Abstract This article presents a model of two firms with fixed budgets that simultaneously hire lobbyists to obtain exclusive contracts in multiple markets. In a pure-strategy equilibrium, neither firm can increase its payoff by using its reserves to hire more lobbyists in any market. Efficiency criterion is defined in order to facilitate the ranking of lobbyist allocations with the same payoffs, where efficiency is improved with the aggregate number of lobbyists that firms keep on reserve. Efficiency comparisons are used to reduced the number of pure-strategy equilibria.
{"title":"Multimarket Lobbying with Reserves","authors":"Oz Shy","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3316483","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3316483","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article presents a model of two firms with fixed budgets that simultaneously hire lobbyists to obtain exclusive contracts in multiple markets. In a pure-strategy equilibrium, neither firm can increase its payoff by using its reserves to hire more lobbyists in any market. Efficiency criterion is defined in order to facilitate the ranking of lobbyist allocations with the same payoffs, where efficiency is improved with the aggregate number of lobbyists that firms keep on reserve. Efficiency comparisons are used to reduced the number of pure-strategy equilibria.","PeriodicalId":234067,"journal":{"name":"Conflict Studies: Scientific Study eJournal","volume":"719 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-04-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121999846","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Under what conditions do intervention tactics shape civilian support for foreign intervention in fragile states? Critics of U.S. foreign intervention often observe that invasive tactics—such as reliance on offshore air power or the deployment of foreign ground troops—undermine local support by triggering nationalist resistance and fear of indiscriminate violence. In contrast, I argue that civilians prefer more invasive forms of intervention when foreign patrons assist local combatants from a common ingroup. I test the theory on original survey data collected in Baghdad, Iraq, in November 2017. Respondents preferred more invasive tactics when foreign patrons assisted the Iraqi Security Forces and pro-government militias, and less invasive support for outgroup combatants like the Kurdish Peshmerga. These findings suggest that many publicized examples of intervention failure can be attributed to a lack of attention to the legitimacy of local partners, as opposed to the identity or tactics of foreign interveners.
{"title":"Local Partners for Local Problems: What Forms of Military Intervention Build Civilian Support?","authors":"A. Knuppe","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3410558","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3410558","url":null,"abstract":"Under what conditions do intervention tactics shape civilian support for foreign intervention in fragile states? Critics of U.S. foreign intervention often observe that invasive tactics—such as reliance on offshore air power or the deployment of foreign ground troops—undermine local support by triggering nationalist resistance and fear of indiscriminate violence. In contrast, I argue that civilians prefer more invasive forms of intervention when foreign patrons assist local combatants from a common ingroup. I test the theory on original survey data collected in Baghdad, Iraq, in November 2017. Respondents preferred more invasive tactics when foreign patrons assisted the Iraqi Security Forces and pro-government militias, and less invasive support for outgroup combatants like the Kurdish Peshmerga. These findings suggest that many publicized examples of intervention failure can be attributed to a lack of attention to the legitimacy of local partners, as opposed to the identity or tactics of foreign interveners.","PeriodicalId":234067,"journal":{"name":"Conflict Studies: Scientific Study eJournal","volume":"79 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-11-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126919511","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Can the slave trade explain Africa's propensity for conflict? Using variation in slave exports driven by the interaction between foreign demand shocks and heterogeneity in trade costs, we show that the slave trade increased conflict propensities in pre-colonial Africa and that this effect has persisted to the present. Moreover, we find empirical evidence suggesting two related mechanisms for this persistence--natural resources and national institutions. These results "decompress" history by connecting the short-run and long-run effects of the African slave trade.
