IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/jocore/v59y2015i7p1155-1185.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Population Resettlement in War

Author

Listed:
  • Yuri M. Zhukov

Abstract

Why do combatants intentionally uproot civilians? The forcible relocation of families and communities to concentration camps, “protected villages,†and other special settlements is a regular feature of irregular war, occurring in almost a third of all counterinsurgency campaigns since 1816. Despite the historical regularity of these practices, most research has focused on individual decisions to flee, rather than the brute-force resettlement of civilians by combatants. Using a dynamic model of popular support and new micro-level data from Soviet secret police archives, I show that civilian resettlement is not simply a by-product of war but is a rational response to informational asymmetry. Combatants who cannot identify and selectively punish their opponents face incentives to control the population rather than earn its support. For strong governments with limited coercive leverage, civilian resettlement offers a way to reduce rebel activity without having to win hearts and minds.

Suggested Citation

  • Yuri M. Zhukov, 2015. "Population Resettlement in War," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 59(7), pages 1155-1185, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:jocore:v:59:y:2015:i:7:p:1155-1185
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://jcr.sagepub.com/content/59/7/1155.abstract
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Benjamin O Fordham, 2020. "History and quantitative conflict research: A case for limiting the historical scope of our theoretical arguments," Conflict Management and Peace Science, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 37(1), pages 3-15, January.
    2. Yuri M. Zhukov, 2014. "Theory of Indiscriminate Violence," Working Paper 365551, Harvard University OpenScholar.
    3. Miguel R. Rueda, 2017. "Popular Support, Violence, and Territorial Control in Civil War," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 61(8), pages 1626-1652, September.
    4. Abbey Steele, 2018. "IDP resettlement and collective targeting during civil wars," Journal of Peace Research, Peace Research Institute Oslo, vol. 55(6), pages 810-824, November.
    5. Nils Hägerdal, 2019. "Ethnic Cleansing and the Politics of Restraint: Violence and Coexistence in the Lebanese Civil War," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 63(1), pages 59-84, January.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:jocore:v:59:y:2015:i:7:p:1155-1185. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://pss.la.psu.edu/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.