Working Papers

  • Silverman, Daniel, Pechenkina, Anna, Yurko, Ron, Knuppe, Austin, and William Marcelino. “Describing the ‘Other’ in Contemporary War: Evidence from Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine.”

    • How do combatants and their supporters characterize their adversaries in modern armed conflict? Groups engaged in conflict can describe their opponents in many different ways, from dehumanizing and hateful terms for the “Other" to more neutral language. This issue is important since language can have key consequences in war, with dehumanization having a particularly blood-spattered history and being associated with the execution of some of the worst atrocities and violence in the history of conflict. Yet, there has been little systematic research studying how opponents are described in modern conflict. Using a dataset of hundreds of thousands of posts from Russian-language war Telegram, this study measures five different ways in which Russian Telegram channels refer to Ukraine and Ukrainians – with dehumanizing language (as animals), negative ideological language (e.g., as Nazis), negative ethnic language (e.g., “khokhols”), general adversarial terms (e.g., “enemy”), or neutral descriptors (e.g., “Ukrainians”) – over time. We find that: (1) top pro-Kremlin Telegram channels talked about Ukraine six times as much as independent Russian channels and with much more incendiary language; (2) there was a spike in the use of charged language – especially negative ideological labels like “Nazi” – for Ukraine by pro-Kremlin actors early in the war, in the spring of 2022; (3) Pro-Kremlin channels increasingly shifted toward more general adversarial language (e.g., “enemy”) for Ukraine as the war dragged on. In our ongoing research, we are working to develop a model that can achieve higher accuracy rates in identifying dehumanizing labels, as well as to extend our data collection across time and to explore these dynamics on the Ukrainian side of the war.

  • Pechenkina, Anna, Silverman, Daniel, and Austin Knuppe. “How does war shape identities? The case of Ukraine.”

    • Social science has demonstrated that identities are not fixed, instead warfare may catalyze shifts in identities. In interstate wars, heightened negative emotions toward the opponent (the outgroup) are often accompanied by positive emotions toward one’s nation (the ingroup). If greater attachment to national identity happens during wars, does it occur in localities that suffer from warfare the most or are spread equally throughout the population? Do these shifts in identity subside after violence wanes and intensify when violence starts again? We aim to answer these questions by leveraging the variation in geographic and temporal warfare that Ukraine has suffered from Russian aggression in 2014–2022. Russian aggression against Ukraine in 2014–2022 occurred in three phases: 1) April 2014–January 2015—the Donbas War; 2) 2016–2021— politically tense relations between Russia and Ukraine; 3) Feb 2022–present—Russia’s brutal expansive invasion of Ukraine (currently stalemated in southeastern Ukraine). We use data on war events in 2010, 2015, 2022, and 2023 to examine how warfare shapes changes in ethnic and linguistic identities in Ukraine over time as well as behavioral linguistic preference (measured as the language in which a survey was taken) using difference-in-differences at the district level).

  • Yoshimoto, Iku and Austin J. Knuppe. “The Effect of Belt-and-Road Projects on the Perceived Legitimacy of Incumbent Regimes in MENA.”

    • How do China's official development aid (ODA) and foreign direct investment (FDI) in the Middle East and North Africa affect the perceived legitimacy of recipient regimes in the eyes of local citizens? We argue that foreign aid and investments enable recipient regimes to legitimate their autocratic authority through two primary mechanisms. The first mechanism relates to economic growth and development in the recipient state. The economic gains of FDI and infrastructure-related aid projects decrease popular motivation to challenge or oppose the regime. The second mechanism relates to the diplomatic linkages FDI and aid creates between donor and recipient states. FDI and aid enable recipient governments to legitimate autocracy by providing incumbent leaders with an example of a wealthier, more powerful patron who shares a common regime type. Using Arab Barometer surveys, we conduct a multilevel mediation analysis to capture perceived legitimacy from survey responses at the individual level (within-group variation), while simultaneously examining the effects of Chinese BRI projects at the province level (between-group variation). We also estimate the impact of BRI projects cross-temporally by using the average level of perceived government legitimacy at the province/governorate level across different survey waves as the outcome variable in our difference-in-differences analysis.