{"title":"The Slave Trade and Conflict in Africa, 1400-2000","authors":"Levi Boxell, John T. Dalton, Tin Cheuk Leung","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3403796","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3403796","url":null,"abstract":"Can the slave trade explain Africa's propensity for conflict? Using variation in slave exports driven by the interaction between foreign demand shocks and heterogeneity in trade costs, we show that the slave trade increased conflict propensities in pre-colonial Africa and that this effect has persisted to the present. Moreover, we find empirical evidence suggesting two related mechanisms for this persistence--natural resources and national institutions. These results \"decompress\" history by connecting the short-run and long-run effects of the African slave trade.","PeriodicalId":234067,"journal":{"name":"Conflict Studies: Scientific Study eJournal","volume":"105 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-06-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125827911","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract. Revolution is an historical process that generates a rapid and radical (social, economic and political) change in society. This conceptual paper shows basic characteristics, taxonomies and situational causes of revolution. Moreover, this study also suggests that acurrent and distinct form of revolution, not included in previous studies, is terrorism. Overall, then, it seems that terrorism has many analogies with some drivers of revolution (e.g., economic, social, political and demographic determinants) and can generate changes in society, similarly to revolutions. Keywords. Social change, Political change, Structural change, Internal war, Rebellion, Insurrection, Coup d’Etat, Terrorism. JEL. N30, O30, O31, I23.
{"title":"Revolution: Characteristics, Taxonomies and Situational Causes","authors":"M. Coccia","doi":"10.1453/JEST.V6I1.1790","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1453/JEST.V6I1.1790","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract. Revolution is an historical process that generates a rapid and radical (social, economic and political) change in society. This conceptual paper shows basic characteristics, taxonomies and situational causes of revolution. Moreover, this study also suggests that acurrent and distinct form of revolution, not included in previous studies, is terrorism. Overall, then, it seems that terrorism has many analogies with some drivers of revolution (e.g., economic, social, political and demographic determinants) and can generate changes in society, similarly to revolutions. Keywords. Social change, Political change, Structural change, Internal war, Rebellion, Insurrection, Coup d’Etat, Terrorism. JEL. N30, O30, O31, I23.","PeriodicalId":234067,"journal":{"name":"Conflict Studies: Scientific Study eJournal","volume":"77 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-03-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115307237","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The consequences of conflict (international and domestic) for political and economic outcomes is an important concern for scholars and policymakers. But establishing causal relations with the data typically available is an effort that is plagued by endogeneity concerns, thus restricting the scope of empirical conflict studies. A prominent feature of most theories of conflict is uncertainty, which implies an inherent randomness that is not predictable ex ante to combatants or researchers. Consequently, there may be random variation which can provide a source of exogenous variation for some political and economic outcomes related to conflict. We identify two distinct sources of risk that produce qualitatively different kinds of natural experiments. First, incidence risk is the uncertainty regarding whether a crisis escalates into violence, and arises from private information between potential combatants. Second, result risk arises from imperfect information about the ultimate outcome of conflict, which implies that the initiation of conflict essentially triggers a lottery. We discuss the kinds of natural experiments that emerge from these sources of uncertainty and ways they can (and cannot) be used.
{"title":"Conflict as an Identification Strategy","authors":"Jessica S. Sun, Scott A. Tyson","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3258725","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3258725","url":null,"abstract":"The consequences of conflict (international and domestic) for political and economic outcomes is an important concern for scholars and policymakers. But establishing causal relations with the data typically available is an effort that is plagued by endogeneity concerns, thus restricting the scope of empirical conflict studies. A prominent feature of most theories of conflict is uncertainty, which implies an inherent randomness that is not predictable ex ante to combatants or researchers. Consequently, there may be random variation which can provide a source of exogenous variation for some political and economic outcomes related to conflict. We identify two distinct sources of risk that produce qualitatively different kinds of natural experiments. First, incidence risk is the uncertainty regarding whether a crisis escalates into violence, and arises from private information between potential combatants. Second, result risk arises from imperfect information about the ultimate outcome of conflict, which implies that the initiation of conflict essentially triggers a lottery. We discuss the kinds of natural experiments that emerge from these sources of uncertainty and ways they can (and cannot) be used.","PeriodicalId":234067,"journal":{"name":"Conflict Studies: Scientific Study eJournal","volume":"96 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-01-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122567168","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
We show that a cooperative outcome — one that is at least next-best for the players — is not a Nash equilibrium (NE) in 19 of the 57 2 x 2 strict ordinal conflict games (33%), including Prisoners’ Dilemma and Chicken. Auspiciously, in 16 of these games (84%), cooperative outcomes are nonmyopic equilibria (NMEs) when the players make farsighted calculations, based on backward induction; in the other three games, credible threats induce cooperation. More generally, in all finite normal-form games, if players’ preferences are strict, farsighted calculations stabilize at least one Pareto-optimal NME. We illustrate the choice of NMEs that are not NEs by two cases in international relations: (i) no first use of nuclear weapons, chosen by the protagonists in the 1962 Cuban missile crisis and since adopted by some nuclear powers; and (ii) the 2015 agreement between Iran, and a coalition of the United States and other countries, that has been abrogated by the United States but has forestalled Iran’s possible development of nuclear weapons.
