The Origins and Consequences of Territorial Control

About this event

Territorial control is central to the political economy of state formation during war. Which armed actor controls or contests a given region can have profound consequences for subsequent economic and political development, especially in weakly institutionalized settings. Yet existing measures of control and contestation are often lacking in construct validity, coverage, or availability. This project addresses this gap in three parts. First, I develop a novel measurement strategy that builds on a simple intuition: armed actors routinely deny or disrupt the ability of agents of the state to gather sensitive information. Leveraging a dataset built from enumerator logs tracking millions of survey collection events in Afghanistan between 2009 and 2020, I cross-validate the measurement concept against alternative classified and semi-public measures and existing theories of violence across zones of control. Second, I exploit within-district cross-seasonal variation in potential revenue from the opium trade to study how local economic shocks enhance the capacity of the Taliban to consolidate authority. Third, I study the impact of changes in local control on illicit activities and public service provision by the government. This project clarifies how resource endowment shocks can disrupt or reinforce political authority, helping us to better understand the economic origins of territorial control.