  • Austin J. Knuppe. “Dancing on the Head of Snakes: Did Saudi air raids in Yemen suppress insurgent violence or trigger civilian blowback?”

    • Under what conditions can great power patrons restrain the risky foreign policy behavior of their weaker clients? While moral hazard problems are endemic to most forms of security delegation, I highlight how patrons can use hands-tying strategies to strengthen the credibility of their bargaining position with weaker clients. Specifically, when patrons can connect their political survival at home to a client’s risky behavior abroad, they are more effective at restraining a client’s "reckless driving." I test the implications of my theory by examining U.S. security assistance to the Saudi-led coalition intervening in the 2015 Yemeni civil war. I find that while coalition-attributed civilian casualties decreased over time, the reduction in indiscriminate violence is likely due to a slowdown in operational tempo as opposed to greater targeting discrimination. While U.S. news agencies consistently covered coalition victimization of civilians, the blowback from high-casualty air strikes quickly subsided in the month following the attack. As a result, reductions in indiscriminate violence are unlikely to be a function of media blowback or the ability of U.S. policymakers to issue credible threats to reduce or eliminate assistance to the Riyadh.

Book

Peer-Reviewed Journal Articles

  • Pechenkina, Anna, Daniel Silverman, and Austin Knuppe, “Civilian Mindsets Toward Peace in Wartime: Evidence From Ukraine,” International Studies Quarterly (September 2024).

  • Hanson Kolby and Austin J. Knuppe. “Polarization vs. Professionalism: Military and Civilian Views on the Domestic Use of the Military.” Political Science Research Methods (June, 2024), DOI: 10.1017/psrm.2024.41.

  • Knuppe, Austin J. and Matthew Nanes. “When Bullets and Ballots Collide: How the Dissolution of the Anti-Islamic State Coalition Stalled Iraq’s Transition to Peacetime,” Civil Wars (October 2023), Volume 26, Issue 2 (2024): 248-273, DOI: 10.1080/13698249.2024.2302732.

  • Almeida, Manuel, Raiman Al Hamdani, and Austin J. Knuppe,“Understanding Community Resilience in Yemen: The Nature and Roles of Parallel Institutions,” British Journal of Middle East Studies (September 2023), DOI: 10.1080/13530194.2023.2265843.

  • Knuppe, Austin J. “The civilians’ dilemma: How religious and ethnic minorities survived the Islamic state occupation of Northern Iraq.” The Journal of the Middle East and Africa, Volume 14, Issue 1 (2023): 37-67. DOI: 10.1080/21520844.2022.2128001.

  • Kaltenthaler, Karl, Arie W. Kruglanski, and Austin J. Knuppe, “The Paradox of the Heavy-Handed Insurgent: Public Support for the Taliban among Afghan Pashtuns,” Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, March 2022, DOI: 10.1080/1057610X.2022.2055008.

  • Knuppe, Austin J. “Blowback or Overblown? Why civilians under threat support invasive foreign intervention,” Journal of Peace Research, Volume 59, Issue 4 (November 2021): 478–494. DOI: 10.1177/00223433211044059.

  • Rosenberg, Andrew S., Austin J. Knuppe, and Bear F. Braumoeller “Unifying the Study of Asymmetric Hypotheses,” Political Analysis, Volume 25, Issue 3 (July 2017): 381-401, DOI: 10.1057/pan.2017.16.

  • Wu, Joshua Su-Ya and Austin J. Knuppe, “My Brother’s Keeper: Religious Cues and Support for Foreign Military Intervention,” Politics and Religion, Volume 9, Issue 3 (September 2016): 537-565, DOI: 10.1017/S1755048316000390.

Editor-Reviewed Publications

Book Chapters