Replication Data for: Plausible Deniability? An Investigation of Government and Government-Outsourced Violence in Refugee Hosting Areas

This paper examines the propensity for host governments and the
groups they sponsor to engage in violence in areas that host refugee
populations. Drawing on arguments that governments strategically
delegate violence to affiliated groups for “plausible deniability” purposes
(Carey, Colarsi, and Mitchell 2015; Salehyan 2010), it argues that, due
to concerns over self-settled refugees’ welfare burden as well as the
concern that these refugees will choose to live in border areas that are
more vulnerable to (or useful for) militant activity, host governments
and their proxies are likely to target violence in areas with more
substantial refugee self-settlement. At the same time, it anticipates that
host governments will “outsource” this violence to surrogate groups
where sizable camp-settled populations are present, due to a heightened
risk of suffering international audience costs. Findings from a large-N
sample of countries in Africa provide some evidence of the hypothesized
outsourcing effect. While presence of sizable camps alongside large selfsettled populations is associated with a reduction in the likelihood of
violence by host governments, it significantly increases the likelihood of
violence committed by host-aligned proxies.