The Logic of Naming and Shaming in Civil Conflicts

• In Event: Poster Session: Public Policy & Society, Extremism, and Democratic Backsliding
  In Poster Session: Poster Session: Society, Extremism, and Democratic Backsliding

Abstract

Why are some rebel groups designated as terrorists but not others in multi-party conflicts? Since 9/11, political designation as a terrorist has been a common strategy not just against terrorist but also against the long-established rebel groups. New People’s Army, for instance, was a long-resisted rebel group formed in 1969 in Philippine, but the group was designated as a terrorist in 2002 and 6 countries now have labelled it as a terrorist. The labeling as a terrorist is critical in terms of resolving a conflict since as the phrase “We don’t negotiate with terrorists” represents, the room for the peace negotiation is removed once a group is listed as a terrorist. However, not all rebel groups are labelled as a terrorist. Myanmar has suffered from civil conflicts for more than sixty years engaging more than dozen’s ethnic armed organizations. Among them, only Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) has been officially designated as a terrorist since 2017 while the others remain unlisted.

This research intends to explain this variation in the context of civil conflicts and test it by the originally compiled dataset on the national terrorist designation. Existing literature has examined how group-level characteristics influence the propensity to be designated. Beck and Miner (2013) demonstrate the Islamic groups and groups that attack aviation are more likely to be designated. Chou (2015) also finds that Islamic groups are more likely to appear on the list, but groups functioning like states are less likely as they are considered as more legitimate. While those works are critical in clarifying characteristics of listed groups, we argue that the government’s motivation to list groups also needs to be explored. Relatedly, most of the existing studies on terrorist proscription are case studies of specific countries or laws and it is, thus, unable to examine the government’s perspective cross-nationally.

We fill this gap in the literature by taking into account both country-level and group-level characteristics and utilize a newly complied dataset that covers 504 armed organizations between 1970 and 2019. We pay particular attention on multi-party conflicts, which is identified based on the UCDP conflict dataset, and the variation of labeling within those conflicts. This research will contribute to a growing body of research on counterinsurgency. While much effort is spent on military perspective such as leadership targeting and drone attacks, the logic and the impact of naming and shaming strategy in the context of civil conflict are under-explored. Analyzing both quantitatively and qualitatively using sub-national level information, we attempt to provide solid findings on the logic of terrorist labeling.

Authors

• Yasutaka Tominaga, Hosei University

• Chia-yi Lee, National Chengchi University

• Nazli Avdan, University of Kansas