2016/12/08 by Yuri Zhukov · 1 citation
Economics, Econometrics and Finance · Social Sciences · #Combatant #Defense, Military, and Policy Studies #Demography #Development economics #Economics #Geography #German #Government (linguistics) #Incentive #International Relations and Foreign Policy #Law #Market economy #Opposition (politics) #Political Conflict and Governance #Political economy #Political science #Politics #Population #Sociology
paper · doi:10.1017/s0043887116000137
openalex publication_date 2016/12/08 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/05/21
Within a single conflict, the scale of government violence against civilians can vary greatly—from mass atrocities in one village to eerie restraint in the next. This article argues that the scale of anticivilian violence depends on a combatant's relative dependence on local and external sources of support. External resources make combatants less dependent on the local population, yet create perverse incentives for how the population is to be treated. Efforts by the opposition to interdict the government's external resources can reverse this effect, making the government more dependent on the local population. The article tests this relationship with disaggregated archival data on German-occupied Belarus during World War II. It finds that Soviet partisan attacks against German personnel provoked reprisals against civilians but that attacks against railroads had the opposite effect. Where partisans focused on disrupting German supply lines rather than killing Germans, occupying forces conducted fewer reprisals, burned fewer houses, and killed fewer people.