'The Sanction Evasion Polkaâ Read about the failures of post-war gender quotas.
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If you read just one thingâ¦
...read about the failures of post-war gender quotas.
Gender quotas in government have become popular components of post-war political arrangements in recent years. From Colombia to Nepal, the use of quotas after conflict have dramatically increased the number of women involved in national, provincial, and municipal government. Yet, as political scientists Marie Berry and Milli Lake [write](, increased representation for women often serves to increase, rather than offset, the power of the groups that fought during the conflict. In Rwanda, for example, women make up 61% of parliament, the highest proportion in the world. Yet that representation did not prevent the government from jailing opposition leader Diane Rwigara when she announced she would run against longtime president Paul Kagame. Instead, women members of parliament from Kagameâs party helped provide what Berry and Lake call a âveneer of democratic progressâ to cover Kagameâs political repression.
How international organizations drive the âpresource curseâ
A new World Bank [study]( looks back at just how wrong the Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and other putative experts were in projecting economic growth from the discovery of Africa petroleum resources in the last two decades. The answer is that they were consistently, extremely, and damagingly wrong.
International policymakers tended to predict quick, huge returns on petroleum discoveries. Instead, petroleum projects took, on average, 73% longer to come to fruition than experts predicted (and only came online sooner than predicted once in 19 tries). Worse, government revenues from the projects were often far less than predicted when they finally did get started. In Ghana, actual revenues are under 50% of what was originally estimated. In Mozambique, where revenues from natural gas are still largely theoretical, projections have been revised down some 80%.
This preposterously bad prediction record is a problem because countries used those predictions to plan future economic and political decisions. Of the 12 countries studied, nine are in a worse debt situation than they were before petroleum discoveries were announced, and only one, Guinea-Bissau, has seen its debt situation improve.
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Chinese nuclear myths
Negotiations to extend the New START agreement to reduce American and Russian nuclear arsenals now turn, according to the Trump administrationâs lead negotiator, on Chinaâs willingness to join the treaty. However, the idea that Chinaâs nuclear stockpile is a threat to the world on a similar scale to the American or Russian arsenals just isnât really true, as David Logan [writes](.
Some have argued that China has a massive secret nuclear stockpile and needs to submit to inspections to allow the rest of the world to see the truth. In reality, thereâs no evidence for a secret Chinese nuclear stash. Indeed, the Pentagon just [estimated]( Chinaâs nuclear warhead count in the âlow 200s,â below some independent estimates and well below the roughly 5,800 warheads the US currently has.
Other claims include the charge that Chinaâs pledge not to be the first to use nuclear weapons in conflict is fraudulent, and that the Chinese government is deploying tactical nukes to use in first-strike situations. Yet neither of those claims stand up to scrutiny â internal Chinese military documents reaffirm the no-first-use policy, and China has canceled, rather than deployed, tactical nuke delivery systems.
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DEEP DIVE
Civilian decisions in conflict: Part I
One of the core insights of conflict studies is that civilians, despite definitionally being the worst-armed faction in any conflict, still retain a great deal of control over how many conflicts play out and what their role in the conflict will be. This week and next, Deep Dive will look at new research on how civilians make important decisions about their lives, priorities and politics during conflict.
Political scientist Mara Revkin has a new [article]( in the Journal of Conflict Resolution that investigates one of the most fundamental choices civilians make in wartime: whether to stay in their homes and live under the control of an armed group that has conquered their city, or to abandon their homes and flee to somewhere they hope will be safer.
Revkin focuses on Mosul, Iraq, when it was under the control of ISIS between 2014 and 2017. The ISIS conquest of Mosul offered Moslawis a stark choice, since ISIS was renowned for its viscous violence and strict approach to governance of the areas it controlled. The group allowed civilians freedom to move in and out of Mosul during its initial months running the city, leaving plenty of opportunities for people to get away. Yet, even in the face of ISISâs fearsome reputation and with opportunities to leave available, three quarters of Mosulâs population was still living there after eight months of ISIS rule.
Revkin was interested in these âstayersâ and why they made the counterintuitive decision to ride out life under ISIS rather than escape. After Iraqi state forces retook Mosul in 2017, she traveled to the city and ran a door-to-door survey of people who had either stayed through the period of ISIS control or had left and returned once ISIS was ejected from the city. She also sat down for extended interviews with both stayers and âleaversâ to better understand their motivations.