{"title":"Farsightedness in Games: Stabilizing Cooperation in International Conflict","authors":"S. Brams, Mehmet S. Ismail","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3313025","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3313025","url":null,"abstract":"We show that a cooperative outcome — one that is at least next-best for the players — is not a Nash equilibrium (NE) in 19 of the 57 2 x 2 strict ordinal conflict games (33%), including Prisoners’ Dilemma and Chicken. Auspiciously, in 16 of these games (84%), cooperative outcomes are nonmyopic equilibria (NMEs) when the players make farsighted calculations, based on backward induction; in the other three games, credible threats induce cooperation. More generally, in all finite normal-form games, if players’ preferences are strict, farsighted calculations stabilize at least one Pareto-optimal NME. We illustrate the choice of NMEs that are not NEs by two cases in international relations: (i) no first use of nuclear weapons, chosen by the protagonists in the 1962 Cuban missile crisis and since adopted by some nuclear powers; and (ii) the 2015 agreement between Iran, and a coalition of the United States and other countries, that has been abrogated by the United States but has forestalled Iran’s possible development of nuclear weapons.","PeriodicalId":234067,"journal":{"name":"Conflict Studies: Scientific Study eJournal","volume":"460 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"117016209","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Support for Islamist violence among Muslims — howsoever varied — is theoretically and practically important because scholars have demonstrated that popular support for terrorism may explain where terrorist events occur even though the mechanistic details of this predictive utility are disputed. For this and other empirical and theoretical reasons, scholars from various disciplines and scholarly commitments have sought to exposit respondent-level determinants of support for Islamist political violence. One of the common variables that is used in these studies is support for Shari’ah (often referred to as “Islamic law”); however, scholars using this variable arrive at divergent conclusions. Recent studies of Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Indonesia suggest one reason for this is the way in which scholars conceptualize and instrumentalize Shari’ah. This scholarship argues that Shari’ah should be decomposed into at least three components, support for: scriptural literalism, good governance and restrictions on women. Using 2009 data from Pew’s Tolerance and Tension, we replicate the empirical estimation strategies of those scholars to extend this analytical framework to four West African countries (Ghana, Cameroon, Guinea Bissau and Liberia), which have been neglected by scholars of Islamist political violence. We find partial support for this framework. Notably, in Ghana and Liberia, support for scriptural literalism coincides with support for religious violence. We find no correlation between religiosity and support for violence in any of the four countries. In Guinea Bissau, we find a puzzling positive relationship between secularism and support for violence.
{"title":"A Replication Study: Understanding Muslims’ Support for Suicide Bombing in West Africa","authors":"C. C. Fair, Samta Savla","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3226690","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3226690","url":null,"abstract":"Support for Islamist violence among Muslims — howsoever varied — is theoretically and practically important because scholars have demonstrated that popular support for terrorism may explain where terrorist events occur even though the mechanistic details of this predictive utility are disputed. For this and other empirical and theoretical reasons, scholars from various disciplines and scholarly commitments have sought to exposit respondent-level determinants of support for Islamist political violence. One of the common variables that is used in these studies is support for Shari’ah (often referred to as “Islamic law”); however, scholars using this variable arrive at divergent conclusions. Recent studies of Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Indonesia suggest one reason for this is the way in which scholars conceptualize and instrumentalize Shari’ah. This scholarship argues that Shari’ah should be decomposed into at least three components, support for: scriptural literalism, good governance and restrictions on women. Using 2009 data from Pew’s Tolerance and Tension, we replicate the empirical estimation strategies of those scholars to extend this analytical framework to four West African countries (Ghana, Cameroon, Guinea Bissau and Liberia), which have been neglected by scholars of Islamist political violence. We find partial support for this framework. Notably, in Ghana and Liberia, support for scriptural literalism coincides with support for religious violence. We find no correlation between religiosity and support for violence in any of the four countries. In Guinea Bissau, we find a puzzling positive relationship between secularism and support for violence.","PeriodicalId":234067,"journal":{"name":"Conflict Studies: Scientific Study eJournal","volume":"21 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-08-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121517627","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Do armed conflicts in the contemporary post-Cold War period reflect a clash of civilizations (CoC) as predicted by Samuel Huntington? This study substantially broadens and temporally extends the scope of major extant quantitative tests of the CoC thesis by assessing not only interactions among states but also interactions between states and non-state armed groups, from 1989 to 2015. Based on Chi-square and logistic regression tests, this study does not find empirical support for the CoC thesis as a basis for adopting foreign policies of civilizational containment.
