GDIS, a global dataset of geocoded disaster locations

This article presents a new open source extension to the Emergency Events Database (EM-DAT) that allows researchers, for the first time, to explore and make use of subnational, geocoded data on major disasters triggered by natural hazards. The Geocoded Disasters (GDIS) dataset provides spatial geometry in the form of GIS polygons and centroid latitude and longitude coordinates for each administrative entity listed as a disaster location in the EM-DAT database. In total, GDIS contains spatial information on 39,953 locations for 9,924 unique disasters occurring worldwide between 1960 and 2018. The dataset facilitates connecting the EM-DAT database to other geographic data sources on the subnational level to enable rigorous empirical analyses of disaster determinants and impacts

Ulikhet, eksklusjon og borgerkrig [Inequality, Exclusion, and Civil War]

Much of the recent research on civil war treats explanations rooted in political and economic grievances with considerable suspicion and claims that there is little empirical evidence of any relationship between ethnicity or inequality and political violence. We argue that common indicators used in previous research fail to capture fundamental aspects of political exclusion and economic inequality that can motivate conflict. Through a statistical analysis of all civil wars since 1960, we show that our theoretically informed indicators of political discrimination and economic marginalization among ethnic groups are powerful predictors of civil war onset. Individual-based inequality indicators, in contrast, display only weak effects. This article in Norwegian is a revised and updated version of earlier work published in English

Disaggregating Ethno-Nationalist Civil Wars: A Dyadic Test of Exclusion Theory

Contemporary conflict research usually measures the influence of ethnicity on conflict by capturing ethnic constellations as country-based indices, such as ethnic fractionalization or polarization. However, such aggregated measures are likely to conceal the actual operation of actor-specific mechanisms. In this article, therefore, we introduce a disaggregated model that measures ethnic groups' access to power. We do so by disaggregating both ethnicity and conflict to the level of explicitly geo-coded center-periphery dyads. This procedure allows us to measure the power balance between politically excluded ethnic groups and dominant actors in terms of group sizes, distances between the center and the periphery, and the roughness of the latter's terrain. We rely on geographic information systems (GIS) to compute demographic and ethno-geographic variables. The dyadic analysis enables us to show that exclusion of powerful ethnic minorities increases the likelihood of conflict considerably. In addition, we show that the risk of conflict is positively associated with the extent of rough terrain in the peripheral group's home region and its distance from the political cente

Square Pegs in Round Holes: Inequalities, Grievances, and Civil War

Much of the recent research on civil war treats explanations rooted in political and economic grievances with considerable suspicion and claims that there is little empirical evidence of any relationship between ethnicity or inequality and political violence. We argue that common indicators used in previous research, such as the ethno-linguistic fractionalization (ELF) and the Gini coefficient for income dispersion, fail to capture fundamental aspects of political exclusion and economic inequality that can motivate conflict. Drawing on insights from group-level research, we develop new country-level indices that directly reflect inequalities among ethnic groups, including political discrimination and wealth differentials along ethnic lines. Our analysis reveals that these theoretically informed country profiles are much better predictors of civil war onset than conventional inequality indicators, even when we control for a number of alternative factors potentially related to grievances or opportunities for conflict. © 2013 International Studies Association

Should the Security Council Engage with Implications of Climate Change? Let’s Look at the Scientific Evidence

Source at https://theglobalobservatory.org/.CClimate change is a controversial topic at the United Nations (UN) Security Council. The Council has adopted over 70 resolutions and presidential statements that address aspects of climate-related peace and security implications. However, a few members strongly oppose adding climate change to the Security Council agenda. When a thematic resolution on the security implications of climate change came up for a vote in December 2021, Russia went so far as to veto it. India also voted against it, while China abstained. But twelve Council members voted in favor, and 113 non-members co-sponsored the resolution—the second highest number of co-sponsors in Security Council history. Although motives for opposing the climate security agenda in the Council vary, one important argument rests on a perception that the scientific evidence for a connection between climate and conflict is limited

