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'Rohingya'- world's most persecuted minority group came to the attention of the international media again in the mid of 2017 due to the brutality they were experiencing in their homeland by the state authority of Myanmar. Now they are being labeled as the 'perpetual other' of Myanmar and as the 'Bengali intruders' by the society regardless of being the inhabitants in the Rakhine state for centuries (The Diplomat 2017). As a result of this Bangladesh experienced the largest surge of displaced people into its border after its independence. They are 'culturally discriminated, economically exploited and politically sidelined' and are being discerned by the Arakan people as a threat to their national identity and an additional competitor for the natural resources (Wolf 2015). It is widely believed that the reason of the violent crackdown of the military against the 'Rohingya' community in the Arakan state is either religiously or ethnically motivated. But this is only a splinter part of the entire truth. These violent atrocities against the Rohingya community is more politically and economically motivated than religiously and ethnically. This paper will focus on the causes of the present crisis which started to unveil since 2017 and how these are linked with the interest of the different stakeholders like: the Military junta of Myanmar, Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA), ASEAN, Bangladesh, Indian government, China, the UN, etc. To understand the causes and the effects of the conflict this paper will use the tool of 'conflict tree' and the 'conflict onion' will be used as a tool to understand the positions, needs and interests of different actors.

Growth rates of per capita GDP are depressed by civil conflict to a degree that reflects its severity. Only the more severe conflicts - ones that affect at least half of the country by land area and/or cause more than 1,000 fatalities in at least one year - have a significant negative growth effect. Post-conflict recovery of output is enhanced by aid flows but this finding may be subject to endogeneity bias.

International audience ; Never has sovereignty been as fashionable as since its explanatory and normative force first came into doubt and its knell was tolled in the European Union. With the shift in authority away from the state to new sub-state, supra-state, post-state and non-state entities, an important question is whether the concept of ultimate authority or sovereignty is to be abandoned or, on the contrary, retained and, if so, in which form. This paper aims at exploring a third way that would allow us to escape from the two types of dualism that contrast state and sovereignty, first, and rejecting and saving sovereignty, second. This paper's argument is that sovereignty is neither the simple reflection of the new European and international reality nor the application of a pre-established concept whose criteria are immutable and risk corseting the post-national order. As an essentially contestable concept, sovereignty is at once a state of affairs, a question pertaining to the nature and justification of that state of affairs and a justification of the latter. The correct use of the concept of sovereignty consists therefore in constantly contesting one's conceptions of the concept and hence one's exercize of sovereignty. As such, the reflexive concept of sovereignty can be described as cooperative in the post-national constellation where sovereign entities overlap in their claims to sovereignty over the same territory and population. Read together with the principle of subsidiarity, cooperative sovereignty implies allocating competences to those authorities that are best placed to ensure the protection of shared sovereign values and principles, such as the values of democracy and fundamental rights. In the European context, cooperative sovereignty provides the normative framework for the development of a dynamic and reflexive form of constitutionalism. Through its duties of cooperation and coherence, cooperative sovereignty countervails the risks of erosion implied by constitutional pluralism, while also ...

International audience ; Never has sovereignty been as fashionable as since its explanatory and normative force first came into doubt and its knell was tolled in the European Union. With the shift in authority away from the state to new sub-state, supra-state, post-state and non-state entities, an important question is whether the concept of ultimate authority or sovereignty is to be abandoned or, on the contrary, retained and, if so, in which form. This paper aims at exploring a third way that would allow us to escape from the two types of dualism that contrast state and sovereignty, first, and rejecting and saving sovereignty, second. This paper's argument is that sovereignty is neither the simple reflection of the new European and international reality nor the application of a pre-established concept whose criteria are immutable and risk corseting the post-national order. As an essentially contestable concept, sovereignty is at once a state of affairs, a question pertaining to the nature and justification of that state of affairs and a justification of the latter. The correct use of the concept of sovereignty consists therefore in constantly contesting one's conceptions of the concept and hence one's exercize of sovereignty. As such, the reflexive concept of sovereignty can be described as cooperative in the post-national constellation where sovereign entities overlap in their claims to sovereignty over the same territory and population. Read together with the principle of subsidiarity, cooperative sovereignty implies allocating competences to those authorities that are best placed to ensure the protection of shared sovereign values and principles, such as the values of democracy and fundamental rights. In the European context, cooperative sovereignty provides the normative framework for the development of a dynamic and reflexive form of constitutionalism. Through its duties of cooperation and coherence, cooperative sovereignty countervails the risks of erosion implied by constitutional pluralism, while also ...

