Arms Acquisition Patterns and the Dynamics of Armed Conflict: Lessons from the Niger Delta

Arms acquisition is a crucial venture for armed insurgency groups for carrying out their militant activities. I argue that the specific manner in which these groups obtain weapons may have important consequences for the dynamics of violent intrastate conflict. While most previous studies of the relationship between arms acquisition and armed conflict have focused solely on the impact of arms availability, in this article I analyze the impact of two specific aspects of arms acquisition patterns—the methods and the degree of leadership control—on the dynamics and nature of armed conflict in a qualitative case study of the armed conflict in the Niger Delta (Nigeria) between 1995 and 2005. I conclude that the specific arms acquisition method and the degree of leadership control over this process have strongly affected the dynamics of the conflict.     

Revisiting Representation: Communism,Women in Politics,and the Decline of Armed Conflict in East Asia

This research note evaluates one of the commonly used measurements for political gender equality: representation of women in parliaments. It demonstrates that caution is called for when interpreting results where this variable is used, because parliamentary representation implies different things in different settings. Societies with more women in parliament tend to have fewer intrastate armed conflicts. We investigate this statistical association with a particular focus on East Asia. This region has seen a shift from extremely intense warfare to low levels of battle deaths at roughly the same time as great strides have been made in the representation of women in parliaments. This research note shows, however, that this statistical association is driven by authoritarian communist regimes promoting gender equality as a part of communist ideology, and these countries’ representative chambers have little influence over politics. Using statistical tests and empirical illustrations from East Asia, the note concludes that the political representation of women is an invalid indicator of political gender equality in East Asia. There is thus a need for nuance in assessing the picture painted in earlier research. In addition, the suggestion that more women in parliament will lead to fewer armed conflicts runs the risk of being forwarded as an oversimplified solution to a complex problem, and we briefly discuss the instrumentalization of gender equality in peace and security studies.     

Precedents,Progress, and Prospects in Political Event Data

The past decade has seen a renaissance in the development of political event data sets. This has been due to at least three sets of factors. First, there have been technological changes that have reduced the cost of producing event data, including the availability of information on the Web, the development of specialized systems for automated coding, and the development of machine-assisted systems that reduce the cost of human coding. Second, event data have become much more elaborate than the original state-centric data sets such as WEIS and COPDAB, with a far greater emphasis on substate and nonstate actors, and in some data sets, the incorporation of geospatial information. Finally, there have been major institutional investments, such as support for a number of Uppsala and PRIO data sets, the DARPA ICEWS Asian and global data sets, and various political violence data sets from the US government. This article will first review the major new contributions, with a focus on those represented in this special issue, discuss some of the open problems in the existing data and finally discuss prospects for future development, including the enhanced use of open-source natural language processing tools, standardizing the coding taxonomies, and prospects for near-real-time coding systems.     

Methods Meet Policy: Transnational Monitoring of the Israel–Palestine Conflict

For the past 2 years, the Kansas Event Data System project has been using event data and other web-based sources to produce quarterly reports on the Israel–Palestine conflict for the swisspeace (Swiss Peace Foundation) FAST Project, which is sponsored by Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation and a number of non-governmental organizations. This paper describes the indicators that we are monitoring, the process we have developed to generate the reports, and the supplemental sources we are using. We address the issue of the differences between newspaper and news wire reports with respect to "media fatigue" effects and also analyze some of the strengths and weaknesses of this approach to conflict monitoring.     

The G7, International Terrorism and Domestic Politics: Modeling Policy Cohesion in Response to Systemic Disturbance

This work probes the variability in G7 cohesion in response to relatively new disturbances in the international system. Using a domestic politics model, we argue that G7 cohesion weakens in the face of international terrorism in the context of variable domestic consequences to common foreign policy responses to this systemic disturbance. We compare the predictions from our model with predictions stemming from neorealist and liberal/institutionalist explanations. We find that, consistent with the domestic politics explanation, G7 foreign policy cohesion declines as internal terrorism increases.     

WarViews: Visualizing and Animating Geographic Data on Civil War

In the recent years, the field of conflict research has produced new findings on the relation between conflict and geography. In doing so, new data sets have been created with the help of GIS software. These data sets include variables relevant for the study of conflict with a spatial component. However, the use of geographic data requires specialized software and substantial training and therefore involves high entry costs for researchers and practitioners. This paper introduces the WarViews project whose aim is to create an easy-to-use front end for the exploration of GIS data on conflict. It takes advantage of the recent proliferation of Internet-based geographic software and makes geographic data on conflict available for these tools. With WarViews, geographic data on conflict can be accessed, browsed, and time-animated in a few mouse clicks, using only standard software. As a result, a wider audience can take advantage of the valuable data contained in these databases, for example, as supplementary data for conflict case studies or for classroom demonstrations. We present two versions of WarViews. The static version runs in a web browser and allows the user to switch between different data sets. The dynamic version is based on Google Earth and can time-animate geographic data such that the development over time can be monitored. The WarViews website can be freely accessed at http://www.icr.ethz.ch/research/warviews .     

中国社会科学院国际论坛“从哥本哈根到坎昆:新挑战、新选择、新机遇”研讨会综述

<正>2010年10月19日,中国社会科学院国际论坛从哥本哈根到坎昆:新挑战、新选择、新机遇在中国社科院拉丁美洲研究所举行。会议由中国社科院国际学部主办,由拉美所、美国美洲协会和中国社科院研究生院国际能源安全研究中心共同承办。     

冲突与兼容:荷印吧城华人遗产继承的法律适用问题——以巴达维亚华人公馆《公案簿》档案为例

在19世纪的吧城华人社会里,华人的遗产继承涉及诸多法律适用问题。本文拟就已整理出版的《公案簿》档案中一些较为典型华人遗产继承案例进行考察和分析,从中探讨荷印法律与中国法律在这一时期吧城华人遗产继承上的相互冲突和相互认可,以及在不同情况和条件下吧城华人遗产继承纠纷的法律条规适用问题,以期进一步了解荷印吧城华人在保持中国传统的同时又逐步融入当地社会生活的进程。