UC Davis

My three-article dissertation examines the consequences of variation in civil-military relations for states’ bargaining behavior when it comes to preventing and resolving domestic as well as international conflicts. State leaders must often decide between negotiating with domestic opposition groups or violently repressing them. Existing bargaining explanations of this decision-making process often assume that states are unitary actors with a singular, coherent set of interests. Breaking with this assumption, my research adopts the perspective that states’ bargaining behavior is often the product of an interplay of competing interests within the state, rather than a rational, centralized process. In my first dissertation essay, I question the dyadic nature of bargaining framework in civil conflicts literature. I contribute to answering a puzzle of why standard bargaining explanations cannot explain some states’ propensity for fighting rather than bargaining. I show that weak civilian control generates state’s preferences towards fighting rather than bargaining because of the military’s hawkish nature, which results in an increase in the likelihood of state repression in the short run and civil war onset in the long run. In the second paper, I explain why many civil conflicts have been particularly intractable in recent decades. I contend that weak civilian control of the state may reduce the likelihood of negotiations with rebel groups by constraining the ability of the government to credibly commit to peace settlements, which makes civil wars last much longer. In addition, weak civilian control limits the range of concessions that states can make to rebel groups, which increases the risk of civil war recurrence. This research contributes to the existing literature by showing the causal effect of weak civilian control of the state on the degree of commitment problems in civil wars and type of peace agreements signed to end those wars. My third dissertation essay focuses on the consequences of the acquisition of nuclear weapons capability on the likelihood of interstate conflicts. I analyze the role of weak civilian control of the state in moderating the effect of nuclear weapons on interstate conflict behavior. Existing studies offer contradictory empirical evidence when it comes to understanding the relationship between nuclear capability and the likelihood of interstate conflicts. I contribute to the discussion by introducing civilian control of the state as a key moderating variable. I show that nuclear capability increases the likelihood of interstate conflict initiation only for countries with weak civilian control.