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1 |
ID:
128975
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Publication |
2014.
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Summary/Abstract |
Terrorist organizations do not operate in isolation. Instead, they forge alliances with one another, which generate a tight network of intergroup relationships. We argue that these relationships serve to increase group capacity, manifesting itself in the ability of a group to conduct deadly attacks. However, groups are notably judicious when they forge these cooperative ties, preferring to link to the strongest groups to which they have access. The result of this process of preferential attachment is a core/periphery structure in the broader network of alliances. Moreover, groups with ties to organizations at the core of the broader universe of relationships reap more rewards than those with large numbers of less meaningful alliances. Terrorism research and counterterrorism policy should assess terrorist organizations in the broader context of their interrelationships and depth of alliances rather than in isolation.
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2 |
ID:
128977
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Publication |
2014.
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Summary/Abstract |
The emergence and institutionalization of cooperation in sizable groups without reciprocity receives considerable attention in game-theoretical modeling. Agents in our study play the Prisoner's Dilemma game cooperating with tolerably similar neighbors. They may imitate cultural markers (tags) and tolerance from more successful neighbors. Alternatively, they break ties to out-group neighbors. New partners are selected either from neighbors' neighbors (clustering) or randomly. Variations in network plasticity (the likelihood of changing partners rather than being influenced) and clustering are explored. With high plasticity and high clustering, networks tend to fragment. With low plasticity and low clustering, networks tend toward global cooperation, but with severe losses of cultural diversity and tolerance. Cooperation in such regimes also proves to be vulnerable to defection. Between, there is a space displaying relatively stable and widespread cooperation with diversity and tolerance. We note some important structural characteristics of the networks evolving in this space.
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3 |
ID:
128979
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Publication |
2014.
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Summary/Abstract |
Civil conflict appears to be contagious-scholars have shown that civil wars in a state's neighborhood make citizens more likely to rebel at home. However, war occurs when both rebels and the state engage in conflict. How do state authorities respond to the potential for civil conflict to spread? We argue that elites will anticipate the incentive-altering effects of civil wars abroad and increase repression at home to preempt potential rebellion. Using a Bayesian hierarchical model and spatially weighted conflict measures, we find robust evidence that a state will engage in higher levels of human rights violations as civil war becomes more prevalent in its geographic proximity. We thus find evidence that states violate rights as a function of the internal politics of other states. Further, we argue authorities will act not to mimic their neighbors but rather to avoid their fate.
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4 |
ID:
128985
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Publication |
2014.
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Summary/Abstract |
Scholars have long accepted the contention that competition among terrorist organizations raises the level of violence used by the competitors. This article discusses this claim and advances another-that competition among terrorist organizations creates incentives to use less violence. Using insights from the organizational ecology literature-namely that competition occurs within "species"-I create a variable that assesses intraspecies competition. I test both claims using a data set of domestic terrorism created from the Global Terrorism Database (GTD) for the years 1970 to 1997. I find support for the hypothesis that competition leads to more terrorism, validating the claims of outbidding theorists. Furthermore, ideologies have differential effects on whether outbidding occurs, with nationalist and religious terrorist groups responding to competition with more terrorism and left-wing organizations responding with less.
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5 |
ID:
128982
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Publication |
2014.
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Summary/Abstract |
Does development aid attract foreign direct investment (FDI) in post-conflict countries? This article contributes to the growing literature on effects of aid and on determinants of FDI by explaining how development aid in low-information environments is a signal that can attract investment. Before investing abroad, firms seek data on potential host countries. In post-conflict countries, reliable information is poor, in part because governments face unusual incentives to misrepresent information. In these conditions, firms look to signals. One is development aid, because donors tend to give more to countries they trust to properly handle the funds. Our results show that aid seems to draw FDI-however, this is conditional on whether the aid can be considered geostrategically motivated. We also show that this effect decreases as time elapses after the conflict. This suggests that aid's signaling effect is specific to low-information environments, and helps rule out alternative causal mechanisms linking aid and FDI.
aid
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6 |
ID:
128984
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Publication |
2014.
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Summary/Abstract |
Do military alliances foster aggressive behavior in allies to the point of undermining the security goal of the alliance? Like others, we find that alliance commitments may cause moral hazard because allies do not fully internalize the costs of actions that can lead to war. But unlike others, we show that the effect of moral hazard can improve security. Moral hazard can be the driving force behind generating deterrence and avoiding costly conflict. Aggressors may refrain from initiating crises if their target enjoys additional resources from its ally and so is more willing to fight back. So rather than incurring costs, moral hazard may be the very key to deterring potential aggressors and minimizing the risk of conflict. This behavior allows alliance partners to capture a "deterrence surplus," which are the gains from avoiding conflict.
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7 |
ID:
128986
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Publication |
2014.
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Summary/Abstract |
Third-party conflict management, particularly legal dispute resolution (arbitration and adjudication) and mediation, can help improve the willingness of disputants to make asymmetric concessions by ameliorating commitment problems and providing political cover. In both regards, and especially pertaining to commitment problems, mediation has substantial limitations when compared to legal dispute resolution. We develop these arguments and test the observable implications on the Issue Correlates of War data. To get traction on the mechanisms at work, we distinguish between challenger concessions and defender concessions, positing that challenger concessions face the primary hurdle of political cover while defender concessions face the primary hurdle of commitment problems. We find that legal dispute resolution strongly increases the propensity for concessions by both challengers and targets, even major asymmetric concessions. Mediation, on the other hand, only helps increase minor challenger concessions. Also consistent with expectations, mediation best enables asymmetric challenger concessions in the highly salient cases that need the most political cover, and legal dispute resolution best enables asymmetric concessions when there has been a history of failed conflict management attempts that perpetuate mistrust.
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