Papers by Caitriona Dowd
Journal of Modern African Studies, 2021
Marjoke Oosterom;Dung Sha Pam;Caitriona Dowd (2021) 'Commissions of inquiry and pathways to accou... more Marjoke Oosterom;Dung Sha Pam;Caitriona Dowd (2021) 'Commissions of inquiry and pathways to accountability in Plateau State, Nigeria'. Journal of Modern African Studies, 59 (4):439-462.
For decades, Plateau State in Nigeria's Middle Belt has witnessed repeated ethnoreligious violence. Over this period, both state and federal governments have established formal Commissions of Inquiry (COIs) in response to unrest, tasked with investigating violence, identifying perpetrators, and – ultimately – strengthening accountability. While commissions’ mandates and specific outcomes varied, there is general consensus that inquiries have been largely ineffective at securing justice or establishing accountability for violence. This study seeks to understand the expectations placed on, and role of, COIs in Plateau State as pathways to formal accountability in a context of recurring violence. We argue that COIs are embedded in the complex, multilevel networks and politics of state and non-state institutions. Civil society, in turn, has diverse expectations and demands, and articulates these in fragmented ways. As a result, COIs served primarily as another avenue for interest-based negotiations.
Research & Politics
This paper assesses the comparative opportunities and limitations of ‘new’ and ‘old’ data sources... more This paper assesses the comparative opportunities and limitations of ‘new’ and ‘old’ data sources for early warning, crisis response and violence research by comparing reports of political violence, and both violent and peaceful demonstrations, produced through social media and traditional media during the Kenyan elections in August and October 2017. We leverage data from a sample of social media reports of violence through public posts to Twitter and compare these with events coded from media and published sources by the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED) along two dimensions: 1) geography of violence; and 2) temporality of reporting. We find that the profile of violence recorded varies significantly by source. Records from Twitter are more geographically concentrated, particularly in the capital city and wealthier areas. They are timelier in the immediate period surrounding elections. Records from ACLED have a wider geographic reach, and are relatively more numer...
Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 2018
This article establishes a framework for understanding the ways in which subnational governance a... more This article establishes a framework for understanding the ways in which subnational governance arrangements produce divergent types and dynamics of political violence. The variation in agents of governance, how a regime shapes its territorial presence and subnational relationships, structures the forms of violent conflict that emerge within and across states. We first acknowledge four distinct types of political environments based on regime depth and subnational elite authority and fragmentation. We then apply these political environment categorizations and logics to the political violence patterns, agents, and risks across key states in Africa. We find that violence across countries varies based on distinct power dynamics that emerge from relations between the central authority and subnational elites. We conclude that the organization of power determines the type and risk of conflict that affects states. Although the interaction among local governance, co-optive arrangements, and violence has been largely neglected in the literature, this article proposes an alternative and generalizable interpretation of governance across developing states, based on subnational patterns of authority. This article contributes to a growing focus on political settlements—rather than national institutions—in explaining governance stability and violence.
Key Words: Africa, conflict, domestic politics, political geography.
Recent years have seen a dramatic escalation in the levels and intensity of violence associated w... more Recent years have seen a dramatic escalation in the levels and intensity of violence associated with the northern Nigerian Islamist group, commonly referred to as ‘Boko Haram’. The deliberate and brutal targeting of civilians has been an increasingly pronounced feature of this conflict, contributing to acute civilian vulnerability. Often ascribed to the specific ideological and ethno-religious configuration of Boko Haram, we argue that this violence is similar to that of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), tactically and in the evolution of both groups over time. In addition, violence inflicted on civilians by both groups has necessitated complex strategies of civilian navigation of insecurity risks, including the establishment of informal local security providers. Drawing on both quantitative conflict event data, and qualitative sources, we present a comparative analysis of Boko Haram and the LRA to demonstrate the importance of common strategies of group mobilisation, evolution in rhetoric and tactics, and armed state and non-state responses to insurgency, in driving violence against civilians in particular. The findings reflect the importance of shared local and historical conditions in producing violence; and placing civilian protection, and the multifaceted ways in which it is undermined, including by state responses, at the centre of peacebuilding theory and practice.
