When Autocratic State Made War,but War Made Democratic State:The Case of Armenia

• In Event: Poster Session: Division 13 Politics of (former) Communist Societies

Abstract

Overview:
By focusing on a subset of developing states experiencing protracted conflict, this work introduces a theoretical model analyzing the link between the nature of conflict violence and the level of state’s accountability to its population, reflected in its distributive politics and politics of democratization.

Abstract:
How does the presence and type of protracted interstate conflict affect states’ decision-making? For how long does conflict allow incumbents to maintain their rally-around-the-flag appeal--both in terms of its resource-allocating decisions, as well as the scope of their democratic concessions? Literature suggests that militarized conflicts hinder economic development and effective governance; however, findings on patterns of government accountability during conflict periods are ambivalent.

I contribute to this body of work by introducing a theoretical model that explores the link between conflict, distributive politics, and democratization by making two arguments: first, on average, protracted conflict brings about a decline in public goods provision and strengthens the incumbent's authoritarian grip. Second, when disaggregating the conflict dynamics, I find that frequency and scope of violence inform patterns of public goods provision and democratic concessions. I suggest that under certain conditions the change in violence dynamics can, surprisingly, increase the provision of certain public goods, as well as result in successful democratization demands from the population.

Empirically, I test my theory in two ways: first, I employ multivariate statistical analysis to explore an original time-series-cross-sectional dataset covering 141 developing countries. While the large-N analysis helps to uncover overarching trends, it sheds little light on the mechanism that explains the linkage between nature of violence and incumbent's accountability. To suss out the mechanism, I draw from 1) qualitative data gathered during my fieldwork in Armenia; 2) a unique dataset on disaggregated conflict dynamics and new measures for the demand and supply of public goods and democratization in Armenia on the provincial level, 2001-2017; 3) and a new survey I have administered in Armenia during its first democratic transition in 2018--popularly known as the Velvet Revolution 2.0. Conflict duration and its varying degrees of violence over the years in Armenia, as well as extensive original micro-level data offer a unique laboratory to understand the linkage between violence, political economy and state accountability in states with ongoing conflicts, and their impact on the lives of regular people.

Author

• Evgenia Jane Kitaevich, University of Michigan