The Quantitative Peace has been dormant for about five years. Part of this dormancy was due to backend issues beyond my expertise. While I could troubleshoot them, it would take more time than I had to devote to them. The website not working was a bit of a sadness as well, since we have several popular posts that have been linked to many times over our history (including topics of the Dark Knight, Zombies, Songs that mention a specific age, fictional political scientists, and the Job Market), but those links are now dead (until today). Given both my limited time and Claude Code’s potential for use by researchers in professional environments, I decided to gamble that $20 could bring this blog back.

My first few forays into Claude Code had nothing to do with the Quantitative Peace, but were instead to see if it could code some toy projects for me and deliver outcomes that would work even though I could not troubleshoot them myself. While this is counterintuitive, starting from ignorance seemed like a first step to understanding how much intervention I might need while using the tool.

First, I had Claude create a game that was like rock-paper-scissors, but it was about matching a handshake at random. Do you fist-bump, handshake, or high-five? The game had a simple 8-bit-like interface, and drawing the hands was difficult for the coding engine (as it is for most AI engines). I switched it to using hand emojis, and the core of the game worked well enough. I could deploy the HTML, and it ran. I wanted to create a high-score board as well, so Claude told me how to set up an external database that users could write to and the game could pull from for high scores. All worked pretty well. An inn joke inspired the game with a friend group, so I am not going to share the result here, but it did what I needed it to do.

For project two, I went back to my roots of coding in BASIC. As a teenager, I loved making text adventures. While I was firmly in the SNES/N64 era of graphics, text adventures were easy to code, and I had played enough Hitchhiker’s Guide and Zork to develop a passion for the genre. Using Claude, I made a game about publishing in international relations called Publish or Perish. This project turned out to be a ton of fun to make, as deciding what branches should look like, how deep the game should go, and whether to add more to it was captivating. The project itself is infinitely expandable and begging for more depth in the future, so it may be something I return to later.

With those two projects out of the way, I turned to my primary task: could it resolve my coding issues and help me recover this website? My first goal was to make a static version of the Quantitative Peace so that old links would work again. Claude was able to pull that off with some prompting and persistence. I uploaded that version of the website, and things were solid. Yet, I would rather have a fully functional blog if feasible. Phase 2 involved a bit more digging into the code and troubleshooting, but the site is back up and running as a working product.

This success led me to use Claude to revamp my website and update sections that had languished for over five years. While many of those tasks were small in nature, the number of updates became daunting over time, and having AI provide the code, formatting, and a list of items to add (or consider adding) was a helpful push in the right direction.

In sum: this website/blog exists again (which may be old-fashioned in the age of Substack). I do not know how research and journal standards will adapt to AI-assisted research in the near future. Some journals require scholars to submit a disclosure as to how AI was used, if at all, in the preparation of the manuscript, and that seems like a reasonable way to begin.

The post Publish or Perish: A Text Adventure of Academic Survival appeared first on The Quantitative Peace.

Home Office

As our home spaces have become work spaces, it is important to have better equipment to record lectures, record other kinds of content, or host synchronous sessions with students. So, there are a few things that you or your political scientist can do to up your game. Some of us may have university funds to help procure these items while many of us may have to dip into our own budgets

New Microphone – There are quite a few options on the market for microphones. Having a good microphone that you can control the volume of, have an external mute, and use either a physical or virtual mixer can be essential in producing distraction-free content for your students. I upgraded from my old Yeti Blue Snowball that I used for podcasting and I am now using a Yeti X. Directional sound, noise cancellation, frequency filtration, and adjusted treble/bass levels can provide a boost to audio content. I also have an arm mount for my microphone to better pick up sound and provide better directional pickup for my voice. Overall, an upgrade over an internal mic can go a long way in being an audio “green screen” of sorts to get rid of background noises. Speaking of which…

Green Screen – This may be less important for you (or your political scientist) if you have your own space or if your camera pointed at a wall; however, if you have a busy home with multiple working adults, children learning remotely, and/or other clutter you want to hide, then being able to chroma key your background and project an alternative setting, transparency, or solid color is an important part of your video content toolkit. I originally used the webaround for years as it is reasonably priced and easy to store. I have since upgraded to a more consistent option here. My animated Dr. Strangelove background has been my standard backdrop since March.

Lighting – If you are using a green screen then lighting is very important. If you are not using one, then lighting is still important, but it might be more optional. A few options for these include a tripod with a ring light, some other form of ring light to attach to your desk or monitor, or, on the higher end, getting one or two of these lights. Eliminating shadows and fully lighting up your face (and background) can offer better videos and conference calls.

