Theorizing simple commodity production in Papua New Guinea

In the social sciences it often takes several generations to dislodge obsolescence. In the meantime, serious mistakes can be, and are made, hurting the lives of millions of hapless people. In poor countries…the mistakes can be costly. And the funerals premature and unnecessary—funerals, not of social scientists, who usually operate from a secure haven, but of the designated beneficiaries of development policies formulated on the basis of faulty premises and paradigms.     

The diffusion of feminist ideology

According to Converse, the ideas/beliefs of an ideology are diffused in packages—i.e., diffusion necessarily involves constraint. However, a person may become aware of these packages and the substance of an ideology of which they are a part without accepting them. Consequently, diffusion produces an increase in both awareness and constraint with the former increasing more than the latter. Diffusion may also take two forms. The ideology may be accepted by more members of the same social class from which the movement's leaders were recruited (horizontal diffusion); or the ideology may spread beyond the confines of the original class to attract the support of the less advantaged (vertcal diffusion).We apply this model of diffusion to the feminist movement in the United States for the period 1972 to 1976. The weight of our evidence indicates that significant horizontal as well as vertical diffusion has occurred. It appears that as the general public became more aware of feminist ideas and beliefs, support for these ideas and beliefs increased along with the constraint between various measures of them.     

Terrorism,Dynamic Commitment Problems,and Military Conflict

Since 9/11, several states have initiated military conflicts in the name of fighting terrorism. However, studies indicate that the costs of terrorism are insignificant compared to the damage created by war. This raises the question: Why do states initiate costly wars when the risk posed by terrorism appears marginal? This study presents two explanations. First, we argue that while terrorists frequently fail to achieve their strategic objectives, terrorists can accomplish tactical objectives and may transition to insurgencies by seizing control of pockets of territory. States may respond by initiating preventive wars to stop terrorists from consolidating control over their strategically valuable territories (e.g., resource‐rich areas). Second, rival states may opportunistically exploit terrorist violence by declaring that the government is a “weak state.” This allows rivals to seize portions of the government's territory under the cover of fighting terror. We test these hypotheses using post–Cold War African dyads from 1990 to 2006.