Development and the Liberal Peace

According to the liberal peace proposition, pairs of democratic states and pairs of states with extensive trade ties are more peaceful than other pairs of states, and democratic states are also more peaceful internally than other regime types. This article reviews the recent literature on the liberal peace, and proceeds to review the literature on how factors assoiciated with socio-economic development are related to democratization, democratic stability, and to the risk of war. Based on this review and a set of recent empirical studies, it argues that development is a precondition for the liberal peace.

Population size, concentration, and civil war : a geographically disaggregated analysis

Why do larger countries have more armed conflict? This paper surveys three sets of hypotheses forwarded in the conflict literature regarding the relationship between the size and location of population groups: Hypotheses based on pure population mass, on distances, on population concentrations, and some residual state-level characteristics. The hypotheses are tested on a new dataset-ACLED (Armed Conflict Location and Events Dataset)-which disaggregates internal conflicts into individual events. The analysis covers 14 countries in Central Africa. The conflict event data are juxtaposed with geographically disaggregated data on populations, distance to capitals, borders, and road networks. The paper develops a statistical method to analyze this type of data. The analysis confirms several of the hypotheses.Population Policies,Social Conflict and Violence,Demographics,Country Population Profiles,Health Indicators

The security challenges in conflict prone countries.

Conflicts; economic growth; Civil war; post-conflict societies; Violence; Prevention;

Democratic Jihad ? Military intervention and democracy

Democracies rarely if ever fight one another, but they participate in wars as frequently as autocracies. They tend to win the wars in which they participate. Democracies frequently build large alliances in wartime, but not only with other democracies. From time to time democracies intervene militarily in ongoing conflicts. The democratic peace may contribute to a normative justification for such interventions, for the purpose of promoting democracy and eventually for the promotion of peace. This is reinforced by an emerging norm of humanitarian intervention. Democracies may have a motivation to intervene in non-democracies, even in the absence of ongoing conflict, for the purpose of regime change. The recent Iraq War may be interpreted in this perspective. A strong version of this type of foreign policy may be interpreted as a democratic crusade. The paper examines the normative and theoretical foundations of democratic interventionism. An empirical investigation of interventions in the period 1960-96 indicates that democracies intervene quite frequently, but rarely against other democracies. In the short term, democratic intervention appears to be successfully promoting democratization, but the target states tend to end up among the unstable semi-democracies. The most widely publicized recent interventions are targeted on poor or resource-dependent countries in non-democratic neighborhoods. Previous research has found these characteristics to reduce the prospects for stable democracy. Thus, forced democratization is unpredictable withregard to achieving long-term democracy and potentially harmful with regard to securing peace. But short-term military successes may stimulate more interventions until the negative consequences become more visible.Population Policies,Peace&Peacekeeping,Parliamentary Government,Politics and Government,Political Systems and Analysis

Every Story Has a Beginning, Middle, and an End (But Not Always in That Order): Predicting Duration Dynamics in a Unified Framework

There are three fundamental duration dynamics of civil conflicts: time until conflict onset, conflict duration, and time until conflict recurrence. Theoretical and empirical models of war usually focus on one or at most two aspects of these three important duration dynamics. We present a new split-population seemingly unrelated duration estimator that treats pre-conflict duration, conflict duration, and post-conflict duration as interdependent processes thus permitting improved predictions about the onset, duration, and recurrence of civil conflict. Our findings provide support for the more fundamental idea that prediction is dependent on a good approximation of the theoretically implied underlying data-generating process. In addition, we account for the fact that some countries might never experience these duration dynamics or become immune after experiencing them in the past

Introduction: Forecasting in peace research

Prediction and forecasting have now fully reached peace and conflict research. We define forecasting as predictions about unrealized outcomes given model estimates from realized data, and predictions more generally as the assignment of probability distributions to realized or unrealized outcomes. Increasingly, scholars present within- and out-of-sample prediction results in their publications and sometimes even forecasts for unrealized, future outcomes. The articles in this special issue demonstrate the ability of current approaches to forecast events of interest and contributes to the formulation of best practices for forecasting within peace research. We highlight the role of forecasting for theory evaluation and as a bridge between academics and policymakers, summarize the contributions in the special issue, and provide some thoughts on how research on forecasting in peace research should proceed. We suggest some best practices, noting the importance of theory development, interpretability of models, replicability of results, and data collection

Språk og makt. Korleis definisjonsmakt over det sanne, det gode og det rette kan vera forankra i det usagte.