Webcams – Many of you are probably fine here as this is a minimally necessary equipment that everyone probably has at this point with their stock equipment. I am a fan of the Logitech c920 series, but I don’t think too many people are in the market for these at that moment. If given a choice between upgrading from a stock microphone or a stock webcam, I would recommend the microphone first. However, if your content is mostly just a video of you (not slides/other people talking), then the camera may take priority.

Games

Table Top Simulator – I have historically recommended board games that illustrate important political science or social science concepts. However, getting together to play board games is more difficult and generally a bad idea right now. Table Top Simulator allows you and your friends (or co-workers) to use a virtual table (VR is not necessary, but is an option) and play with people from across the globe. The workshop for TTS has a robust collection of board games and contains many of the games I have suggested previously.

Civilization VI – I have recommend Civ V in the past, but VI, with its newest expansion, offers you the opportunity to play just one more turn (in perpetuity) as you put your civilization building skills to the test. If you haven’t played a Civ game before, you are missing out. You can get it on other platforms besides PC, but the game is a resource hog in the late game and best, in my experience, with a mouse and keyboard.

Dungeons & Dragons – I have been playing since AD&D Second Edition and, with the release of fifth edition and the pandemic, I have found myself playing D&D more than any other time in my life. Finding someone both willing and capable of being a good Dungeon Master is difficult, but being able to explore worlds, dungeons, interact with local and global politics and economics, shape international relations, and basically do anything you can imagine in a fantasy setting is a good exercise in collaborative imagination backed by statistical decision-making. Both of the campaigns I regularly play are in the context of macro-level political drama and help define the options available to our party.

There is a starter kit aimed for brand new groups, while more experienced player should look at the core books for playing the game (DM”s Guide, Player’s Handbook, and Monster Manual). There are reference manuals for adventures, campaigns, worlds, and items. Additionally, there are lots of 3rd party content to expand your adventures further. Additionally, there are quite a few options for playing with people online. Roll20 is probably the easiest to use, but both Fantasy Grounds and Foundry offer robust interfaces for those that need much more powerful tools in world building.

Two additional notes. D&D Beyond is a handy resource to get all of your books digitally and reduce the clutter. Also, Table Top Simulator (linked above) can also be used to run D&D campaigns!

Mahjong – Again, unless you can get three other people to play it in your household, this is a harder game to do in person at the moment. Also, no, it is not the solitaire game where you just pick up tiles from a pile. Some see it as a predecessor to Poker and a few of the Texas Hold ’em pros in the mid-2000s came from various Mahjong scenes. The game is rather intricate, relies quite a bit on reading information, and playing strategically. So, while poker is the go to analogy for strategic decision-making, whether between legislators or states, Mahjong has more to say about offensive and defensive strategy. If you get the basics down, there is even an International Relations scholar that has written an entire book on intermediate level strategy and introduces people to Tenhou, a popular online site to play Mahjong. Of course, this does not actually offer anything for you to buy the political scientist in your life as both the book and Tenhou are free to play. A physical mahjong set is an option, but you would likely already know if a person in your life is interested in the game enough to want a set.

Office Distractions

These are mostly whimsical entries and have been on my shortlist for a bit now. They make for good office toys, but lose a bit of purchase if you are the only person that can interact with them. They may be the academic equivalent of a fidget spinner.

A different world map – The Mercator projection is unsatisfactory for so many reasons and there are plenty of alternatives (relevant XKCD). I really wanted to get a copy of this map for my office, but my one attempt to order from overseas failed.

However, there are plenty of pedagogically interesting projections you can buy. The upside-down Mercator is an option. A 1922 and 1988 Van der Grinten is available. A more current Gall-Peters can be had. There are several different styles of map projections and some poking around on the net may yield you the projection of the world you desire.

Globe – A typical way to signify you are, indeed, a worldly professor. A global projection is better than a 2-dimensional one, but

Hourglass – Another potential professorial signifier, but it can be a way to mark your jam writing sessions and when you start looking at your email again.

Galton Board – A simple way to demonstrate normal curves to those that stop by your office hopefully later in the year.