{"title":"The Clash of Civilizations? Statistical Evidence from Armed Conflicts, 1989-2015","authors":"A. Che","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3727194","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3727194","url":null,"abstract":"Do armed conflicts in the contemporary post-Cold War period reflect a clash of civilizations (CoC) as predicted by Samuel Huntington? This study substantially broadens and temporally extends the scope of major extant quantitative tests of the CoC thesis by assessing not only interactions among states but also interactions between states and non-state armed groups, from 1989 to 2015. Based on Chi-square and logistic regression tests, this study does not find empirical support for the CoC thesis as a basis for adopting foreign policies of civilizational containment.","PeriodicalId":234067,"journal":{"name":"Conflict Studies: Scientific Study eJournal","volume":"30 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-06-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130496819","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Richardson’s Law says that the relationship between the size of violent wartime events and their frequency is characterized by a simple probability distribution called a power law. Power law distributions have been found in both civil war violence and terrorist attacks and have recently served as the foundation for novel theories of conflict, solutions to missing data problems, and prediction models. This note revisits Richardson’s Law in light of recent data collection efforts, looking at all relevant micro-level conflict event data publicly available in the world today (685,000 events across 16 data sets). I find substantially less support for Richardson’s Law than past research, suggesting serious caveats to claims about its universal nature. By identifying new stylized facts about the heavy-tailed nature of violence, this note lays the groundwork for more nuanced analyses of conflict severity.
{"title":"Testing Richardson's Law: A (Cautionary) Note on Power Laws in Violence Data","authors":"R. Zwetsloot","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3112804","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3112804","url":null,"abstract":"Richardson’s Law says that the relationship between the size of violent wartime events and their frequency is characterized by a simple probability distribution called a power law. Power law distributions have been found in both civil war violence and terrorist attacks and have recently served as the foundation for novel theories of conflict, solutions to missing data problems, and prediction models. This note revisits Richardson’s Law in light of recent data collection efforts, looking at all relevant micro-level conflict event data publicly available in the world today (685,000 events across 16 data sets). I find substantially less support for Richardson’s Law than past research, suggesting serious caveats to claims about its universal nature. By identifying new stylized facts about the heavy-tailed nature of violence, this note lays the groundwork for more nuanced analyses of conflict severity.","PeriodicalId":234067,"journal":{"name":"Conflict Studies: Scientific Study eJournal","volume":"83 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-01-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125634380","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
We compare the predictive performance in forecasting the onset of large scale political violence worldwide of five statistical models and three commonly used fragility/instability indices using PITF and UCDP data for the period 2000-2015. We find that the models typically outperform the rankings and that a ‘consensus’ model performs better than the individual models. We highlight problems with measurement of the dependent conflict variable, reflect on problems associated with forecasting political violence, and we outline ways forward for future research.
{"title":"Models Versus Rankings: Forecasting Political Violence","authors":"Artur N. Usanov, T. Sweijs","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.2930104","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2930104","url":null,"abstract":"We compare the predictive performance in forecasting the onset of large scale political violence worldwide of five statistical models and three commonly used fragility/instability indices using PITF and UCDP data for the period 2000-2015. We find that the models typically outperform the rankings and that a ‘consensus’ model performs better than the individual models. We highlight problems with measurement of the dependent conflict variable, reflect on problems associated with forecasting political violence, and we outline ways forward for future research.","PeriodicalId":234067,"journal":{"name":"Conflict Studies: Scientific Study eJournal","volume":"32 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114597050","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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