This research advances the hypothesis and establishes empirically that interpersonal population diversity, rather than fractionalization or polarization across ethnic groups, has been pivotal to the emergence, prevalence, recurrence, and severity of intrasocietal conflicts. Exploiting an exogenous source of variations in population diversity across nations and ethnic groups, as determined predominantly during the exodus of humans from Africa tens of thousands of years ago, the study demonstrates that population diversity, and its impact on the degree of diversity within ethnic groups, has contributed significantly to the risk and intensity of historical and contemporary civil conflicts. The findings arguably reflect the contribution of population diversity to the non-cohesiveness of society, as reflected partly in the prevalence of mistrust, the divergence in preferences for public goods and redistributive policies, and the degree of fractionalization and polarization across ethnic, linguistic, and religious groups.

Post-conflict societies face two distinctive challenges: economic recovery and risk reduction. Aid and policy reforms have been found to be highly effective in the economic recovery. In this paper we concentrate on the other challenge, risk reduction. The post-conflict peace is typically fragile: around half of all civil wars are due to post-conflict relapses. Both external actors and the post-conflict government must therefore give priority to reducing the risk of conflict. Our statistical results suggest that economic development does substantially reduce risks, but it takes a long time. We also find evidence that UN peacekeeping expenditures significantly reduce the risk of renewed war. The effect is large: doubling expenditure reduces the risk from 40% to 31%. In contrast to these results we cannot find any systematic influence of elections on the reduction of war risk. Therefore, post-conflict elections should be promoted as intrinsically desirable rather than as mechanisms for increasing the durability of the post-conflict peace. Based on these results we suggest that peace appears to depend upon an external military presence sustaining a gradual economic recovery, with political design playing a somewhat subsidiary role. Since there is a simple and statistically strong relationship between the severity of post-conflict risks and the level of income at the end of the conflict this provides a clear and uncontroversial principle for resource allocation: resources per capita should be approximately inversely proportional to the level of income in the post-conflict country.

Performer: CISAC, Stanford University Principal Investigator: Scott D. Sagan Cost: $100,000 Fiscal Year(s): 2014-2015 ; Policymakers and scholars widely believe that there is a deep public aversion to nuclear weapons. But there is no empirical evidence on the strength of "antinuclear instincts" and the conditions under which they operate in the United States and other countries. This is especially relevant in light of current debates over "red lines" for military intervention, concerns about non-combatant immunity, and escalation dangers in military conflicts. ; PASCC

It is argued that civil war and protests are mutually exclusive processes. However, the prevalence of protests and their proximity with or simultaneity to armed conflict contradicts this idea. Conflict and confrontation involve different types of interactions between the state and its opponents, which can involve protests, mass mobilization, clashes, and even armed conflict. Thus, we can understand conflict as existing in a continuum. Analyzing protests and protestors as related to armed conflict may serve to widen our understanding of conflict. This chapter presents the case for linking protest with a wider understanding of conflict, considering its links with other categories of contestation such as arme conflict. We can thus envision different types of contestation as being related. If we consider this possibility, we can then analyze processes of escalation and de-escalation between different expresions of contestation. This chapter reflects on the similarities and differences between different categories used to understand contestation, focusing on the categories of protests, civil conflict, and civil war. I claim that while a distinction between protests and armed violence is often made on the basis of the degree of violence involved in these processes, this in itself does not mean that these forms of conflict are disconnected. Through focusing on the nature of their political claims, we can understand these processes of contestation as related to each other. Thus, we can analyze how mass mobilization escalates into armed conflicts, and we also observe cases of post agreement scenarios where mass mobilization follows the signature of peace agreements (a de-escalation process). Evidence from the case of South Africa is presented to illustrate this.

The article considers the geopolitical factors associated with contemporary regional conflicts and the basic imperatives of importance to mitigate or resolve conflict conflicts through the implementation of post-conflict international transaction of political and diplomatic nature.

The Twentieth Century was the most violent in history and prepared the way for the conflict with which this century has already been marked. Conflict comes in various forms but ultimately it is about power: a struggle for power or a struggle between the powerful and the powerless. The argument of this paper is that art and literature, far more than the language of politics, have the capacity to speak to power by speaking beyond it. They do this first by transformation. Resistance, as we see from the example of postcolonial literature, is most effective when it is transformative—when it takes the language of power and makes it work in the service of the powerless. But in addition, literature, through its capacity to imagine a different world, has a utopian function that conceives a world beyond conflict. This paper will focus on the phenomenon of utopian possibility, to show the function of art and literature in transforming power and imagining the future.

