Trigger-happy? Military regimes and the timing of conflict

The proclivity of military regimes and their leaders for more frequent involvement in international conflict than other autocracies has been shown in several studies. The question raised here is not whether they participate in more conflicts and disputes, but rather whether after the leaders of military regimes enter office they initiate these acts more quickly than the leaders of other types of autocracies. Drawing on three authoritarian regime typologies and examining the time to the initiation of any dispute and the initiation of violent disputes, our results show that in comparison to other authoritarian leaders a subset of military leaders is distinctly trigger-happy

Barremian and Aptian (Cretaceous) sharks and rays from Speeton, Yorkshire, north-east England

Bulk sampling of a number of horizons within the upper part of the Speeton Clay Type section has produced teeth and other remains of sharks and rays from several poorly studied horizons. At least 10 shark and two ray species were recorded, with two sharks, Pteroscyllium speetonensis and Palaeobrachaelurus mitchelli, being described as new. The oldest occurrences of the family Anacoracadae and the genus Pteroscyllium, as well as the youngest occurrence of the genus Palaeobrachaelurus, were recorded. The palaeoenvironmental significance of the faunas is briefly discussed

Microborings in mid Cretaceous fish teeth

Fish teeth and other remains from the British Cretaceous contain abundant evidence for post-mortem colonization by endolithic organisms. The borings are here recognised as occurring in three morphotypes, including a flask-shaped form not previously recorded. There is strong evidence to suggest that each of these boring types shows a strong preference for a particular substrate histology. The damage and destruction of vertebrate remains by microborings is here considered to exert a major taphonomic control on microvertebrate assemblages. The relationships between the intensity of colonization of vertebrate material by endolithic organisms and palaeoenvironment have implications for using these bone microborings as palaeoenvironmental indicators

Opportunity, Willingness, and the Diffusion of War

Using borders and alliances as indicators of opportunity and willingness, respectively, we test the relationship between the sea and the diffusion of war during the 1816-1965 period. The impact of borders and alliances, individually and in combination, on the growth of ongoing war through infectious diffusion is shown through the comparison of baseline cases to cases where states at peace were exposed to various treatments comprised of warring border nations or warring alliance partners. The findings indicate that the probability of war diffusion is substantially increased as opportunities and willingness increase, particularly when such geographic and political factors are combined. The applicability of the opportunity and willingness framework to the study of war and diffusion is expanded and confirmed

The Geography of the International System: The CShapes Dataset

We describe CShapes, a new dataset that provides historical maps of state boundaries and capitals in the post-World War II period. The dataset is coded according to both the Correlates of War and the Gleditsch and Ward (1999) state lists, and is therefore compatible with a great number of existing databases in the discipline. Provided in a geographic data format, CShapes can be used directly with standard GIS software, allowing a wide range of spatial computations. In addition, we supply a CShapes package for the R statistical toolkit. This package enables researchers without GIS skills to perform various useful operations on the GIS maps. The paper introduces the CShapes dataset and structure and gives three examples of how to use CShapes in political science research. First, we show how results from quantitative analysis can be depicted intuitively as a map. The second application gives an example of computing indicators on the CShapes maps, which can then be used in statistical tests. Third, we illustrate the use of CShapes for generating different weights matrices in spatial statistical applications. All the examples can be replicated using the freely available R package and do not require specialized GIS skills. The dataset is available for download from the CShapes website (http://nils.weidmann.ws/projects/cshapes). © Taylor & Francis Group, LLC

Running An Empire, Building A Nation: Korean Bureaucrats And The Manchukuo Legacy, 1931–1961

Between 1931 and 1945 more than 10,000 Koreans served as bureaucrats in Manchukuo–Japan’s imperial client state in northeast China. This dissertation investigates their experience and its impact on state-building in postcolonial South Korea through the 1950s. Within the Japanese imperial system, the Manchukuo bureaucracy was a unique institution, characterized by hyper-militarism, technocratic rationalism, and a belief in the state’s paramount role in socio-economic development. Manchukuo’s Korean bureaucrats internalized and applied these principles, which they brought back to liberated South Korea after 1945. However, financial constraints, American influence, and a lack of political power limited their ability to apply the Manchukuo model directly. In response, they reinterpreted and adapted the model to these conditions in creative and conflicting ways. Based on Japanese, Korean, and American government documents, as well as media publications and memoirs, this study takes a historical and individualized approach to state building. It demonstrates that Manchukuo’s legacy in South Korea was multivalent, both related to and distinctive from the developmental nationalism of the 1960s military regime

Sharks of the order Carcharhiniformes from the British Coniacian, Santonian and Campanian (Upper Cretaceous).

Bulk sampling of phosphate-rich horizons within the British Coniacian to Campanian (Upper Cretaceous) yielded very large samples of shark and ray teeth. All of these samples yielded teeth of diverse members of the Carcharhiniformes, which commonly dominate the fauna. The following species are recorded and described: Pseudoscyliorhinus reussi (Herman, 1977) comb. nov., Crassescyliorhinus germanicus (Herman, 1982) gen. nov., Scyliorhinus elongatus (Davis, 1887), Scyliorhinus brumarivulensis sp. nov., ? Palaeoscyllium sp., Prohaploblepharus riegrafi (Müller, 1989) gen. nov., ? Cretascyliorhinus sp., Scyliorhinidae inc. sedis 1, Scyliorhinidae inc. sedis 2, Pteroscyllium hermani sp. nov., Protoscyliorhinus sp., Leptocharias cretaceus sp. nov., Palaeogaleus havreensis Herman, 1977, Paratriakis subserratus sp. nov., Paratriakis tenuis sp. nov., Paratriakis sp. indet. and ? Loxodon sp. Taxa belonging to the families ?Proscylliidae, Leptochariidae, and Carcharhinidae are described from the Cretaceous for the first time. The evolutionary and palaeoecological implications of these newly recognised faunas are discussed

Demography, Democracy and Disputes: The Search for the Elusive Relationship Between Population Growth and International Conflict

AbstractWe examine the propensity of states to initiate international conflict conditioned on four primary explanatory variables: (1) changes in population over varying lags, (2) democratic status of the state, (3) the power status of the state, and (4) changes in the state's level of energy consumption. We hypothesize that the responsiveness of a government to the needs of its citizens is sufficiently important that the effect of population growth cannot be properly examined independently of democracy and that major powers tend to become involved in disputes for a much wider set of reasons than minor powers. Thus, we expect to find the strongest effect of population change on conflict initiation in democratic minor powers. We also expect that decreases in energy consumption concurrent with increases in population will lead to conflict initiation. A series of negative binomial regressions over 20 yearly time lags lends robust support to our expectations