Definisjonar påverkar oppfatningane og handlingane våre, og eg har i denne oppgåva sett på definisjonsmakt som påverknadskraft. Skjult makt er mest effektiv, og med utgangspunkt i Bourdieu sitt omgrep symbolsk makt har eg undersøkt korleis definisjonsmakt kan vera forankra i det usagte. Eg har gjort ein retorisk analyse av utsegn der delar av argumentasjonen er underforstått, og eg har dermed nytta enthymem som viktigaste analyseverktøy. Det usagte i eit enthymem kan handla om fakta, allmenngyldige verdiar eller noko det er falsk semje om, og eg har omtalt det som det sanne, det gode og det rette. Dette har eg høvesvis kombinert med omgrepet kontekstuell kunnskap frå Haraway, med verdiordenar frå Boltanski og Thévenot og med sensemaking frå Weick. Slik har eg løfta fram ulike perspektiv og forståingsmåtar for empirien, som hovudsakleg er samfunnsdebattar om natur- og klimaspørsmål. Empirien er henta frå mellom anna ein TV-debatt, avisartiklar og Facebook-innlegg. Eg har plukka ut enkelte utsegn og formulert dei til syllogismar, som er komplett argumentasjon med to premiss og konklusjon. På denne måten har eg vist korleis me kan avdekka det usagte. Det som blir formulert og sagt høgt kan me forhalda oss til og diskutera, og slik kan me som fellesskap ta meir reflekterte val. Stikkord: Definisjonsmakt, retorikk, enthymem, syllogisme, symbolsk makt, kontekstuell kunnskap, verdiordenar og sensemaking.Definitions affect our perceptions and actions, and in this paper I have looked at the power of definition as an influential force. Hidden power is most effective, and based on Bourdieu's concept of symbolic power, I have examined how defining power may be rooted in the unspoken. I have made a rhetorical analysis of statements where parts of the argument are implied, and I have thus used enthymem as the most important analysis tool. The unspoken in an enthymem can be about facts, universal values or something there is false agreement about, and I have referred to it as the true, the good and the right. I have respectively combined this with the concept of contextual knowledge from Haraway, with economies of worth from Boltanski and Thévenot and with sensemaking from Weick. In this way, I have highlighted different perspectives and ways of understanding the empirical data, which are mainly public debates on natural and climate issues. The empirical data is taken from, among other things, a TV debate, newspaper articles and Facebook posts. I have picked out some statements and reformulated them into syllogisms, which are complete arguments with two premises and a conclusion. In this way I have shown how we can uncover the unspoken. What is formulated and said aloud we can relate to and discuss, and so we as a community can make more reflective choices. Keywords: Defining power, rhetoric, enthymem, syllogism, symbolic power, contextual knowledge, economies of worth and sensemaking

Designing a surveillance program for early detection of alien plants and insects in Norway

Naturalized species of alien plants and animals comprise < 3% of biodiversity recorded in Norway but have had major impacts on natural ecosystems through displacement of native species. Encroachment of alien species has been especially problematic for coastal sites close to transport facilities and urban areas with high density housing. The goal of our field project was to design and test a surveillance program for early detection of alien species of vascular plants and terrestrial insects at the first phase of establishment in natural areas. In our 3-year project (2018–2020), we sampled 60 study plots in three counties in the Oslofjord region of southern Norway. Study plots (6.25 ha) were selected by two criteria: manual selection based on expert opinion (27 plots) or by random selection based on weights from a hotspot analysis of occurrence of alien species (33 plots). Vascular plants were surveyed by two experienced botanists who found a total of 239 alien species of vascular plants in 95 rounds of surveys. Insects and other invertebrates were captured with a single Malaise trap per site, with 3–4 rounds of repeated sampling. We used DNA-metabarcoding to identify invertebrates based on DNA extractions from crushed insects or from the preservative media. Over 3500 invertebrate taxa were detected in 255 rounds of sampling. We recorded 20 alien species of known risk, and 115 species that were new to Norway, including several ‘doorknocker’ species identified by previous risk assessments. We modeled the probabilities of occupancy (ψ) and detection (p) with occupancy models with repeated visits by multiple observers (vascular plants) or multiple rounds of sampling (insects). The two probabilities covaried with risk category for alien organisms and both were low for species categorized as no known or low risk (range = 0.052–0.326) but were higher for species categorized as severe risk (range = 0.318–0.651)... Arthropods · DNA-metabarcoding · Early detection · Invasive · Invertebrates · Occupancy models · Rapid response · Study design · Vascular plantsDesigning a surveillance program for early detection of alien plants and insects in NorwaypublishedVersio