The main concern of this thesis is to analyze conflict in Pakistan, mainly the ethnopolitical conflict. It builds a case that conflict in Pakistan has been a product of the weakening of its social contract. This is both a qualitative and quantitative work which relies on both primary and secondary data as well as diverse techniques from historical interpretative analysis to econometrics. In addition to the ethnopolitical conflict, the thesis also contains an analysis of the factors leading to taliban recruitment in the current conflict. The thesis attempts to link the historical evolution and composition of social contract and the struggles over identity in pre and post independence era of Pakistan. It sets up a theoretical framework which defines the relevant concepts of identity, ethnopolitics, conflict, social contract, institutions and the saliency of socio economic determinants of conflict. To test this theoretical framework, an analytical framework is proposed which operationalizes these concepts. Data about the violent and non violent ethnopolitical conflict from 1972 to 2005 is collected, coded and put into a data scheme which helps us build the composite and individual pictures of this conflict through time. This database is unique to the extent of Pakistan. The thesis finds that the intensity of the major individual conflict have mostly followed an inverted U curve through time. Except for Balochistan, this is true for both the violent as well as non violent conflict. The emerging conflict is then explained with the help of the decay of institutions of conflict management. These include both the formal and informal types. Two political and two economic institutions are selected for analysis which are part of the fiscal federalist scheme of the constitution. The findings suggest that consociational federalism has worked to bring down the intensity of conflict among the federating units. To investigate the political power dynamics, an original scheme of quantifying the political power gap in the state structure is employed and the emerging picture is then contrasted with the picture of ethnopolitical conflict. Analysis also suggests that democracies have worked better at containing the conflict inside the institutions that were created for its management. The thesis takes up the saliency of the debate about the social and political horizontal inequalities, especially in Pakistani context and follows it with an econometric analysis of the data related to these inequalities and conflict. Linking grievances with the socio economic and political horizontal inequalities among federating units, the econometric results suggest that overall, larger inequalities led towards greater ethnopolitical c

Abstract: It is argued that civil war and protests are mutually exclusive processes. However, the prevalence of protests and their proximity with or simultaneity to armed conflict contradicts this idea. Conflict and confrontation involve different types of interactions between the state and its opponents, which can involve protests, mass mobilization, clashes, and even armed conflict. Thus, we can understand conflict as existing in a continuum. Analyzing protests and protestors as related to armed conflict may serve to widen our understanding of conflict. This chapter presents the case for linking protest with a wider understanding of conflict, considering its links with other categories of contestation such as armed conflict. We can thus envision different types of contestation as being related. If we consider this possibility, we can then analyze processes of escalation and de-escalation between different expressions of contestation. This chapter reflects on the similarities and differences between different categories used to understand contestation, focusing on the categories of protests, civil conflict, and civil war. I claim that while a distinction between protests and armed violence is often made based on the degree of violence involved in these processes, this in itself does not mean that these forms of conflict are disconnected. Through focusing on the nature of their political claims, we can understand these processes of contestation as related to each other. Thus, we can analyze how mass mobilization escalates into armed conflicts, and we also observe cases of post agreement scenarios where mass mobilization follows the signature of peace agreements (a de-escalation process). Evidence from the case of South Africa is presented to illustrate this.

FY 2013-2014. Project Lead: Bruce W. MacDonald ; While America has been a space-faring nation for decades, space plays an increasingly important role in conventional military superiority, strategic nuclear posture, and civilian economies. With the proliferation of space and other technologies, China could exploit fast-growing U.S. dependence on space to weaken U.S. military and economic power. Though absolute U.S. advantages in space should continue, the margin of U.S. advantage will likely diminish with increased Chinese space capabilities and exploration. This project will build on current understandings of space deterrence and contribute research on possible crisis behaviors. Should a crisis erupt, understanding how space deterrence functions will dictate the path back to space stability. Furthermore, the analysis of factors that will influence behavior between the United States and China in a crisis or actual conflict will better inform U.S. crisis decision-making and peacetime planning. ; Defense Threat Reduction Agency ; NA ; Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited.

The article of record as published may be found at http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0192512110379489 ; Language divides are common components of group conflict, a phenomenon reflected widely in theories of nationalism.This article evaluates measures developed by David Laitin and James Fearon in the minorities at risk dataset claiming to quantify language difference and concludes they are deeply flawed.The introduction outlines language divides vis-a-vis conflict.A theoretical analysis in the second section argues against rational choice analyses of language politics; in the third section a sociolinguistic matrix shows that these fractional measures represent language ancestry but nothing else (morphology, syntax, lexicon, orthography, status). Theoretical implications and alternative methods are considered in the fourth section followed by a summary conclusion.

Constitutional resolution of disputes between constituent groups of a polity avoids the incremental costs of civil conflict. But, the political process prescribed by a constitution provides a viable alternative to civil conflict if and only if the constitution is self enforcing. This paper presents theoretical and historical analyses of the possibility of designing a selfenforcing constitution. The theoretical analysis reveals that the following factors make it possible to design a self-enforcing constitution that a polity can use to resolve a given dispute: - No party to the dispute has a big advantage in civil conflict. - The parties to the dispute expect the incremental costs of civil conflict to be large relative to the importance of the dispute. - The parties to the dispute have almost as much concern for the future consequences of the choices that they make as for the current consequences. The theoretical analysis also reveals that a self-enforcing constitution can require limitations on the prerogatives of winners of constitutional contests such that the outcomes of constitutional contests do not matter too much. The historical analysis illustrates the relevance of the theoretical analysis by applying these theoretical results to two dramatic examples of constitutional failure: the secession of eleven Southern states from the Union in 1861 and the National Socialist revolution in Germany in 1933.