Author: chermen

The Political Economy of Support for Sharia: Evidence from the Russian North Caucasus, Politics and Religion, 2016 (with David S. Siroky, and Khasan Dzutsev)

Many scholars have argued that orthodox Muslims harbor attitudes that are more economically communitarian and politically illiberal, since individuals are seen as embedded within a larger community that places a premium on social order. Yet most studies have ignored the potential of Islam as an ideological platform for political reformers. Religion in general and Islam in particular has mostly been treated as a predictor rather than a derivative of political-economic preferences. This article suggests that, in the absence of credible secular political ideologies and representative political mechanisms, reformist-minded individuals are likely to use religion as a political platform for change. When Muslims are a minority in a repressive non-Muslim society, Islamic orthodoxy can serve as a political platform for politically and economically liberal forces. We test these conjectures with original micro-level data from the Russian North Caucasus and find strong support for them.

The Empire Strikes Back: Ethnicity, Terrain, and Indiscriminate Violence in Counterinsurgencies, Social Science Quarterly, 2015 (with David S. Siroky), download citation

Objective: The literature on indiscriminate violence has emphasized how information shapes state capacity and determines whether and where the government employs collective targeting. This article investigates the conditions that influence the government’s ability to obtain intelligence in counterinsurgencies. Specifically, it suggests that the government is more likely to use indiscriminate violence in areas characterized by indigenous ethnic homogeneity and forested terrain. These features increase the cost of acquiring information about the insurgents, and reduce state capacity, thereby increasing the likelihood of indiscriminate violence. Method: We examine district-level data on the Russian government’s use of indiscriminate violence and disaggregated data on ethnicity and terrain across the North Caucasus from 2000 to 2011. Results: The results indicate that ethnically homogeneous and forested areas are significantly more likely targets of indiscriminate violence, and that the effect of ethnicity is markedly stronger when the district is densely forested. Conclusion: This finding expands on previous studies by testing the observable implications of theories linking information to indiscriminate violence, and by providing new micro-level evidence for important human and physical constraints on counterinsurgencies.

The differential demand for indirect rule: evidence from the North Caucasus, Post-Soviet Affairs, 2013 (with David S. Siroky and Michael Hechter), download citation

Indirect rule is one of the means that central authorities have long employed in hopes of defusing communal conflict and civil war in multicultural societies. Yet very little is known about the appeal of indirect rule among the ruled themselves. Why do people in some places demand more indirect rule and local autonomy, whereas others seem content to be governed directly by rulers of an alien culture? This is a crucial question with important implications for determining the form of governance that is most likely to provide social order in culturally heterogeneous societies. Although much attention has been given to consider the relative costs and benefits of direct versus indirect rule for the central authorities, the other side of the coin – namely, the variable demand for indirect rule among the members of distinctive cultural groups – has hardly been examined with systematic empirical data. This paper presents a theory of the differential demand for indirect rule and offers an initial test of its principal empirical implications using original micro-level data from the North Caucasus region of Russia. The theory’s core claim is that the middle class should express the greatest demand for indirect rule, while both the upper and lower classes should prefer more direct rule. The theory therefore predicts that there will be an inverse parabolic relationship between the demand for indirect rule and economic class. The findings are largely consistent with these theoretical expectations.

Comparative analysis of public opinion and hostage attack victims’ attitudes: evidence from Beslan, September 2004, Caucasus Survey, 2013 (with Khasan Dzutsev), download citation

How does an extreme situation, such as a violent attack, impact political opinions of the affected population? Using original data from the hostage crisis in the North Ossetian town of Beslan, this article explores the differences and similarities in attitudes towards the key social and political issues between the directly affected and the general populations of the town. The study was constructed as a quasi-natural experiment of a rare kind, since the attack generated directly affected and unaffected populations living in the same society. Our research shows that despite deep distrust toward both the national and regional government, respondents still indicated a relatively low inclination to engage in civic activity in opposition to the state authorities as a result of the attack. The results of the study throw light on the question of why the Beslan attack did not become a catalyst for change in North Ossetia: absence of political opposition disempowers the general population and prevents social change from happening even under highly stressful circumstances. The inconclusiveness of the official investigation into the Beslan attack may, however, leave these tragic events open to future politicisation.

Rational or reckless? Georgia’s zugzwang in the Caucasus, Nationalities Papers, 2012 (with David S. Siroky), download citation

Although the 2008 Russian-Georgian war was a military defeat for Georgia, it has only reinforced Georgia’s westward trajectory. One noteworthy difference from Georgia’s pre-war policy is a new regional strategy – the North Caucasus Initiative – that seeks to create a soft power alternative to Russia’s military dominance in the region. We suggest that this approach is rational rather than reckless, as some critics have claimed. It represents a carefully calculated strategy that is already benefiting Georgia and from which all concerned parties, including Russia, stand to gain. If the South and North Caucasus were more open and less divided – a direction in which this new initiative appears to point – the Caucasus could become more prosperous and more stable. That would serve Russia’s long-term interest by significantly reducing the cost of subsidies to sustain and stabilize the volatile region.

Editor-reviewed

Russia’s Syria War: A Strategic Trap? Middle East Policy, 2018 (with Emil A. Souleimanov)

Published working papers

Building Models for Biopathway Dynamics Using Intrinsic Dimensionality Analysis, arXiv:1804.11005, 2015 (with Emilia M. Wysocka, Tirthankar Bandyopadhyay, Laura Condon, and Sahil Garg)

An Agent-Based Model of Corruption: Micro Approach, Computational Model Library, 2015