Suchergebnisse

How many peacekeepers are needed to keep the peace? Under what conditions are local governments and rebel forces more willing to cooperate with an intervention force? From a theoretical perspective in which the main role of peacekeepers is to assist local actors in overcoming their commitment problems and mistrust toward each other, it follows that sufficiently robust missions should positively affect levels of cooperation. Furthermore, any effect should be conditional on the local balance of power, that is, the military leverage between government and rebel forces. Relatively weak rebel groups-facing a stronger government-should be more willing to cooperate with larger missions. In the empirical analysis, using newly collected event data on United Nation (UN) peacekeeping operations from 1989 to 2005 in African civil wars, the authors find support for conditional effect of robust peacekeeping: there is more cooperation with UN peacekeepers when the rebels are weak. [Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications Inc., copyright holder.]

How many peacekeepers are needed to keep the peace? Under what conditions are local governments and rebel forces more willing to cooperate with an intervention force? From a theoretical perspective in which the main role of peacekeepers is to assist local actors in overcoming their commitment problems and mistrust toward each other, it follows that sufficiently robust missions should positively affect levels of cooperation. Furthermore, any effect should be conditional on the local balance of power, that is, the military leverage between government and rebel forces. Relatively weak rebel groups—facing a stronger government—should be more willing to cooperate with larger missions. In the empirical analysis, using newly collected event data on United Nation (UN) peacekeeping operations from 1989 to 2005 in African civil wars, the authors find support for conditional effect of robust peacekeeping: there is more cooperation with UN peacekeepers when the rebels are weak.

Can legacies of fascism threaten democracies with political violence? Democracies aim to peacefully manage incompatible interests in a society. Yet, few democracies avoid violence altogether. Legacies of fascism may re-emerge because local networks can transfer their ideational tenets - supremacist identities and anti-democratism ( know what), violent practices ( know how), and paramilitary networks ( know whom) - to the new generations. Thanks to an original subnational dataset, we study if the Italian fascist movement that emerged in the 1920s affected political violence in the 1970s–1980s. The local strength of the fascist party before the institutionalization of the fascist regime predicts neofascist political violence more than forty years later. New catalysing events facilitate the resurfacing of local fascist legacies: when a Minister of Interior is appointed, we observe higher levels of neofascist violence in provinces where the early presence of the fascist party was stronger.

Why do fraudulent elections encourage protesting? Scholars suggest that information about fraud shapes individuals' beliefs and propensity to protest. Yet these accounts neglect the complexity of opinion formation and have not been tested at the individual level. We distinguish between the mobilizing effects of actual incidents of election fraud and individuals' subjective perceptions of fraud. While rational updating models would imply that both measures similarly affect mobilization, we argue that subjective fraud perceptions are more consistent predictors of protesting, also being shaped by attitudes, information, and community networks. Our empirical analysis uses geo-referenced individual-level data on fraud events, fraud perception, and protesting from the 2007 Nigerian elections. Our analysis yields two main findings: proximity to reported fraud has no effect on protesting and citizens perceiving elections as fraudulent are consistently more likely to protest, and more so if embedded in community networks.

We highlight how efforts to collect systematic data on conflict have helped foster progress in peace and conflict research. The Journal of Peace Research has played a key role in these developments, and has become a leading outlet for the new wave of disaggregated conflict data. We survey progress in the development of conflict data and how this interacts with theory development and progress in research, drawing specifically on examples from the move towards a greater focus on disaggregation and agency in conflict research. We focus on disaggregation in three specific dimensions, namely the resolution of conflict data, agency in conflict data, and the specific strategies used in conflict, and we also discuss new efforts to study conflict processes beyond the use of violence. We look ahead to new challenges in conflict research and how data developments and the emergence of 'big data' push us to think harder about types of conflict, agency, and the 'right' level of aggregation for querying data and evaluating specific theories. [Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications Ltd., copyright holder.]

We highlight how efforts to collect systematic data on conflict have helped foster progress in peace and conflict research. The Journal of Peace Research has played a key role in these developments, and has become a leading outlet for the new wave of disaggregated conflict data. We survey progress in the development of conflict data and how this interacts with theory development and progress in research, drawing specifically on examples from the move towards a greater focus on disaggregation and agency in conflict research. We focus on disaggregation in three specific dimensions, namely the resolution of conflict data, agency in conflict data, and the specific strategies used in conflict, and we also discuss new efforts to study conflict processes beyond the use of violence. We look ahead to new challenges in conflict research and how data developments and the emergence of 'big data' push us to think harder about types of conflict, agency, and the 'right' level of aggregation for querying data and evaluating specific theories.