSVPs to an Evite) and actual participation (through participants’ registering for raffle tickets as they entered the rally) that allowed us both to be systematic and to respect individuals’ expectations of confidentiality. Reported participation was measured through an online survey circulated after the event.

The primary hypothesis under investigation was that individuals are more likely to participate in contentious political events when doing so will win them social rewards. That is, people care about what others think of them and are willing to pursue the high-regard of their peers even if winning that kind of admiration is materially costly. Thus, ordinary citizens may be more likely to sacrifice their scarce time and effort to participate in contentious politics if they anticipate that their participation will be socially celebrated.

To test this hypothesis, some individuals in the study received invitations to the rally simply informing them of the time, place and purpose of the event; others, by contrast, received that information plus an explicit promise of social admiration – either through the promise of recognition of rally participants in the group’s newsletter or, alternatively, through the promise of “likes” on Facebook. I found that either promise of social admiration significantly boosted attendance at the rally in comparison to the information-only invitation.

The study thus provides new experimental evidence that our concern for others’ opinions matters for the political activities in which we engage. Who has the courage and will to engage in contentious political events? Commitment to a cause and information about how to participate likely matter, but even holding those factors constant, the promise of social rewards can make the difference between showing up and staying home.

About the Author: Gwyneth McClendon is an Assistant Professor of Government and Social Studies at Harvard University. Her article, “Social Esteem and Participation in Contentious Politics: A Field Experiment at an LGBT Pride Rally” appeared in the April 2014 issue of the American Journal of Political Science.

Carly Urban, Montana State University

Sarah Niebler, Dickinson College

Why do individuals contribute to political campaigns? There are many reasons people may give—ranging from the warm glow they feel after contributing to a cause they care about to perceived access to political candidates. Presidential campaigns thrive on individual campaign contributions to keep their messages present with advertisements, radio slots, and get-out-the vote campaigns. With these goals in mind, candidates should aim to maximize the amount of money they can bring in. But how can they do this?

We show that by running advertisements in non-battleground states, presidential candidates could earn additional money, meaning that there are currently “dollars on the sidewalk.” Because of the winner-take-all nature of the Electoral College, U.S. presidential candidates tend to only compete, and therefore advertise, in “battleground” states.  However, in some areas of non-competitive states, media markets overlap with battleground states. For example, Boston is often uncontested, but receives presidential advertisements because its media market overlaps with part of New Hampshire. Our work examines the effect of those “accidental” televised campaign ads on individuals’ likelihood of contributing financially to either of the two major-party U.S. presidential candidates.

We ground our analysis in previous work finding that televised campaign advertisements can have an effect both on voter turnout and on persuasion. We use data on the location, timing, and content of political ads from the Wisconsin Advertising Project in combination with data on who is contributing to presidential candidates from the Federal Election Commission.  Examining these two sources together, and looking only at zip codes in non-battleground states, we are able to isolate the effects of televised campaign ads on contributions.  We match zip codes of non-battleground states where there is no political advertising to zip codes of non-battleground states that are exposed to advertising – advertising really aimed at the neighboring battleground state.

Another example of the accidental advertising phenomenon can be seen by looking at advertising in Illinois in the 2008 presidential campaign. The only three media markets contained solely within Illinois (Rockford; Peoria; and Champaign) did not see any advertising during the 2008 general election campaign.  However, we found that all other media markets in Illinois did see advertising as they also cover areas of neighboring battleground states.  For instance, the Chicago media market covers area of Indiana; the Davenport market covers areas in Iowa; and the St. Louis market covers areas of Missouri.  In our study’s design then, zip codes in Champaign or Peoria were matched with zip codes of similar demographics and socioeconomic characteristics in Quincy or St. Louis.

We ultimately find that in 2008, zip codes that were exposed to accidental advertising contributed, on average, between $6,100 and $7,200 more than zip codes with similar characteristics that were not exposed to advertising.  We further examined whether these findings were likely unique to 2008 and found that they were not.  We estimate that while it was the case that zip codes contributed more, on average, in 2008 than in 2004, that being exposed to advertisements increases aggregate contributions at the zip code level.

Having found that accidental advertising can increase campaign contributions, we aimed to determine next if advertising in uncontested states could ever be economically fruitful for presidential candidates.  After calculating the optimum level of ads in each media market that was solely contained within a non-battleground state, multiplying it by the expected gains to advertising, and subtracting an estimated cost for airing those ads, we found that candidates might expect to raise an additional $3 million by airing ads in these markets.  While this may seem like a small amount of money in a campaign season in which presidential candidates raise, and spend, upwards of $1 billion, we ultimately conclude that targeting advertising not just in battleground states, but also in those media markets that have a high concentration of high-income individuals may prove profitable for future presidential candidates.