Books

The Foundation – I will always recommend this to political scientists (and perhaps formal modelers/quantitative researchers broadly). This book’s fictional academic discipline seems to mirror what was budding in political science in the 1960s. As I wrote previously, “this foundational science fiction book by Asimov creates the social science theory of `Psycho-History;’ a study of groups of people and has the ability to predict their behavior.  Psycho-history cannot predict individuals, but can predict the movement of large bodies as if they were unitary actors.  The parallels between Asimov’s fictional social science and what we do should be obvious. This seven part series is a must-read for any political scientists interested in science fiction”

The Forever War – Most scifi shows do not properly deal with the relativity issues of traveling at near light speed (or faster), but this book offers some very useful implications of having wars with such travel possible. Probably mostly for IR scholars who like science fiction but less relevant to those outside of that intersection.

A book on R – I reached out to my co-editor and frequent co-author Michael E. Flynn for a recommendation on a good R book. I “grew up” learning Stata and had used R previously, but not consistently enough at this point in my career. So, this item is more of a personal inclusion. His recommendations for R and statistics are: Wickham’s R for Data Science, Baumer’s Modern Data Science with R, and McElreath’s Statistical Rethinking. I have so much work to do.

Streaming Services

In previous years, I recommended particular shows or movies, but people buy far fewer DVDs when much of that content is available through services. Of course, a gift card/1-year subscription can be a welcomed gift. So my top picks:

Disney+ – I have written about the implications of Civil War research on A New Hope previously (both in a book and on this blog), so having access to the full catalog of Star Wars is a plus. I think Mandolorian has less to offer in terms of political science, but there is some elements of state building that are useful.

CBS All Access – Star Trek. Discovery and Picard have both had their detractors, but both are finding their own space within the Star Trek Universe. If you are up on your Trek through the latest movies, Lower Decks has several in-universe references that are likely to amuse those who want a less grim-dark trek. Discovery and Picard both have several discussion points for political scientists, but I will leave that for a later post. Of note, the emotional intelligence of Discovery seems to be higher than previous Treks. People with an emotional or psychological problem are not an aberration to be solved in 45 minutes, but an ongoing struggle for a crew constantly experiencing difficult events with little room to recover or reflect. In some ways, Discovery has moved on from the Star Fleet officer as an ideal type trope and is giving us the Star Fleet officer as a human (or humanoid).

Netflix/Hulu: These are obvious, but a 1-year subscription can make a good gift regardless. Netflix (and HBO) have access to the West Wing, but that show feels like a distant memory these days.

Cold Hard Cash

It’s the economically efficient gift, but we apparently value fun in our utility function, this is probably not the right gift to give, but likely depends on your relationship with the person.

Bonus Challenge: Masks

I decided to see what the market looked like for political science masks. The two top entries where this one and this one. Surely, we can do better.

The post Gifts for Political Scientists, 2020 appeared first on The Quantitative Peace.

Back in early June I wrote that Donald Trump was in big trouble. Trump trailed Biden by close to double digits nationally. State level polls were equally grim. Nearly four months later, almost nothing has changed. Trump is down nearly double digits in the national polls and state-level polls show him trailing in every swing state, and at best running even some red states like Texas, Georgia, and Arizona.

As Cook Political Report elections analyst (and Twitter must follow) Dave Wasserman has noted, district-level polling, which suggested big problems for Clinton in 2016, backs up the national polls. Biden is running ahead of Trump in many suburban districts Trump carried by ten or more points in 2016. This spells trouble for down ballot Republicans.  

Decisions by the campaigns suggest their internal polling matches what is publicly available. Joe Biden is making trips to Iowa, a state Trump won by nearly double digits, as well as Georgia. Kamala Harris is headed to Texas. Meanwhile, Trump has made recent trips to Nebraska (Nebraska, like Maine, apportions Electoral Votes by Congressional district, and the district containing Omaha is very much in play), Ohio, and a last-minute fundraising trip to California. Mike Pence is campaigning in South Carolina, a state that was on nobody’s radar six months ago.   

The campaigns’ spending decisions mirror the polling. The Trump campaign is hurting for cash and pulling ads from key swing states including Ohio, New Hampshire, and Iowa. Biden has a three to one cash advantage and outspending Trump all over the map.   

Democratic early vote totals are massive. According to University of Florida Political Scientist Michael P. McDonald’s U.S. Elections Project, Democratic voters have requested far more absentee ballots than Republicans and are returning them at higher rates, at least so far. The Republicans are banking on Election Day turnout amid a pandemic to offset Democrat’s early vote advantage. This strikes me as extremely risky, to say the least.  

Regardless, turnout will be record breaking. There were 136 million ballots cast in 2016. I fully expect that there will be well over 150 million votes cast in 2020. Despite perceptions, I am not sure high turnout necessarily benefits one party over the other, but it is something to keep an eye on.

