(Re-)Emergent Orders: Understanding the Negotiation(s) of Rebel Governance

The concept of order is often neglected in the study of conflict – seemingly such a ‘disordering’ process. With the recent increase in the examination of rebel governance however, bringing order back into our understanding of rebel and insurgent groups has much to offer in exploring the everyday politics which connect authorities, rebel movements and the population itself, in a complex mass of intersubjective and power-based interactions and negotiations. Rebels both shape and are shaped by existing forms of order in complex and ongoing ways. This article explores how varying elements interact in the negotiation, framing and enforcement of order and develops an original analytical framework to examine the perpetual negotiations of rebel movements in their attempts to cement their control

Natural Noun Phrase Variation for Interactive Characters

Interactive characters that cohabit a shared space with human partners need to generate and interpret references to elements of the virtual world. Natural language allows for a wide range of phrasings for referring to any particular object, and this variation is thought to reflect not only spatial but also cognitive and linguistic factors. Our study attempts to account for the variability in referring forms found in a set of dialogs of two human partners performing a treasure-hunt task in a virtual world. A decision tree classifier was built that predicts the form of 51% of the referring expressions, compared to a baseline of 39% achieved by a heuristic classifier. The classification algorithm can be used by conversational characters to generate referring expressions of the appropriate form

Natural noun phrase variation for interactive characters

Interactive characters that cohabit a shared space with human partners need to generate and interpret references to elements of the virtual world. Natural language allows for a wide range of phrasings for referring to any particular object, and this variation is thought to reflect not only spatial but also cognitive and linguistic factors. Our study attempts to account for the variability in referring forms found in a set of dialogs of two human partners performing a treasure-hunt task in a virtual world. A decision tree classifier was built that predicts the form of 51 % of the referring expressions, compared to a baseline of 39 % achieved by a heuristic classifier. The classification algorithm can be used by conversational characters to generate referring expressions of the appropriate form

De Facto States in International Politics (1945-2011): A New Dataset

Sovereign states remain the primary units of analysis in conflict research. Yet, the empirical record suggests that the international system includes a wider range of actors whose behavior is relevant for conflict outcomes. This article introduces De Facto States in International Politics (1945–2011), a new data set dedicated to understanding the behavior of de facto states—separatist statelike entities such as Abkhazia. I begin by explaining why de facto states deserve attention. Further, I provide a definition of the de facto state that separates it from cognate phenomena. Thereafter, I offer an overview of the data set and illustrate its utility by demonstrating how it contributes to the literatures on war and state making, civil war, and rebel governance