Sebastian van Baalen

Uppsala University | UU · Department of Peace and Conflict Research

Under what conditions do rebels succeed in establishing functional institutions in state-dominated areas? Canonical theories of rebel governance and state formation insist that territorial control is a necessary precondition for the development of governing institutions. Yet despite growing recognition that this claim is empirically incorrect and t...

Almost a decade after the 2011 post-electoral crisis, Côte d’Ivoire once again held elections marred by widespread violence. The third-term crisis revolved around President Alassane Ouattara’s controversial third-term bid and left at least 83 people dead and 633 people injured. This briefing draws on a new electoral violence dataset and field resea...

How does civilian protest shape civil war dynamics? Existing research shows that civilian protests against violence and war contribute to peace and restrain violence against civilians. There is less research on civilian protests that are at odds with peaceful conflict resolution, such as protests to salute armed actors, advocate against peace agree...

How, and under what conditions, does electoral violence influence voter turnout? Existing research often presumes that electoral violence demobilizes voters, but we lack knowledge of the conditions under which violence depresses turnout. This study takes a subnational approach to probe the moderating effect of local incumbent strength on the associ...

This article examines the conditions that foster state-insurgent cooperation in rebel governance. State-insurgent cooperation is puzzling because it can alienate hardliners, undermine the parties’ legitimacy, reveal sensitive information, and cause autonomy losses. We propose that conflict parties are more likely to discount these costs when they h...

Violence after civil war is a challenge to sustainable peace. Many armed conflicts today are recurrences of previous wars and much of the literature on violence after war explains why armed groups return to the battlefield. But even if peace prevails, many other types of violence take place in postwar environments. This postwar violence is likewise...

Why is rebel governance more responsive in some areas than in others? In recent years, scholars have started to examine the determinants of rebel governance. Less attention has been given to explaining variation in the responsiveness of rebel governance, that is, the degree to which rebels are soliciting and acting upon civilian preferences in thei...

This study considers the concept of rebel governance responsiveness by the Forces Nouvelles (FN) in Côte d’Ivoire. Responsiveness refers to the degree to which a government’s political decisions correspond to its citizens’ desires. The concept of responsiveness is vital for assessing regime types and constitutes an essential metric of democracy. Ho...

Information communications technologies (ICTs) like laptops, smartphones and portable storage devices facilitate travel, communication and documentation for researchers who conduct fieldwork. But despite increasing awareness about the ethical complications associated with using ICTs among journalists and humanitarians, there are few reflections on...

How does climate change affect the risk and dynamics of violent conflict? Existing research shows that climate change can increase the risk of violent conflict and significantly alter the dynamics of existing conflicts. Less is known about the exact mechanisms through which climate change affects violent conflict. In this article, we address this l...

Many post-war states experience continuous low-intensity violence for years after the formal end of the conflict. Existing theories often focus on country-level explanations of post-war violence, such as the presence of spoilers or the nature of the peace agreement. Yet, postwar violence does not affect all communities equally; whereas some remain...

The security implications of climate change have attracted increasing attention in policymaking and research circles since the early 2000s. Since climate change has far-reaching implications for human livelihoods and activities, the potential security implications are broad and complex. Responses from different policy communities—foreign affairs, d...

A literature review of quantitative and qualitative research on climate-related environmental change and violent conflict in East Africa.

This paper seeks to understand the relation between local and national conflict dynamics by looking at four arenas of conflict between the African National Congress (ANC) and the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) in South Africa in 1990. The analysis shows that what started off as local conflict often escalated when national actors were brought in, locat...