Suchergebnisse

Mowing the grass is a cyclical pattern in counterterrorism campaigns where governments attack to destroy terrorist capacity, thereby achieving a period of quiet as groups recover. If groups expect their capacity to be destroyed, why build their capabilities in the first place? I analyze an infinite-horizon dynamic game where a group endogenously builds capacity in the face of potential attacks and capacity is an evolving, persistent variable. The model highlights that terrorist groups and governments have incentives to create strategic uncertainty and thus explains attack cycles without punishment strategies, revenge preferences or imperfect/incomplete information. I calibrate the model to time-series data in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict describing rockets fired from Gaza. The results illustrate a peace-making dilemma: altering the government's incentives will have comparatively minimal effects on long-term conflict dynamics, whereas changing the terrorists' incentives to acquire capacity would either increase the frequency of high-capacity terrorism or government attacks.

Preface -- Acknowledgements -- List of Figures -- List of Tables -- Fuzzy Social Choice -- 1.1 The Purpose and Plan of the Book -- 1.2 General Concepts -- 1.2.1 Sets -- 1.2.2 Subsets -- 1.2.3 Relations -- 1.2.4 Fuzzy Intersection and Union -- 1.2.5 Residuum -- References -- Classical Social Choice Theorems -- 2.1 Arrows Theorem -- 2.2 Discussion -- 2.3 Gibbard-Sattherthwaite Theorem -- 2.4 The Median Voter Theorem -- 2.5 The Maximal Set -- References -- Rationality of Fuzzy Preferences -- 3.1 The Structure of Fuzzy Preference Relations -- 3.2 Consistency of Fuzzy Preferences and the Fuzzy Maximal Set -- 3.3 Empirical Application I: Deriving an FWPR from a Fuzzy Preference Function -- References -- Arrow and the Aggregation of Fuzzy Preferences -- 4.1 Fuzzifying Arrow's Conditions -- 4.1.1 Transitivity -- 4.1.2 Weak Paretianism -- 4.1.3 Independence of Irrelevant Alternatives -- 4.1.4 Dictatorship -- 4.2 Making and Breaking Arrow's Theorem -- 4.3 Empirical Application II: The Spatial Model and Fuzzy Aggregation -- References -- Characteristics of Strategy-Proof Fuzzy Social Choice -- 5.1 Fuzzy Choice and Manipulation -- 5.2 Fuzzy Social Choice: Definitions and Concepts -- 5.2.1 Fuzzifying ASB II -- 5.2.2 Relaxing the Conditions of Abdelaziz et. al. -- 5.3 Findings -- 5.4 Implications for the Spatial Model -- 5.5 Conclusions -- References -- Fuzzy Black's Median Voter Theorem -- 6.1 The Structure of Fuzzy Rules and Strict Preference -- 6.2 Basic Definitions and Concepts -- 6.3 New and Old Fuzzy Voting Rules -- 6.4 Single-Peaked Preferences and the Maximal Set -- 6.5 Extending Black's Median Voter Theorem -- 6.6 An Application -- 6.7 Conclusions and Spatial Models -- References -- Representing Thick Indifference in Spatial Models -- 7.1 Stability and Thick Indifference in Individual Preferences

During violent conflict, governments may acknowledge their use of illegitimate violence (e.g., noncombatant casualties) even though such violence can depress civilian support. Why would they do so? We model the strategic incentives affecting government disclosures of illegitimate violence in the face of potential NGO investigations, where disclosures, investigations, and support are endogenous. We highlight implications for the analysis of conflict data generated from government and NGO reports and for the emergence of government transparency. Underreporting bias in government disclosures positively correlates with underreporting bias in NGO reports. Furthermore, governments exhibit greater underreporting bias relative to NGOs when NGOs face higher investigative costs. We also illustrate why it is difficult to estimate negative effects of illegitimate violence on support using government data: with large true effects, governments have incentives to conceal such violence, leading to strategic attenuation bias. Finally, there is a U-shaped relationship between NGO investigative costs and government payoffs.

AbstractSignaling games are central to political science but often have multiple equilibria, leading to no definitive prediction. We demonstrate that these indeterminacies create substantial problems when fitting theory to data: they lead to ill-defined and discontinuous likelihoods even if the game generating the data has a unique equilibrium. In our experiments, currently used techniques frequently fail to uncover the parameters of the canonical crisis-signaling game, regardless of sample size and number of equilibria in the data generating process. We propose three estimators that remedy these problems, outperforming current best practices. We fit the signaling model to data on economic sanctions. Our solutions find a novel U-shaped relationship between audience costs and the propensity for leaders to threaten sanctions, which current best practices fail to uncover.

AbstractWe estimate audience costs and examine their substantive effects on the evolution of interstate disputes by using an infinitely repeated and dynamic game of crisis escalation. Unlike past efforts, our approach estimates country‐specific audience cost parameters without relying on proxy variables, such as democracy measures. Contrary to intuition, increases in a country's audience costs encourage it to initiate disputes in equilibrium because the costs serve as a commitment device during the subsequent crisis, incentivizing the country to stand firm and coercing its opponent to back down. Nonetheless, the results demonstrate that larger audience costs would result in more peace worldwide, as they also discourage potential opponents from initiating disputes. Beyond regime type, we find that a free press, provisions for executive appointment or removal, and historical rivalries are also important determinants of audience costs.

Violence against civilians in civil war is widely thought of as a strategic choice by combatant groups. We argue that a common strategic logic of competition underlies diverse theories of civilian victimization. We develop a theory of strategic complements in victimization, hypothesizing that an armed group's propensity to victimize civilians will increase with its expectation that its competitors will act likewise. We test this argument by structurally estimating a formal model of strategic interdependence between armed groups using data from the Colombian civil war. Our findings indicate that strategic expectations are responsible for a substantial amount of violence against civilians: the two major combatant groups would have systematically victimized civilians in at least 9% fewer municipalities if they had expected no violence by their rival. Examining causal mechanisms, we also find that victimization in the Colombian case was more likely aimed at controlling civilians than at influencing peace negotiations.

The first Council of Representatives elected under the new Iraqi Constitution was unable to pass legislation required to achieve the political benchmarks set by the government. We argue that the exercise of a qualified veto by the three-member Presidency Council essentially required near unanimity among the nine parties of the governing coalition. Given the policy positions of these parties, unanimity was not possible. Our analysis makes use of a fuzzy veto players model. The placement of the government parties along a single dimension based on fuzzy preference measures derived from party text data reveals no common area of agreement. Adapted from the source document.