Publications

Despite the long standing “no concessions” argument, scientific studies now suggest that governments can benefit from negotiating with militant insurgencies. However, despite government efforts, the leaders of insurgent movements often appear fanatical and unwilling to negotiate. This behavior presents a puzzle: If the leaders of insurgencies mobilize to create political change, and a government offers concessions, why do insurgent leaders refuse to negotiate? Using a game-theoretic model, we argue that insurgent leaders may rationally reject negotiation due to an internal commitment problem. Specifically, when leaders cannot credibly share the benefits of peace with their rivals, insurgent leaders may reject offers over fear of an internal conflict, which could leave the entire group vulnerable to government exploitation. However, the model demonstrates that insurgent leaders should negotiate if power in the insurgency is shifting in favor of their rivals, as it could help them maintain control of the movement. We illustrate these hypotheses using evidence from the Nigerian state's conflict with the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) organization and Boko Haram.

Textual Analysis by Augmented Replacement Instructions (TABARI) provides an automated method for coding large amounts of text. Using TABARI to code lead sentences of news stories, the KEDS/Penn State Event Data project has produced event data for several regions. The wide range of events and actors, TABARI’s ability to filter duplicate events and the number of events coded allow users to analyze patterns in conflict and cooperation between state and nonstate actors over time. We evaluate whether coding full stories provides more detailed information on the actors referenced in the lead sentences. Additional actor information would allow researchers interested in the interactions between violent nonstate actors to test hypotheses regarding group cohesiveness and splintering, spoiling behavior, commitment problems between factions and many other issues critical to management of an insurgency. We downloaded Reuters news stories relevant to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and used TABARI to code the lead sentences. We then analyzed the full text of the coded stories to determine the level of actor detail available. Our findings highlight the dynamic relationship among nonstate and state actors during the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, and we find that, contrary to expectations, hand coding full news stories does not lead to significant improvements in the accuracy or depth of actor information compared with machine coding by TABARI using lead sentences. These findings should bolster the confidence of researchers using TABARI coded data, with the caveat that TABARI’s ability to distinguish between actors is dependent upon the detail available in the actor dictionaries.

Reciprocity refers to the character of the actions and reactions between two or more actors. This character is commonly one of responding in kind to the actions of another. As such, reciprocity is considered one of the fundamental processes observed by scholars in the study of international relations (IR). In the realm of international politics, the study of reciprocity typically encompasses formal/experimental and empirical research. Some scholars look at ethical dimensions and the propagation of norms such as the Golden Rule, while others undertake empirical analysis of patterns of reciprocity in search of answers to questions about the existence, predictability, and diffusion of reciprocity. As a concept, reciprocity has applications in a range of IR topics such as the basic ingredients of cooperation, the escalation and return of conflict, and the adherence to international law. Within the realm of conflict processes, the iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma (PD) and formal frameworks are often used to represent arms races and similar security concerns. Related to the iterated PD is the work of Robert Axelrod, who demonstrated the robustness of the reciprocal strategy known as tit-for-tat (TFT). One puzzle on reciprocity that deserves consideration in future research is that the expectation of a long time horizon for interaction should stimulate the incentive to cooperate, but long time horizons may also be associated with long pasts. One way to find the answer to this puzzle is to incorporate reciprocity into more general models of international interaction.

The search for identity and the obstacles to it in Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird are examined through the framework of the Panopticon and the Other that Michel Foucault sets forth in Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Through Boo, Scout and Jem are able to see flaws in society that run deeper than the simple problems they face as children, social ills that allow a community to witness passively and thus allow the abuse that Boo faced and that Mayella still faces, that allow a society to, in effect, kill Tom Robinson or any other innocent man to protect their own prejudices.