Suchergebnisse

Various themes in the scholarly literature have argued that an entrenched military is able to maintain its level of influence through the manipulation of perceptions of a hostile environment. While I argue that any alleged manipulation is generally not carried out under the guise of conscious `security policy', there is some evidence that the perception of an international threat can be and is maintained through the use of the media and entertainment outlets. Using the prevalence of war toys and war movies as indicators of societal symbols, I find that there is a consistent pattern between: (a) the trends of militarization in the USA, (b) public attitudes toward military spending and the expectation of a future war, (c) the popularity of war toys and movies, and (d) press reporting with pro-military themes. The correlation between war movies and societal militarization is 0.83; war toys and militarization 0.74; and press reporting with pro-military themes and militarization 0.44. These patterns appear to hold in the USA over the first 85 years of the 20th century, and not only lend credence to those arguments that suggest that a threat need not be existential for the military to remain `well prepared', but also point to areas that could help facilitate long-term demilitarization efforts.

Examines the relationship between pro-militarization of public attitudes, the popularity of war toys and movies, and press reporting with pro-military themes.

Sanctions are designed to reduce the amount of resources available to the targeted actor and have the potential to be an effective tool for bringing disputing sides in a civil conflict to the bargaining table by altering incentives for continued fighting. Thus, there is reason to believe that sanctions can shorten the duration of civil conflicts. However, once sides in a conflict have moved to the use of violence to settle their dispute, it is hard for sanctions, in isolation, to impose enough cost to convince warring factions that settling a conflict has greater value than what could be expected from continued fighting. In this article, we argue that sanctions, in isolation, are unlikely to affect the duration of civil conflicts. However, when sanctions are combined with military interventions they can contribute to conflict management strategies resulting in shorter civil conflicts. We test our expectations empirically using data on civil conflicts from the Uppsala Conflict Data Program Armed Conflict Database and data on economic sanctions from the Threat and Imposition of Economic Sanctions Database. Our results suggest that the best hope for sanctions to shorten the duration of civil conflicts is if they are used as part of a comprehensive international response that includes institutional sanctions and military interventions.

With growing attention to peace-building in civil wars, scholars have increasingly focused on the role that international and regional organizations play in conflict resolution. Less attention has been paid to unilateral interventions undertaken by third-party states without the explicit consent of organizations and to the impact of unilateralism on how long civil wars last. In this article, we claim that unilateral interventions exert a cumulative impact on civil wars depending on interveners' interrelations. States with a cooperative rapport have an easier time in bringing civil wars to an end though they act unilaterally and follow their interests in the civil war environment, whereas states that compete for influence over war combatants prolong the fighting. Analysis results from post-1945 civil wars support our expectations and show that interveners supporting opposing sides of the war increase war duration. On the other hand, third-party states bandwagoning on the same side of a civil war are effective in stopping the fighting only when the intervening parties share similar preferences. [Reprinted by permission; copyright Sage Publications Ltd. & ECPR-European Consortium for Political Research.]