In spite of the shared high profile of recent Islamist attacks on civilians in sub-Saharan Africa... more In spite of the shared high profile of recent Islamist attacks on civilians in sub-Saharan Africa, patterns of anti-civilian violence differ across and within violent Islamist groups, and the countries in which they are active. This research seeks to explain this variation by situating Islamist violence within the sub-national spaces in which such groups operate, and the wider conflict environment in which they choose to use, or limit the use of, anti-civilian violence. Drawing on data from the Armed Conflict Location & Event Dataset, the research finds that violent Islamist groups are more likely to target civilians where they are the most active conflict agent, even when other conflict agents are active in the same spaces; but less likely to do so when they are relatively weak and in competition with other non-state armed groups. Anti-civilian violence is thus deployed strategically by violent Islamist groups, while its function as a signalling or retributive policing tool depends on the relative strength of groups in relation to actors in the wider conflict arena.
What explains the emergence of Islamist violence as a substantial security threat in such diverse... more What explains the emergence of Islamist violence as a substantial security threat in such diverse contexts as Kenya, Mali and Nigeria? This article addresses this question through an exploration of the strategies of governance employed by states, and how these shape the emergence and mode of collective violence. Conflict research often emphasises the specificity of Islamist violence; but these conflicts can be understood as a form of political exclusion and grievance-based violence, comparable to other forms of political violence. Further, violent Islamist groups emerge from local conditions: the areas in which groups are established share similar local experiences of governance and political marginalisation; a history of violent conflict on which Islamist militants capitalise; and key triggering events expanding or reinforcing state exclusion. These findings challenge a narrative emphasising the global, interconnected nature of Islamist violence. This article pairs data from the Armed Conflict Location & Event Dataset (ACLED) with Afrobarometer survey data and case study evidence to identify drivers of Islamist violence across three African countries.
This paper proposes a novel application of a measure of actor fragmentation drawn from electoral ... more This paper proposes a novel application of a measure of actor fragmentation drawn from electoral studies to the growing field of conflict event data. The application facilitates comparison of conflict environments over time and across cases, while enabling researchers to take account of the relative activity levels of diverse actors. Analysis of the measure suggests that a fragmentation index diverges from a simple count of active conflict agents in important instances, including in providing a more accurate measure of dominant and weaker conflict agents, capturing dynamics of escalation and continuation of conflict over time and across country cases, and reflecting the coalescence of conflict agents around dominant conflict cleavages. The findings suggest that future research may benefit from combining measures of the discrete count of groups and their relative activity levels in order to accurately capture evolving conflict dynamics.
This study estimates the relationship between violent conflict and household income in four state... more This study estimates the relationship between violent conflict and household income in four states of Nigeria’s Middle Belt region (Benue, Kaduna, Nasarawa, and Plateau) where farmers and pastoralists routinely clash over access to farmland, grazing areas, stock routes, and water points for animals and households. Although relatively low in intensity, this form of violence is widespread, persistent, and arguably increasing in its incidence. We obtained data on income and household-level violence exposure from an original household survey administered in September 2014. Employing a negative binomial instrumental variables model, we find an inverse relation between violence and household incomes. Incomes could be increased by between 64 to 210 percent of current levels if violence related to farmer-pastoralist conflict in the four study states were reduced to near-zero. Cumulatively, we find that forgone income represents 10.2 percent of the combined official state domestic product in the study area. This is high when compared to the costs of conflict measured in other studies, even as our study takes account only of microeconomic costs. After incorporating an estimate of the size of the informal economy, the microeconomic cost of farmer-pastoralist conflict to the total economy is approximately 2.9 percent. [JEL codes: C36, D74, J17]