All and all, Biden is sitting in a very, very good position and Trump is in a world of trouble. Trump was unpopular in 2016. He’s unpopular now and has been throughout his term. There has been zero net movement in the polls since early summer and there is no reason to expect any significant movement with only a week to go.

This is not surprising. As I have noted elsewhere, Trump employed a terrible strategy in 2016 and is employing a terrible strategy now too. Trump’s campaign is a right-wing fever dream straight out of a Mark Levin segment on Hannity—it only speaks to the grievance driven right-wing media ecosystem and has zero penetration to the vast majority of people who remain outside the bubble. Trump is not a good politician and never has been. More than two hundred thousand Americans are dead in a pandemic. The President is doubling down on some bizarre conspiracy theory about Hunter Biden cooked up former NYC mayor and current presidential bagman Rudy Giuliani rather than overseeing any meaningful economic or public health response to COVID.   

Yeah, but what about 2016?

As a political analyst, I fully expect any claim that a Democratic candidate is in a good electoral position will be met with “yeah, but what about 2016?” for as long as I live. Fair enough. Trump’s victory in 2016 broke something in the minds of many liberals. Polls cannot be trusted! Trump must have political superpowers!

Nonsense. This is not 2016. Clinton was the second most unpopular presidential candidate of all time (right behind the current president) and probably deserves a place on the pantheon of all time worst presidential candidates. Biden has positive net favorability and his net favorability has actually improved over the course of the campaign. Biden is polling better among almost every demographic group relative to Clinton four years ago, including among core Trump groups like non-college whites and senior citizens.

Even the polls in 2016 were much more accurate than most people remember. In the high-quality national polls released right before Election Day, Clinton’s highest topline number was 48% (from Fox News), while most had her in the mid to low 40s. 538’s national polling average had Clinton winning the national popular vote 45.7-41.8 on election day, a 3.9-point margin. The actual margin was just over two points.

It was clear the election was close, but people chose to disregard the evidence that Clinton was not a shoe in to win. I had a reporter ask me in my office on Election Day 2016 “who was going to fill Tim Kaine’s Senate seat when he becomes Vice President” and I told him there was a real chance Trump could win. He was stunned. The red lights were flashing this time four years ago. Most people, especially people living in urban areas, just ignored them.

There are fewer, if any, warning signs this year. Biden is consistently polling above 50% nationally and his lead is more than twice as large as Clinton’s. His position in state polling is better much better too. Biden has put a half dozen states in play, including Texas, Ohio, and Iowa, that were off the table four years ago.

One important caveat is that Trump did overperform in a number of states relative to the polling (especially in the upper Midwest). This was largely due to polling firms over sampling college educated whites and under sampling non-college whites. The parties were not always divided along educational lines like they are today, and polling firms were slow to adjust. My sense is most of the legitimate polling outfits are taking this into account now. The polling in 2018 was very good on balance. There is no reason to expect Trump to overperform his polling once again.

Some of the “error” in the 2016 polling wasn’t even error at all. There were lots of undecided voters and lots of people saying they were going to vote for third party candidates. The majority of these people broke for Trump at the end. The pollsters were trying to hit a moving target.

Polls are instruments for measuring public opinion. There is going to be volatility in measurement if public opinion is shifting. Fluctuation in the polls is not necessarily a problem with the instrument, it might be a sign that public opinion is unstable. This was the case in 2016, when a large proportion of the electorate was vacillating right up until the end. There is none of that this year. People have made their minds up. The polls are stable. I expect an outcome that closely reflects the polling.  

Bottom Line

Trump won the Electoral College with 46-percent of the popular vote. This is a very difficult thing to do and there is absolutely no evidence that he has expanded his appeal. Trump can win, but it is going to take an even bigger Hail Mary than it did last time. This is someone who caught every break imaginable, not some act of political genius.

Furthermore, there is no way to objectively discuss this election without stating this is a disastrously failed presidency. The President’s Chief of Staff Mark Meadows said Sunday the Administration has stopped trying to contain the COVID-19 epidemic. They quit on the job. There is no charitable way to describe this. They have flat out abandoned the American people amid the greatest public health crisis in a century. This is sheer lunacy from a public health perspective and reflects the fact that Trump has spent the last eight months trying to sabotage his own government’s response to the pandemic. It is madness.

I fully expect an outcome that reflects the reality that presidential approval is double digits underwater and has motivated the opposition to the extent where most Democrats would crawl over broken glass to vote against him. Turnout for Trump in rural areas will be very, very high, but turnout will be high everywhere. The suburbs are the kingmaker in American politics, and Trump has lost the suburbs.