Roving Bandits? The Geographical Evolution of African Armed Conflicts

The fighting in some civil wars primarily takes place in a few stable locations, while the fighting in others moves substantially. We posit that rebel groups that do not primarily fight for a specific ethnic group, that receive outside military assistance, or that have relatively weak fighting capacity tend to fight in inconsistent locations. We develop new measures of conflict zone movement to test our hypotheses, based on shifts in the conflict polygons derived from the new Georeferenced Event Dataset (GED) developed by the Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP). Our empirical results provide support for the suggested mechanisms. We find that groups which lack strong ethnic ties and sufficient military strength to compete with government forces in conventional warfare fight in more varied locations. These findings improve our understandings of and expectations for variations in the humanitarian footprint of armed conflicts, the interdependencies between rebel groups and local populations, and the dilemmas faced by government counterinsurgency efforts

Climate-driven risks to peace over the 21st century

publishedVersio

Utvikling, kvalitet og ledelse. Kvalitetsutviklingssystem og ledelse i utdanningssektoren i Nord- Trøndelag

I 2005 innførte Fylkestinget i Nord-Trøndelag et helhetlig kvalitetssystem for utdanningssektoren basert på en modell for planlegging, rapportering og vurdering. Vi har sett på hvilken betydning innføringen av systemet har hatt for ledelsesarbeidet i skolen. Problemstillingen i oppgaven er: Hvordan påvirker kvalitetsutviklingssystemet ledelsesarbeidet i skolen? For å få svar på problemstillingen har vi brukt følgende to forskningsspørsmål: 1. Hvordan er forholdet mellom kvalitetsbegrepet i kvalitetsutviklingssystemets og lederes forståelse av kvalitet. 2. Hvordan vurderer lederne kvalitetsutviklingssystemet som verktøy for kvalitetsutvikling i skolen

Peacekeeping as Conflict Containment

A rich literature has developed focusing on the efficacy of peacekeeping operations (PKOs) in a temporal sense - asking whether the periods following a deployment are more peaceful or not. We know less about the efficacy of PKOs in a spatial sense. Can peacekeeping shape the geographic dispersion of particular episodes of violence? We posit that PKOs can contain conflict by decreasing the tactical advantage of mobility for the rebels, by obstructing the movement of armed actors, and by altering the ability for governments to seek and confront rebel actors. We investigate the observable implications using georeferenced conflict polygons from the Uppsala Conflict Data Program's (UCDP) Georeferenced Event Dataset (GED). Our findings confirm that PKOs tend to decrease movement in the conflict polygons, especially when robust forces are deployed and when rebel groups have strong ethnic ties. Our findings, on the one hand, imply that PKOs reduce the geographic scope of violence. On the other hand, PKOs may allow nonstate actors to gain strength and legitimacy and thus constitute an even greater future threat to the state whether some form of accord is not reached

Environmental changes and violent conflict

This letter reviews the scientific literature on whether and how environmental changes affect the risk of violent conflict. The available evidence from qualitative case studies indicates that environmental stress can contribute to violent conflict in some specific cases. Results from quantitative large-N studies, however, strongly suggest that we should be careful in drawing general conclusions. Those large-N studies that we regard as the most sophisticated ones obtain results that are not robust to alternative model specifications and, thus, have been debated. This suggests that environmental changes may, under specific circumstances, increase the risk of violent conflict, but not necessarily in a systematic way and unconditionally. Hence there is, to date, no scientific consensus on the impact of environmental changes on violent conflict. This letter also highlights the most important challenges for further research on the subject. One of the key issues is that the effects of environmental changes on violent conflict are likely to be contingent on a set of economic and political conditions that determine adaptation capacity. In the authors' view, the most important indirect effects are likely to lead from environmental changes via economic performance and migration to violent conflict. © 2012 IOP Publishing Ltd