How do civilians attribute blame for state indiscriminate violence?
| Date | 01 July 2019 |
| Published date | 01 July 2019 |
| Author | Kiron K Skinner,Anna O Pechenkina,Andrew W Bausch |
| DOI | 10.1177/0022343319829798 |
| Subject Matter | Regular Articles |
How do civilians attribute blame for state
indiscriminate violence?
Anna O Pechenkina
Department of Political Science, Utah State University
Andrew W Bausch
Murmuration
Kiron K Skinner
Institute for Politics and Strategy, Carnegie Mellon University
Abstract
State indiscriminate violence against civilians has been viewed as counterproductive for the government. This
conclusion hinges on the assumption that indiscriminate violence aggrieves civilians against the government even
when the rebels provoke the state by using civilians as human shields. An alternative view suggests that civilians
recognize if the rebels exploit them as human shields and blame the rebels if such provocation occurs. We ask: do
civilians evaluate all state indiscriminate violence in the same way or do they think of state indiscriminate violence
differently when it is provoked by insurgents? Accounting for the covariate differences between individuals with and
without personal experience of warfare in the survey data from postwar Ukraine, we find that personal exposure to
violence shapes one’s blame attribution for provoked state attacks on civilians. Individuals unexposed to violence
tend to take into account whether the government was provoked by the rebels. By contrast, individuals with personal
experience of warfare tend to blame the government for indiscriminate attacks regardless of rebel provocation. This
finding has implications for counterinsurgency scholarship and policy. It is likely that the difference between
unexposed and exposed to violence civilians emerges in geographically isolated conflicts. If so, targeting of civilians
may have different effects on the escalation of insurgency in geographically concentrated as opposed to widespread
cases of violence.
Keywords
attributions of blame, civilian attitudes, indiscriminate violence, rebel provocation of state indiscriminate response,
targeting of civilians
Introduction
State indiscriminate violence targets civilians regardless
of whether they participate in rebellion. Most policy-
makers (e.g. Sepp, 2005) and academics (e.g. Berman
et al., 2013; Kalyvas, 2006) agree that such attacks
backfire. This conclusion hinges on the assumption that
civilians blame the state for their suffering, thus collabor-
ating with insurgents as a result of such violence. The
literature on rebel provocation makes this assumption
most strongly: insurgents often use civilians as human
shields by attacking the government from densely popu-
lated areas, such that any state response inevitably harms
non-combatants (e.g. Kydd & Walter, 2006; Lake,
2002).
If attacking civilians is counterproductive, it is then
puzzling why states do so in most intrastate conflicts.
Perhaps states anticipate that civilians will recognize
Corresponding author:
anna.pechenkina@usu.edu
Journal of Peace Research
2019, Vol. 56(4) 545–558
ªThe Author(s) 2019
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DOI: 10.1177/0022343319829798
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