Mitch McConnell got his judges. Now it is time to reap the whirlwind. Biden is going to flirt with 400 Electoral Votes. It is going to be a Republican bloodbath down the ballot. Nothing is off the table.

The post Presidential Election 2020: Where things stand with one week to go appeared first on The Quantitative Peace.

Donald Trump is in big trouble. Polls released last week from Monmouth University, CNBC, the Economist, ABC News/Washington Post, and CBS News have Trump trailing Biden by 4 to 11 points nationally. On average, Trump is down by 7.8 points.

State-level polling is equally grim. Biden is consistently polling ahead of Trump in the swing states. Perhaps even more concerning for Trump, Biden is statistically tied with Trump in a number of traditionally red states, including electoral vote rich Arizona and Texas.

Trump’s Base is not Big Enough

Trump’s struggles are unsurprising. To be sure, his largely white, Christian, and rural base is rock solid. His problem is that these voters are nowhere close to a majority. Trump is struggling to attract support among every ethnic and racial minority group. He is underwater with women. The partisan gender gap rivals the largest we have ever seen. He is also trailing Biden among white college graduates—a group that turned against the Republicans en masse in the 2018 Midterm.

For an incumbent president, this is an extremely weak electoral position—possibly the weakest we have seen since the invent of modern scientific polling.

The reasons for Trump’s struggles are clear. Throughout his tenure, Trump has made few attempts to expand his coalition. He is counting on a shrinking slice of the electorate to carry him to victory. This is not a good strategy. He was warned.

The 2012 Republican Postmortem

Following Mitt Romney’s loss to Barack Obama, the Republican Party released a remarkable post-mortem. The report identified a host of problems: messaging, campaign infrastructure, campaign finance, and voter mobilization and made recommendations on how to fix them. Most importantly, the report identified one key problem: “The minority groups that President Obama carried with 80 percent of the vote in 2012 are on track to become a majority of the nation’s population by 2050 (pg. 12).”

The report made clear that the Republicans were risking permanent minority status unless the party could attract new voters. The authors made a number of proposals to increase support among “demographic partners,” including championing comprehensive immigration reform and adopting a “tone that takes into consideration of the Hispanic community.”

Donald Trump turned this report on its head. Trump made no effort to expand the Republican coalition. In fact, he is taking every opportunity to “build a wall” between the Republicans and their “demographic partners.”

Trump won in spite of his strategy, not because of it. The combination of an unpopular Democratic candidate, strong third-party showings, an October surprise from James Comey, and an Electoral College/popular vote inversion allowed Trump to win with only 46 percent of the vote. Trump threaded the needle.

Sometimes candidates do everything right and still lose. Other times, they do everything wrong and win. Trump accomplished the latter in 2016. He employed a strategy with a low chance of success, caught every break imaginable, and won. The problem is that Republican’s 2012 postmortem was fundamentally correct, and Trump is doing nothing to address these long-term problems. 

Trump will compound the GOP’s problems in 2020. Winning teams rarely change strategies. Most of the time this makes sense—go with a strategy until the other side proves they can stop it. Obama won in 2012 with a coalition that was remarkably similar to the one he formed in 2008. Trump is trying to do the same thing. The problem is Obama won 53-percent of the vote in 2008. Trump won 46-percent in 2016.

What My Research Shows

I document the political ramifications of America’s changing demographic landscape in a number of research papers (2014, 2016a, 2016b, 2018, 2019, 2020). I draw a couple points from this research that are relevant for understanding the 2020 presidential election.

My first point is that despite perceptions, 2016 did not produce a dramatic electoral realignment. Despite the narratives, Trump’s coalition looked much like Romney’s in 2012 and McCain’s in 2008—he performed very well among whites without college degrees. However, he did not do dramatically better among this group than his predecessors.

The biggest difference between the Romney and Trump coalitions is that Trump performed worse among college educated whites. This is a continuation of a long secular trend—professional class whites are moving away from the Republican Party and have been for some time. Trump accelerated this trend.

Trump did not forge a new coalition that will endure into the future, Trump won with a stripped-down version of the traditional Republican coalition. Barely.  

My second point is that the past four years have done nothing to alter the foundational transformation of the American electorate. Latinos and Asians are continually more powerful voting blocs. Both of these groups will strongly oppose Trump in 2020.

As I, and others have noted, the Republican Party could offset the political consequences of these demographic changes by winning a modestly larger proportion of the white vote—moving from consistently winning about 60%-61% of the white vote nationally to something closer to 64 or 65%. This is where Trump’s struggles among college educated whites becomes so damning.

