Replication Data for: "How Leaders' Experiences and Rebellion Shape Military Recruitment during Civil War"

The use of forced recruitment strategies during war can adversely affect military effectiveness and human rights. Given these costs, under what conditions do state leaders adopt coercive recruitment during civil wars? We find between 1980-2009, states changed their recruitment practices 140 times during civil wars – half of which were towards coercive recruitment. Since structuralist explanations focus on factors that remain more or less constant over time, they cannot explain the frequency of these changes. Instead, we focus on individual-level factors and argue that leaders’ dispositions as risk-takers determine their beliefs about using force to solve collective action dilemmas during civil wars. Further, conflict context matters for leaders' recruitment decisions -- when rebel groups engage in coercive recruitment, leaders may also feel more justified in using such strategies. Using the LEAD Dataset and data on recruitment, we find that risk-tolerant leaders, including those who have had careers in the security sector, as well as those who have prior experience as a rebel or revolutionary leader, are more likely to use force to increase recruitment. While we theorize that this effect may be mitigated by combat experience, the evidence is mixed. Lastly, we find that rebels’ use of forced recruitment makes state leaders less likely to use voluntary recruitment. This replication folder includes the dataset used in our paper, as well as the do files and documentation necessary to recreate our results.

战争期间强制征兵策略的使用，会对军事效能与人权状况造成负面影响。鉴于此类成本代价，国家领导人在内战时期会在何种条件下采取强制性征兵手段？我们的研究发现，在1980年至2009年间，各国内战期间的征兵政策共发生140次变更，其中半数转向强制性征兵。由于结构主义解释聚焦于长期基本保持稳定的因素，因此无法解释这类政策变更的频繁程度。为此，我们转而关注个体层面的影响因素，并提出：领导人作为风险承担者的性格特质，会决定其在内战时期使用武力解决集体行动困境（collective action dilemmas）的信念。此外，冲突情境也会对领导人的征兵决策产生影响——当反叛团体采取强制性征兵手段时，国家领导人也会更有理由采用此类策略。借助LEAD数据集（LEAD Dataset）与征兵相关数据，我们发现，风险容忍度较高的领导人，包括曾在安全部门任职者，以及曾有反叛或革命领袖经历者，更倾向于通过武力手段扩大征兵规模。尽管我们从理论上提出，作战经验可能会弱化这一效应，但相关证据并不一致。最后，我们的研究还发现，反叛武装使用强制征兵的行为，会降低国家领导人采用志愿征兵的可能性。本复刻文件夹包含了本文研究所使用的数据集，以及用于复现研究结果所需的do文件与文档资料。