Data and Code for: Security Transitions

Principal Investigator(s): View help for Principal Investigator(s) Thiemo Fetzer, University of Warwick ; Pedro Souza, University of Warwick; Oliver Vanden Eynde, Paris School of Economics; Austin Wright, University of Chicago

Version: View help for Version V1

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REPOSITORY			05/10/2021 05:44:PM
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Project Citation:

Fetzer, Thiemo, Souza, Pedro, Vanden Eynde, Oliver, and Wright, Austin. Data and Code for: Security Transitions. Nashville, TN: American Economic Association [publisher], 2021. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2021-06-23. https://doi.org/10.3886/E130649V1

Project Description

Summary: How do foreign powers disengage from a conflict? We study this issue by examining the recent, large-scale security transition from international troops to local forces in the ongoing civil conflict in Afghanistan. We construct a new dataset that combines information on this transition process with declassified conflict outcomes and previously unreleased quarterly survey data of residents' perceptions of local security. Our empirical design leverages the staggered roll-out of the transition, and employs a novel instrumental variables approach to estimate the impact. We find a significant, sharp, and timely decline of insurgent violence in the initial phase -- the security transfer to Afghan forces; we find that this is followed by a significant surge in violence in the second phase -- the actual physical withdrawal of foreign troops. We argue that this pattern is consistent with a signaling model, in which the insurgents reduce violence strategically to facilitate the foreign military withdrawal to capitalize on the reduced foreign military presence afterwards. Our findings clarify the destabilizing consequences of withdrawal in one of the costliest conflicts in modern history, and yield potentially actionable insights for designing future security transitions.

Funding Sources: Pearson Institute for the Study and Resolution of Global Conflict; ANR (coopconflict); EUR (ANR-17-EURE-001)

Scope of Project

Subject Terms: counterinsurgency; civil conflict; public goods provision

JEL Classification:
      D72 Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
      D74 Conflict; Conflict Resolution; Alliances; Revolutions
      L23 Organization of Production

Geographic Coverage: afghanistan

Time Period(s): 2008 – 2016

Data Type(s): administrative records data; aggregate data; event/transaction data; geographic information system (GIS) data; images: photographs, drawings, graphical representations; observational data; survey data

Collection Notes: See README/readme.pdf for details about data collection and processing.

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Published Versions

V1 [2021-06-23]

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