Revkinâs most remarkable finding is that the ISISâ reputation for cruelty didnât cause a mass exodus the moment ISIS entered Mosul. Even among leavers, many stayed in Mosul for months after ISISâs arrival to see how life would be under their governance. In fact, the majority of leavers Revkin sampled left after the start of 2015, six months after ISIS fighters first entered the city.
Rather than evaluating ISIS based on its reputation, both stayers and leavers largely chose their reactions based on how they and their city fared under ISIS control. Stayers tended to experience ISIS governance as an improvement over the way the city had been run by the Iraqi government. One stayer, a school administrator, told Revkin that âMosul was the cleanest I had ever seen itâ in the first six months of ISIS rule. Similarly, stayers were more likely than leavers to say that ISIS governance â measured in terms of taxes charged and services provided â was more fair than under Iraqi state rule.
This is not to say that decisions to stay or leave were not heavily influenced by the threat of ISIS violence. Almost everyone who left said they did so largely out of fear that ISIS would hurt them, and even many who stayed described their fears that leaving put them at more risk from ISIS than staying as a major reason for not fleeing the city. Yet, given the pervasiveness of that fear, Revkin shows that individual experiences of governance before ISISâs arrival still mattered in determining whether people found it necessary to leave after ISIS took over Mosul.
Revkinâs results speak to the experience of conflict not just as a horrifying break from normalcy, but as a time when civilians can engage with potential new normals if they were dissatisfied with the pre-conflict status quo. Moswalis largely remained in ISISâ Mosul during the period when leaving was plausible, in part, because many of them saw improvements in the city under ISIS rule. Their ability to express their governance preferences even amid ISIS violence is a prime example of the roles civilians carve out for themselves in conflicts.
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SHOW US THE RECEIPTS
Shirin Jaafari [spoke]( to Palestinians who are unimpressed with the recently signed Abraham Accords, which will normalize diplomatic relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain. Many Palestinians see the accords as a betrayal by the UAE and Bahrain, because it goes back on a 2002 commitment by Arab states to refuse Israel normal diplomatic relations until it ended its occupation of Palestinian territory and recognized a Palestinian state. As one former Palestinian Liberation Organization official told Jaafari, âWhat [Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates are] really, in effect doing, is saying that Israelâs behavior is acceptable when itâs actually not acceptable.â
Kate Kizer [made the case]( for a transitional justice program in the US to establish exactly how the American response to 9/11 has led to two decades of war abroad and an increasingly militarized society within the US. US policymakers, Kizer pointed out, typically treat transitional justice as something other countries need, often after the end of civil wars. Yet this kind of exceptionalism obscures the value truth commissions could have in understanding â and ending â an era of endless war. By exposing the true cost of war at home and around the world, truth commissions could provide the impetus for a new approach to US security issues.
Mary Kay Magistad [reported]( on Chinese Belt and Road Initiative investment in Kazakhstan. Lack of transparency around Belt and Road Initiative-funded projects prompted protests in Kazakhstan, leading the government to release documents last year showing that 55 projects received a total of $27.6 billion in Chinese loans and investment. Opinions are mixed about the value of the projects. Some see them as a way for Kazakhstan to get foreign funding that is hard to obtain from other sources. Others, however, see them as a way for China to launder its reputation in Kazakhstan, even as it forces Uighurs and ethnic Kazakh Muslims into concentration camps just across the Chinese border in Xinjiang province.
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[ ]
WELL PLAYED
Iran-Contraâs own Elliott Abrams [warning]( people in 2020 not to sell arms to Iran in contravention of US sanctions has got to be the most elaborate scared-straight program of all time.
Presumably the point of these [pizzas]( is to build consensus around the idea that they definitely shouldnât exist.
The nice thing about the [accordion]( trade is that it makes such a melodious sound regardless of whether sales are contracting or expanding.
[This]( is the headline of the week, but the story is compelling because it touches on a real competition between the US and Russia over who owns what in space. If NASA gets to be a moon rock [dealer](, whoâs to keep Russia from just claiming Venus?
A caution if you work in an academic political science department: Realists may be particularly [smug]( this week.
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LISTEN TO 'THINGS THAT GO BOOM'
Great Power Competition is: âI think we should really look at it through the lens of uh⦠competition." â a real life security expert.
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Critical State is written by Sam Ratner and is a collaboration between The World and Inkstick Media.
The World is a weekday public radio show and podcast on global issues, news and insights from PRX, BBC, and WGBH.
With an online magazine and podcast featuring a diversity of expert voices, Inkstick Media is âforeign policy for the rest of us.â
Critical State is made possible in part by the Carnegie Corporation of New York.
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