Confrontational Behavior and Escalation to War 1816-1980: A Research Plan

The understanding of international war, like many complex social events, may be - and has been - ap proached from a range of theoretical perspectives and via a variety of research strategies. Outside of the work of Bloch (1898), Sorokin (1936), Richardson (1941), and Wright (1942), however, there was little re search of a scientific nature until the mid-1960s. And while these past fifteen years have certainly not given us a compelling theory of international war, they have seen a steady growth in cumulative knowledge regar ding the correlates of war. These results, despite the expected mix of inconsistencies and anomalies, provide us with some sense of the factors that are most consistently associated with war over the last century and a half, along with some tentative insights into the rising and declining potency of these factors.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/68556/2/10.1177_002234338201900104.pd

Frameworks, effects and significance of research assessment in the Italian university system

In the past decades, growing attention has been paid to the assessment of the quality of university research (Handerson et al., 1990; Genua & Martin 2003; Lange, 2006). Although Italy is traditionally behind other European countries in introducing assessment systems for academic activities, it is now distinguishing itself on the European scene as a country that is adopting large-scale research assessment practices. In 2004, the Committee for the Evaluation of Research (CIVR) launched the Three Year Assessment Exercise (VTR) to analyse research activities carried out in the three year period 2001–2003 which had its origins in the European peer review experience