The Blame Game in International Politics: Part I

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Parenthood and politics often overlap when it comes to sharing the blame. When things go wrong, politics can help determine where to blame. And this is also true in children, just ask any older sibling if they ever ended up taking the fall for something their younger siblings did like they did. in the States. This week and the next, Critical State looks at new research into how the blame is distributed in international politics and how that affects volatile security situations.

Related: The Leftovers: What Happens To Foreign Policy In Power Transitions? Part i

The government’s inability to prevent attacks is becoming a key part of the insurgents’ argument that the government is illegitimate and dysfunctional and that civilians should abandon their support for the state and embrace the insurgency.

In a new article in International Studies Quarterly, Uppsala University political scientists Annekatrin Deglow and Ralph Sundberg tackle one of the trickiest questions about the allocation of responsibility in politics: When insurgents commit attacks terrorists against civilians, who is responsible? At first glance, the answer seems simple. The insurgents carried out the attacks that they maybe even publicly bragged about, so surely they should be blamed. And sometimes they do. But if the insurgents suffered the brunt of the negative response every time they terrorized civilians, they would likely stop doing it, and they haven’t stopped yet. In reality, governments often take much of the blame for failing to prevent terrorist attacks. The government’s inability to prevent attacks is becoming a key part of the insurgents’ argument that the government is illegitimate and dysfunctional and that civilians should abandon their support for the state and embrace the insurgency.

Related: When It Rains, It’s War: Tracking Cross-Security Threats Part II

The problem is which attacks are likely to cause civilians to blame the insurgents and, in the parlance of sociologists, rally around the flag in support of the state, and which attacks will instead cause civilians to hold the state? responsible for his failure to protect them.

The problem is which attacks are likely to cause civilians to blame the insurgents and, in the parlance of sociologists, rally around the flag in support of the state, and which attacks will instead cause civilians to hold the state? responsible for his failure to protect them. Most of the research on this issue has looked at attacks that occur more or less out of the blue in stable political contexts, the Al Qaeda attacks in the United States on September 11, or in Madrid, in 2004, for example. In these cases, the researchers find that American and Spanish civilians largely rallied to the flag (although, in the Spanish case, they did not rally with the ruling party).

Related: Political Science of the Periphery: Part I

Deglow and Sundberg investigated whether the rallying trend also applies to large-scale attacks in existing conflict environments. To do so, they focused on the 2012 Taliban attack on the Spozhmai Lakeside Resort outside Kabul. Five Taliban fighters besieged the posh hotel, killing 15 civilians and taking 50 hostages before being killed by Afghan security forces. The attack took place on June 21, in the midst of a week-long public opinion poll conducted in Kabul by a major Afghan research center. Deglow and Sundberg turned the survey data into an experiment, comparing responses from Kabul residents interviewed before the attack to responses from interviewees after the attack.

Related: Political Science of the Periphery: Part II

The effect of the attack on the peoples reported, confidence in the Afghan government has been remarkable. People polled after the attack were 32% more likely to say they had a fair amount or a great deal of trust in the provincial government than those polled before. For confidence in the Afghan parliament, the effect was even more pronounced. People were 65% more likely to say they trusted parliament after the attack, and 34% less likely to say they did. For the police, who already enjoyed greater trust than provincial or national governments, the effect was less substantial but still significant: people were 12% more likely to say they trusted the police after the attack.

While governments may be able to avoid blame for large insurgent attacks against civilians, even in an area of ​​conflict, the long-term effect of failure to make peace is always erosion. of the legitimacy of the state.

A notable aspect of Deglow and Sundberg’s conclusion is that, despite their evidence of a dramatic rallying effect in the wake of a large-scale attack on civilians, two decades of conflict between the Taliban and the Afghan state did not result in an overwhelming government embrace. by Afghan civilians. Indeed, on the contrary, when the same organization that carried out the 2012 survey asked Afghans in 2019 about their confidence in public organizations, only 47% expressed their confidence in the parliament as a whole and 56% in provincial councils. While governments may be able to avoid blame for large insurgent attacks against civilians, even in an area of ​​conflict, the long-term effect of failure to make peace is always erosion. of the legitimacy of the state.

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