David S. Siroky - Böcker

How can researchers obtain reliable responses on sensitive issues in dangerous settings? This Element elucidates ways for researchers to use unobtrusive experimental methods to elicit answers to risky, taboo, and threatening questions in dangerous social environments. The methods discussed in this Element help social scientists to encourage respondents to express their true preferences and to reduce bias, while protecting them, local survey organizations, and researchers. The Element is grounded in an original study of civilian support for the jihadi insurgency in the Russian North Caucasus in Dagestan that assesses theories about wartime attitudes toward militant groups. We argue that sticky identities, security threats, and economic dependence curb the ability of civilians to switch loyalties.

Why do great powers intervene militarily in revolutionary civil wars? This pivotal question in international relations is answered though a new theory of security hierarchies that emphasizes the role of clients, rivals and rogues in world politics. Employing a mixed-methods approach, integrating statistical analysis with comprehensive case studies of Afghanistan, Libya, and Syria, this book demonstrates that great power interventions are significantly more constrained and predictable than previously assumed. Role theory and frame analysis further exhibit how the status of other states within a great power's security hierarchy influences interventions. The findings provide a lucid account of great power behavior, offering critical insights for scholars and policymakers interested in the international dimensions of intrastate conflicts. Clients, Rivals and Rogues shows that the strategies that underpin great power interventions and provides crucial lessons for the management of regime conflicts, one of the most common and deadly forms of political instability today.