About the authors: Carly Urban is an Assistant Professor of Economics at Montana State University and Sarah Niebler is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at Dickinson College. Their article, “Dollars on the Sidewalk: Should U.S. Presidential Candidates Advertise in Uncontested States?” appeared in the April 2014 issue of the American Journal of Political Science.

The American Journal of Political Science, like most other major journals in political science, takes a one-month break during the summer. During this period, no new manuscripts are accepted, although all other Journal operations continue unabated. For 2014, we are going to try something new: Rather than shutting down the office for a single one-month hiatus, we will take two shorter breaks. The first will occur May 21 through June 9, 2014. The second will take place from July 12 through July 28, 2014.

We believe these multiple short breaks have several advantages over a single longer hiatus. For example, authors who finish manuscripts during one of these breaks will now have a shorter wait until the paper can be submitted to the Journal. I can say from personal experience that preparing a paper for submission, only to find that I have to wait a month to do so, is extremely frustrating! Of course, a two-week wait will be frustrating too, but hopefully not as much so.

For the Editorial Staff and me, the shorter break means that we will be confronted with a smaller “rush” of submissions at the end of the hiatus period than would have been the case with a one-month break. But, that is really the only difference that we will experience. Remember, all other aspects of manuscript processing will continue as usual during the break periods. These activities include sending out reminders to referees, accepting incoming reviews, making editorial decisions, and preparing new issues of the Journal. All in all, there will be very little in the way of interruptions to the usual flow of manuscripts through the review process.

So, please remember to mark your calendars if you plan to send your work to the American Journal of Political Science sometime this summer: Again, the AJPS Editorial Office will be closed to new submissions from May 21 through June 9, 2014, and from July 14 through July 28, 2014.

Finally, please do not hesitate to let us know if you have preferences regarding the structure of the summer breaks. Our use of multiple shorter breaks this year is something of an experiment. If the process does not work well, or if reactions are overwhelmingly negative, then we may well return to a single longer break in 2015. So, once again, feel free to let us know what you think!

Jakana Thomas, an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science at Michigan State University, posted an article on The Monkey Cage, titled “Actually, sometimes terrorism does work.” Read Professor Thomas’ article at:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/monkey-cage/wp/2014/04/22/actually-sometimes-terrorism-does-work/ 

The posting on The Monkey Cage is based on Professor Thomas forthcoming article in the American Journal of Political Science, “Rewarding Bad Behavior: How Governments Respond to Terrorism in War” (Volume 52, Issue 2, April 2014). The full AJPS article is available free through May 22, 2014, at:

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ajps.12113/abstract/ 

The article, “The Strategic Nature of Compliance: An Empirical Evaluation of Law Implementation in the Central Monitoring System of the European Union,” by Thomas König and Lars Mäder, appears in the January 2014 issue of the AJPS. Here, Thomas König provides a summary of its content:

How does a central monitoring agency affect compliance in a multilevel system of governance, in which the lower level actors must implement the policy goals decided at the higher level? Do these implementers strategically anticipate the ability and willingness of this agency to enforce compliance? And what about the agency’s enforcement decision – does it strategically anticipate enforcement success and sanctioning costs? Using the example of the European Commission for a central monitoring agency, our study models and tests the strategic interaction in the compliance game of the European Union.

The member countries of the European Union are obliged to implement the policy goals of directives in a correct and timely manner, which is monitored and can, in case of non-compliance, be enforced by the European Commission. Even though this process establishes several interdependent implementation and enforcement decisions, the previous literature has studied separately the implementation from the enforcement stage. In a strategic game, however, the decision to implement can also be influenced by the anticipated decision to enforce compliance, which we thus integrate into a single strategic compliance model. This model postulates that a compliance conflict is determined by the probabilities for enforcement success and costs of sanctioning, which is statistically confirmed by our structural estimation model.

Although the central monitoring system of the European Union is praised for effectiveness, our findings reveal that the monitoring agency refrains from enforcing compliance when the probability of success is low and the sanctioning costs are high – promoting the outcome of a compliance deficit. The European Commission accordingly preselects non-compliance and only takes action against non-complying countries in situations, in which the probability of an enforcement success is high and/or the costs of sanctions are low. This finding might also explain a well-known puzzle in compliance research, according to which the European Commission is almost always successful in front of a court.