There is very little room for the Republicans to form a majority coalition without winning more minorities or more college educated whites or some combination of the two. Performing poorly among both groups will lead to defeat. Trump is particularly ill-suited to make either happen.

Trump’s 2020 Path is Extremely Narrow

My argument is not that Trump cannot win. One lesson to learn from 2016 it is to not to confuse the unlikely with the impossible. Rather, there is no evidence to suggest that Trump has done anything to alter the country’s long-term political and demographic fundamentals.

As a result, Trump’s ceiling is low, especially by the standards of an incumbent president. He stands little chance of forming a popular vote majority. He is relying on being able to thread the needle in the Electoral College once again. It is a strategy with low probability of success.  

The post Trump’s Base Strategy is Unlikely to Work in 2020. He was Warned appeared first on The Quantitative Peace.

How do rebels treat civilians after they take control of territory in civil wars? The study of rebel governance has gained traction in recent years, but often looks at this phenomenon from a static perspective. Empirically, civil wars are frequently characterized by changes in territorial control. In our research, we combine these two perspectives and look at civilian victimization immediately after rebels seize territory.

Conflict researchers usually assume that civilian victimization is most severe in areas of actively contested control: areas with ongoing battles between a government and rebels. These areas are seen as most violent for civilians because armed actors attack civilians to deter defection and to enforce compliance. Once one side is able to establish firm control over a given territory, scholars generally expect civilian suffering to become less intense.

Taking rebel governance into account, we look at how long this process of establishing firmer control takes. We argue that civilian victimization will remain high—or even rise immediately after a rebel territorial takeover—until a basic level of governance and civilian compliance is established. In newly captured territory, rebels likely have less local knowledge to identify who is on their side and who might challenge their rule. Local capacities to govern non-violently, for example through co-opting local dispute resolution mechanisms, might be very limited for rebel fighters that are not used to govern. We argue that this lack of knowledge and resources makes it more likely that rebels first intimidate the local population with increased civilian targeting until they can transition to more stable and peaceful control.  

Rebel Violence Towards Civilians in Sierra Leone

To test our argument, we look at the Revolutionary United Front’s (RUF) actions during the civil war in Sierra Leone. The RUF controlled over half the country’s territory in 1998 and twice advanced into the capital of Freetown. This extremely violent rebel organization engaged in widespread and violent victimization of civilians. This included indiscriminate killings, abductions, and rape, which makes the RUF an extreme case of a non-state armed actor targeting civilians, in addition to the large areas it controlled during the conflict. Figure 1 shows different incidents of violence by geographic location and type of incident.

As the RUF committed many acts of violence against civilians and was not known for establishing governance institutions, we would expect levels of civilian victimization to remain consistently high, both before and after seizing territory, rather than peaking after territorial takeover and subsequently declining. Accordingly, we regard Sierra Leone as a good case to test our theory, because we would not expect to find support for it given the RUF’s patterns of behavior.

The Challenges of Analyzing Spatiotemporal Data

In order to understand patterns of civilian targeting by rebel groups, we need to look at individual incidents of violence, rather than aggregate trends. We do this by examining deliberate targeting of civilians by the RUF (between 1997 and 2001)—both lethal and nonlethal—to fully capture patterns of civilian victimization.  

These types of event-level data offer many advantages to researchers because they list the geographic location and date of each incident, but they bring their own challenges. The biggest challenge we face is deciding how to aggregate individual attacks into geographic units as the results of statistical analyses can vary depending on this decision.

Using data from both UCDP GED and ACLED we apply matched wake analysis (MWA), a difference-in-differences design for spatiotemporal event data, to estimate the causal effect of territorial takeover on civilian victimization. MWA allows us to circumvent the problem of obtaining results due to the arbitrary choice of a particular space and time window by generating estimates from multiple different possible combinations. We also use matching to control for the effects of local factors such as distance to the nearest diamond mine, because diamond revenue was regarded as crucial in the Sierra Leone civil war.

Acquiring Control Can Mean More Violence

Our analysis points to a positive effect of rebel territorial takeover on subsequent civilian targeting after a battle between the government and the RUF. However, this effect is limited in its temporal and spatial scope to thirty-five days and up to four kilometers from the battle. Put differently, higher levels of civilian victimization occur following the assertion of rebel control over a contested territory, but only in the direct vicinity of the battles where rebels seized territory from the government. This fits our expectation that at locations where violent territorial transfer occurs, the interactions between rebels and civilians become even more violent.