This article reports on the potential macroeconomic benefits of peace stemming from a reduction i... more This article reports on the potential macroeconomic benefits of peace stemming from a reduction in farmer-pastoralist violence in four Middle Belt states of Nigeria (Benue, Kaduna, Nasarawa, and Plateau). Farmers and pastoralists routinely clash over access to farmland, grazing areas, stock routes, and water points for both animals and households. Farmer-pastoralist violence in these states is a relatively low-intensity form of conflict, but it is regionally widespread and chronic, and its incidence is arguably increasing. Using estimates of potential income benefits of peace at the household-level derived from a related study, we herein derive macroeconomic benefits via an input-output model of the Nigerian economy. We estimate these benefits to amount to around 2.8 percent of the nominal Nigerian GDP (or around 0.8 percent of the total Nigerian GDP, inclusive of the informal sector), representing a major macroeconomic opportunity. We break out these benefits by sector, showing that the sectors that stand to gain most from peace are the crop production, food and beverage, livestock, and chemical and petroleum industries. [JEL codes: C65, D74, E01]
Political Geography
This research explores the relationship between cultural demography and Islamist violence in Afri... more This research explores the relationship between cultural demography and Islamist violence in Africa in a cross-national time series study. It argues that while religious demography can explain some aspects of Islamist violence, these explanations have to date been privileged over analyses which take into account the way institutional and political relations of the state incentivize and de-incentivize the salience of particular identities in collective action. This paper uses disaggregated conflict event data from the Armed Conflict Location & Event Dataset (ACLED) to test the relationships between religious group size, diversity, ethnicity and Islamist violence. The results highlight that approaches to explaining Islamist violence emphasising the cultural specificity of Islam as particularly prone to violence, and those focusing on competition between diverse identity groups as explanations for the rise of Islamist violence are misguided. Rather, ethnic political power relations emerge as important interacting factors in religious identity conflict, with Islamist violence as an example. The article makes an original contribution both empirically, by testing existing theories of Islamist violence on previously unanalysed data; and theoretically, by highlighting the importance of political marginalisation and strategic identity construction as explanations for violent Islamist activity.
Working Papers and Policy Reports by Caitriona Dowd
in Brendan Cahill and Johanna Lawton (Eds.), A Skein of Thought: The Ireland at Fordham Humanitarian Lecture Series (Refuge Press: New York, NY), 2020
Lind, Jeremy and Dowd, Caitriona
IDS Rapid Response Briefing 10
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Papers by Caitriona Dowd
For decades, Plateau State in Nigeria's Middle Belt has witnessed repeated ethnoreligious violence. Over this period, both state and federal governments have established formal Commissions of Inquiry (COIs) in response to unrest, tasked with investigating violence, identifying perpetrators, and – ultimately – strengthening accountability. While commissions’ mandates and specific outcomes varied, there is general consensus that inquiries have been largely ineffective at securing justice or establishing accountability for violence. This study seeks to understand the expectations placed on, and role of, COIs in Plateau State as pathways to formal accountability in a context of recurring violence. We argue that COIs are embedded in the complex, multilevel networks and politics of state and non-state institutions. Civil society, in turn, has diverse expectations and demands, and articulates these in fragmented ways. As a result, COIs served primarily as another avenue for interest-based negotiations.
Key Words: Africa, conflict, domestic politics, political geography.
Working Papers and Policy Reports by Caitriona Dowd
For decades, Plateau State in Nigeria's Middle Belt has witnessed repeated ethnoreligious violence. Over this period, both state and federal governments have established formal Commissions of Inquiry (COIs) in response to unrest, tasked with investigating violence, identifying perpetrators, and – ultimately – strengthening accountability. While commissions’ mandates and specific outcomes varied, there is general consensus that inquiries have been largely ineffective at securing justice or establishing accountability for violence. This study seeks to understand the expectations placed on, and role of, COIs in Plateau State as pathways to formal accountability in a context of recurring violence. We argue that COIs are embedded in the complex, multilevel networks and politics of state and non-state institutions. Civil society, in turn, has diverse expectations and demands, and articulates these in fragmented ways. As a result, COIs served primarily as another avenue for interest-based negotiations.
Key Words: Africa, conflict, domestic politics, political geography.