The Curse of Geography: How Governments Preempt Secession AttemptsRob Williams
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Research Question
Puzzle:•Why is there no relationship between thegovernability of territory and rebel goal?
Answer:•Governments anticipate secession attempts inmost suitable areas and invest to prevent them
Motivation•Collected original dataset of goals for all ethnicterritorial rebel groups 1990-2013•Used geospatial data on population to measuregovernability of territory•No relationship between governability and goal
Theory•Different territories are more or less governable asa function of the resources they contain•Territories far from the reach of the state aremore governable•Population is on one of the most importantresources for governance•Marginalized ethnic groups that controlgovernable territory will be more likely to fightfor secession•Geography is relatively static and governmentsuse their knowledge of human geography topreempt conflict in areas most suited to secession•This preemption can be measured globally usingnighttime light emissions as they correlate withlocal measures of state capacity[1]
Hypothesis: The effect of territorial governabilityon nightlights should be positive and increasing indistance from the capital
Data•GeoEPR & EPR•NOAA Nightlights
•GPWv4 Population•V-Dem & WDI
Illustration
Results
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Model 1 Model 2
−1 0 1 2 −1 0 1 2
(Constant)
Polyarchy
GDP
Lost Autonomy
Excluded
Area
Population Total x Capital Distance
Population Total
Capital Distance
0.60
0.65
0.70
0.75
0.80
−3 −2 −1 0 1 2
Capital Distance
Mar
gina
l Effe
ct o
f Pop
ulat
ion
Tota
l
−3
−1
0
1
2
−4 −2 0 1 3
Capital Distance
Pop
ulat
ion
−4
−2
0
2
Pre
dict
ed N
ight
light
s V
alue
ModelY ∼ N (α + γ + Xβ, σ2)β ∼ N (µβ, σβ)α ∼ N (µα, σα)γ ∼ N (µγ, σγ)
µα, µα, µβ ∼ N (0, 5)σα, σγ, σβ, σ ∼ Cauchy(0, 2.5)
Out of Sample Validation
0.0
0.5
1.0
1.5
Model 2Model 1Population DistanceMSE of models on a 1/3 held out validation set
Discussion•Governments seem to invest more in areas whichare both populous and remote•Nightlights correlated with both militaryinfrastructure and public goods•Weakly positive effect of lost autonomy suggestsstates devote attention to secession prone areas[2]
Next Steps•Medium N study of internal colonialism e.g.Aceh, Northeastern Sri Lanka, Ireland•Historical study of forced relocations e.g. Sovietdeportations, Armenian genocide
Email: [email protected]: jrw.web.unc.edu
References[1] Ore Koren and Anoop K. Sarbahi.
State Capacity, Insurgency, and Civil War: A Disaggregated Analysis.International Studies Quarterly, Forthcoming.
[2] David S. Siroky and John Cuffe.Lost Autonomy, Nationalism and Separatism.Comparative Political Studies, 48(1):3–34, January 2015.
