77 research outputs found
The Dynamics of the Colombian Civil Conflict: A New Data Set
We present a detailed, high-frequency data set on the civil conflict in Colombia during the period 1988-2002. We briefly introduce the Colombian case and the methodological issues that hinder data collection in civil wars, before presenting the pattern over time of conflict actions and intensity for all sides involved in the confrontation. We also describe the pattern of victimisation by group and the victimisation of civilians out of clashes
Proposed Colombia Work
We are pursuing three distinct but closely related lines of work on conflict human rights and human security in Colombia: Database development, Trust builing and Analysis
The Dynamics of Repressive Dictatorships
We study the optimal strategy for a dictator hanging onto power by choosing how much repression to apply in every period. State variables are the amount of "hate" and "fear" in society which are both increasing in the amount of repression from the previous period. Hate, fear, and a random shock, determine the quantity of repression required for the dictator to survive period t. We show under certain conditions that in every period there are only two possible optimal choices: the minimal repression necessary to retain power ("No Demonstration") or the maximum possible repression ("Demonstration"). When Demonstration is optimal it will remain optimal after fear is reduced and when No Demonstration is optimal it will remain optimal when fear is increased
From old wars to new wars and global terrorism
Even before 9/11 there were claims that the nature of war had changed
fundamentally. The 9/11 attacks created an urgent need to understand
contemporary wars and their relationship to older conventional and terrorist
wars, both of which exhibit remarkable regularities. The frequency-intensity
distribution of fatalities in "old wars", 1816-1980, is a power-law with
exponent 1.80. Global terrorist attacks, 1968-present, also follow a power-law
with exponent 1.71 for G7 countries and 2.5 for non-G7 countries. Here we
analyze two ongoing, high-profile wars on opposite sides of the globe -
Colombia and Iraq. Our analysis uses our own unique dataset for killings and
injuries in Colombia, plus publicly available data for civilians killed in
Iraq. We show strong evidence for power-law behavior within each war. Despite
substantial differences in contexts and data coverage, the power-law
coefficients for both wars are tending toward 2.5, which is a value
characteristic of non-G7 terrorism as opposed to old wars. We propose a
plausible yet analytically-solvable model of modern insurgent warfare, which
can explain these observations.Comment: For more information, please contact [email protected] or
[email protected]
Human Rights Conditions on Foreign Aid can Backfire
A domestic power faces an enemy and commits terrorist atrocities to increase its likelihood of victory. A foreign patron can grant aid tothe power but prefers fewer or no atrocities. To avoid the need to compromise with the foreign patron, the domestic power may create (or stop supressing) independent paramilitaries that commit even more atrocities. Once "atrocity overshooting" is reached, the domestic power shifts gears and tries to restrict the atrocity level that paramilitaries are committing. Case studies of Colombia and Northern Ireland illustrate the model
Structural Uncertainty and Central Bank Conservatism: The Ignorant Should Shut Their Eyes
We study the problem of a central bank whose policy actions simultaneously affect the information flow about its expectations-augmented Phillips curve and its reputation for toughness in fighting inflation. In an environment with an unknown relationship between inflation surprises and output, big inflation surprises yield big short-term output gains and a strong information flow. Yet optimal policy is very conservative because inflation surprises yield information that increases the volatility of both future inflationary expectations and inflation itself. In fact, the more there is that can be learned about the Phillips curve the less does optimal policy aim towards learning
Sampling bias in systems with structural heterogeneity and limited internal diffusion
Complex systems research is becomingly increasingly data-driven, particularly
in the social and biological domains. Many of the systems from which sample
data are collected feature structural heterogeneity at the mesoscopic scale
(i.e. communities) and limited inter-community diffusion. Here we show that the
interplay between these two features can yield a significant bias in the global
characteristics inferred from the data. We present a general framework to
quantify this bias, and derive an explicit corrective factor for a wide class
of systems. Applying our analysis to a recent high-profile survey of conflict
mortality in Iraq suggests a significant overestimate of deaths
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