Looking more closely at distance to diamond mines and the capital, it becomes clear that the amount of violence that accompanies rebel efforts to establish governance is a function of how far they are from the capital and how close they are to a diamond mine. In other words, rebel efforts to establish governance are more violent if the territory offers rents they can extract and if it is further away from the center of power, thus reducing the likelihood of government forces seeking to regain control quickly.

What Does This Mean for the Study of Civilian Violence in Civil Wars?

Given our extreme case selection, follow-up research should examine if other civil wars show similar violent transition periods after territorial takeover. Our research reveals that the establishment of rebel governance might be a violent process despite rebels’ long-term dependence on civilian support. Civilian life under newly established rebel governance might be more dangerous, but we have to study other cases of territorial takeovers to understand all mechanisms.

Our evidence for a violent transition to power also suggests that we should study rebel governance with a temporal perspective in mind. If rebel rulers and their behaviour towards civilians change over time, research on rebel governance should carefully compare how rebels rule during different stages of territorial control. When, and under what circumstances, this violent transition period turns into stable and nonviolent governance and the provision of public goods requires further research as well. This is also relevant for future research on patterns of civilian victimization.

The post Civilian Victimization and Rebel Territorial Control in Sierra Leone appeared first on The Quantitative Peace.

This is a guest post by Brendan Skip Mark and Efe Tokdemir. This post is based on research from their article When Killers Become Victims: Diversionary War, Human Rights, and Strategic Target Selection, published in International Interactions.

Was the assassination of General Qassem Soleimani an attempt to divert attention from President Trump’s unfavorable domestic attention, and if so, will it be successful? The event parallels an earlier historical example. In 1998, a New York Times headline read “Impeachment Vote in the House Delayed As Clinton Launches Iraq Air Strike, Citing Military Need to Move Swiftly.” Then as now, many questioned whether the use of force in Iraq was meant to divert attention from President Clinton’s impeachment.

A string of research in political science has examined how Presidents use this rally effect to divert attention away from an unpopular domestic situation. The use of force abroad is believed to create a “rally around the flag” effect by increasing the public’s patriotism as the American people unite against a common, foreign enemy. Put simply, the diversionary use of force is when the increase in patriotism also spills over into support for the Commander in Chief, which then distracts from any unfavorable domestic attention.

It’s important to first lay out the nature of this conflict. The US-Iran conflict includes six major events. First, in December of 2019, an Iranian-backed militia launched a rocket attack on an Iraqi military base that killed an American contractor and wounded four US service members. In retaliation, the US launched an airstrike at five locations in Iraq and Syria that killed 24 Iranian-backed militia members. Iraq’s leader argued this was a violation of their sovereignty, and shortly after, the US embassy in Baghdad was stormed by Iraqi citizens protesting these killings. Three days later the US assassinated General Soleimani, the commanding general of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp’s Quds Force, and five others in an overnight drone strike at Baghdad airport. A few days later unknown rockets were fired near the US embassy in Baghdad, and on January 7^th Iran launched rockets at two Iraqi bases housing US troops in al Assad and Erbil.

Was Soleimani’s killing an act of diversionary conflict?

In order for the use of force to be diversionary, it must meet a few criteria: First, a leader must need to divert public attention from unfavorable domestic conditions. President Trump is undoubtedly in the midst of domestic turmoil that could benefit from a distraction. With an election on the way, his approval rating hovers around 42%, he recently became the third president in US history to be impeached, and 52% of Americans believe he should be removed from office. What’s more, his foreign policy, the place where presidents have the most direct power, has been heavily criticized; most recently with his decision to pull US troops out of Syria leaving the ground to Russia, Iran and Turkey.

Second, for a diversionary use of force to be successful two criteria must be met. First, the conflict has to grab media headlines and the people’s attention. In other words, it has to actually divert everyone’s attention from the domestic situation. This condition is undoubtedly met by the assassination of General Soleimani. Media coverage of US-Iran relations totally eclipsed all other news stories as the conflict unfolded. Questions of whether we will see war with Iran abound, with coverage varying between Iran backing down, the US backing down, and warnings that future escalation may be likely or unavoidable. At the time of this piece, news stories continue to emerge questioning whether the conflict will escalate once again.

Third, the use of force must be justifiable, defensible, and not an obvious attempt to divert attention. The choice of target is therefore quite important. In fact, our research shows that when leaders face domestic trouble, they are more likely to target regimes who violate human rights because the use of force against a repressive regime is both more successful at diverting attention and more easily justified.

