Descriptive representation and conflict reduction: Evidence from India’s Maoist rebellion
| Published date | 01 September 2023 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/00223433221098917 |
| Author | Aidan Milliff,Drew Stommes |
| Date | 01 September 2023 |
| Subject Matter | Regular Articles |
Descriptive representation and conflict
reduction: Evidence from India’s
Maoist rebellion
Aidan Milliff
Walter H Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, Stanford University
Drew Stommes
Department of Political Science, Yale University
Abstract
Can greater inclusion in democracy for historically disadvantaged groups reduce rebel violence? Democracy-building
is a common tool in counterinsurgencies and post-conflict states, yet existing scholarship has faced obstacles in
measuring the independent effect of democratic reforms. We evaluate whether quotas for Scheduled Tribes in local
councils reduced rebel violence in Chhattisgarh, an Indian state featuring high-intensity Maoist insurgent activity.
These quotas did not originate as a counterinsurgency technique, but instead as an effort to address the longstanding
political marginalization of India’s Scheduled Tribes. We employ a geographic regression discontinuity design to
study the wartime effects of quotas implemented in Chhattisgarh, finding that reservations reduced Maoist violence
in the state. Exploratory analyses of mechanisms suggest that reservations reduced violence by bringing local elected
officials closer to state security forces, providing a windfall of valuable information to counterinsurgents. Our study
shows that institutional engineering, like reforms to create more inclusive representative democracy, can shape the
trajectory of insurgent violence. Institutional engineering creating more inclusive representative democracy during an
ongoing conflict can affect the political economy of information sharing in civil war and, ultimately, affect the
trajectory of insurgent violence.
Keywords
counterinsurgency, democracy, India, quotas, regression discontinuity, representation
Introduction
Can greater inclusivity in democracy decrease insurgent
violence? Research on institutional design and conflict
suggests that inclusive institutions foster macro-level sta-
bility and minimize extrasystemic conflict (Acemoglu,
Johnson & Robinson, 2001), and that maintaining func-
tional democracy in diverse states requires guarantees of
security and inclusion for minority groups (Dahl, 1971).
Studies of conflict onset and resolution show similar
results: formal protections for ethnic minorities can pre-
vent ethnic conflict and civil wars (Horowitz, 1985), and
systematically excluding minorities from power increases
the risk of war (Cederman, Wimmer & Min, 2010).
During war, counterinsurgents often look to democratic
reforms as a way to strengthen the state and increase
government ‘legitimacy’ in the eyes of civilians (Petraeus
& Amos, 2006; Kalyvas, 2008). In some counterinsur-
gency campaigns, local democratic reforms are linked to
enhanced public goods provision (Beath, Christia &
Enikolopov, 2015), and improved civilian perceptions
of well-being (Beath, Christia & Enikolopov, 2011;
Breslawski, 2021). Recently, studies of civil war termina-
tion suggest that substantial democratic reform, even the
Corresponding author:
milliff@stanford.edu
Journal of Peace Research
2023, Vol. 60(5) 807–822
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DOI: 10.1177/00223433221098917
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inclusion of rebel parties in post-war elections, is associ-
ated with durable peace after even intense civil conflict
(Matanock, 2017b; Joshi, Melander & Quinn, 2017).
In this article, we study a major democratic reform
implemented during an ongoing insurgent conflict in the
Indian state of Chhattisgarh. We exploit the implemen-
tation of quotas for marginalized group representation in
local councils known as panchayats and use a geographic
regression discontinuity (RD) design to show that the
quotas directly reduced insurgent violence, even as they
were implemented during a period of intense insurgent
conflict and targeted at a marginalized community con-
stituting a key reservoir of insurgent support.
We interrogate the violence-reduction findings from
Chhattisgarh with exploratory tests of potential mechan-
isms, a variety of robustness checks, and a placebo test
from the neighboring state of Jharkhand, which saw later
implementation of identical democratic reforms amid
much less intense violence. Previous research on civil war
and on electoral quotas suggest two mechanisms:
(1) Economic improvements – a known consequence
of quotas more generally, per Pande (2003); Kadekodi,
Kanbur & Rao (2008); Bardhan, Mookherjee & Parra
Torrado (2010); Gulzar, Haas & Pasquale (2020) –
inhibit rebels’ recruitment efforts (Blattman & Annan,
2016); or, (2) improved government performance
increases perceptions of state legitimacy (Chattopadhyay
& Duflo, 2004). Results from additional regression dis-
continuity analyses show that neither explanation plau-
sibly accounts for the full effect we observe. Qualitative
evidence suggests that quotas improve the state’s access
to actionable information about insurgents: Maoists in
Chhattisgarh responded to the reforms by assassinating
holders of quota-reserved council seats on the suspicion
that they provided the state with information about the
Maoists. In discussing our regression discontinuity
results, we posit that a change in insurgent–civilian–
government information flows might account for the
effect we find, and we identify areas for further research
on the village-level dynamics (Balcells & Justino, 2014)
that are changed by the reforms we study.
Our article makes two contributions to the vibrant
literature on civil war violence dynamics, institutional
reform, and conflict termination. First, because demo-
cratic reforms are almost always deployed strategically
(i.e. non-randomly), previous studies have not isolated
the causal effect of democratic reforms. We study a con-
flict where reforms were assigned non-strategically and
were not part of a conflict-reduction or counterinsur-
gency strategy. We exploit a geographic discontinuity
in the implementation of these reforms to produce a
causally identified estimate of democratic reforms’ effect
on violence dynamics.
Second, where a substantial and theoretically genera-
tive literature studies the effect of democratic reforms
during either post-conflict peace-building or political
negotiations aimed at ending the conflict (Flores &
Nooruddin, 2012; Staniland, 2014; Matanock, 2017a,
etc.), we examine reforms that are implemented unilat-
erally, without the backdrop of meaningful negotiation
between the rebels and government.
1
We find a situation
in which democratic reforms reduce violence without
pre-existing buy in from all parties to the conflict. In
fact, qualitative evidence suggests that the reforms
change violence dynamics despite rebels never buying
in. Their main response is boycotting elections and
attempting to assassinate elected officials empowered
by the new representation quotas. We conclude that in
certain conflicts – featuring high-intensity violence with
substantial rebel governance activity, organized in part
around an identity cleavage, largely rural, or fought by an
electoral democracy as the incumbent government –
institutional engineering might reduce violence without
negotiation, which existing literature assumes is a crucial
condition for reforms to produce peace.
Democratic reforms and conflict
How does reforming democratic institutions reduce vio-
lence and support durable settlements to civil conflict?
Literature on civil war termination and post-conflict
state building suggests that creating or expanding dem-
ocratic inclusion can reduce conflict by lowering the
incentives to compete outside the system. Some research
suggests that elections, for example, create credible com-
mitment mechanisms, reducing the chance of violent
contestation over political goals (Dunning, 2011; Harish
& Little, 2017). Others suggest that devolution of power
to local actors, a different type of reform, decreases
violence in ongoing conflicts by coopting local actors
(Ferwerda & Miller, 2014), but that decentralized power
structures during war can threaten post-war stability
(Daly, 2014). Other work shows that solving commit-
ment problems is only one of the necessary steps for
durable peacebuilding and reduction of violence (among
many: Doyle & Sambanis, 2006; Lake, 2017).
1
Matanock & Staniland (2018) note that the line between post-
conflict and during-conflict politics i s hazy given that many wars
recur shortly after negotiated settlements, but they do focus on
instances of meaningful rebel participation in negotiations or
elections.
808 journal of PEACE RESEARCH 60(5)
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