Iran is an authoritarian and repressive state with very few civil and political rights. Indeed, the CIRIGHTS human rights dataset shows that Tehran’s scores on the use of torture, killings, disappearances, and political imprisonment for 2017 puts Iran as the 11^th most repressive state in the world.[1] The Iranian government engages in the widespread violation of its citizens rights to peaceful assembly, free movement, religious freedom, labor rights, women’s rights, and free speech. According to our research, Iran is a good target for the use of diversionary force.

The US government justified its use of force by pointing out the repressive nature of Iran with President Trump calling him a “monster” whose death would save many lives. As a reminder, by almost all international accounts prior to this conflict, General Soleimani was a terrorist, possibly a war criminal, and responsible for many acts of repression carried out against the Iranian people. The United Nations had already banned him from traveling outside of Iran (UNSC Resolution 2231), the European Union had designated him as a terrorist for his activities in Syria (EU Reg. No. 790/2014), and the US had implemented sanctions against him in 2007 for proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (Executive Order 13382).

The US government also justified the assassination as self-defense to save American lives from an “imminent” attack. It should be noted that there is little publicly available evidence to corroborate this claim. Further, the UN Rapporteur on extra-judicial executions, Agnes Callamard, publicly tweeted that the assassination was most likely unlawful. However, as we argue, diversionary uses of force abroad are particularly effective when the international community is unwilling or unable to punish repression and the US can claim to be acting on behalf of those whose rights are violated.    

What explains Iran’s behavior?

Altogether, these conditions make Iran a perfect target to divert public attention from domestic affairs. But that begs the question of why Iran bombed an American base in the first place? “Strategic conflict avoidance” theory suggests that the Iranian government should have been aware of President Trump’s need to divert attention from his impeachment, and therefore, should have kept a low profile as their odds of be targeted were high. The Iranian regime and Trump administration may be implementing the same tactic.

Iranian leaders are facing their own domestic trouble and they have their own incentives to use this conflict for diversionary purposes. Protests and strikes in Iran have been ongoing since 2017. Protesters have called for radical changes to the country’s economic policies, political reform, and have threatened the Iranian leadership directly. The government has resorted to widespread repression to try and quash the protests with little success. In November 2019, a mass protest broke out over a hike in fuel prices, and the government responded by killing somewhere between 300 and 1,500 peaceful protesters (a mass atrocity by most definitions). The threat of war with the US could help demobilize these mass protests and allow the Iranian government to create its own “rally around the flag.”

So, what does it mean for the future of this conflict if both sides are trying to use force for diversionary purposes? Diversionary use of force theory expects leaders to engage in strategic foreign policy to divert public attention and boost popularity, but leaders have to be careful not to escalate the conflict or it may end up more costly than either leader wanted. Neither the US nor Iran wants a war right now; therefore, diversionary actions should stop at the edge of war. We should witness a de-escalation period regarding the final moves of both countries: President Trump publicly stated after the Iranian missile attack that “No Americans were harmed in last night’s attack by the Iranian regime” and that Iran was standing down. News reports since then have pointed out that dozens of US troops were injured and suffer brain damage. President Trump has dismissed these injuries as “headaches”. This implies the US has built Iran a golden bridge to retreat across” as Sun Tzu puts in The Art of War. President Trump’s decision to threaten sanctions rather than military force or boots on the ground appears to indicate an unwillingness to allow this conflict to escalate. News reports at the time of this writing have noted that Iran has similarly taken steps to de-escalate the conflict.

Key takeaways

In sum, there is good evidence that Trump ordered the killing of General Soleimani to divert attention from his domestic troubles as the assassination of Soleimani meets all of the conditions necessary for a diversionary use of force. The assassination captured the attention of every major media outlet, as well as the public, and was justified as both self-defense and the execution of a “monster.”

Iran similarly seems to be using this conflict to divert attention away from the mass protests that are threatening their regime. By raising the possibility of war with the US, the Iranian regime hopes to demobilize protesters who may take the death of General Soleimani, a key figure in the repressive tools employed by the state, as the spark of a new democratic movement.

One of the conclusions of our research and the broader political science literature is that foreign policy is rarely carried out to improve human rights. Similarly, the use of violence for the purposes of improving human rights has a pretty poor track record. While much of the media has focused on the Iran-US conflict in terms of sincere actions by leaders in both countries, we argue that much of the conflict may be diversionary. If leaders are engaging in a diversionary conflict, then much of the tension surrounding this conflict has been fabricated to benefit the leadership in both countries. Viewed through this lens Iran is helping President Trump stay in power, and President Trump is helping the Iranian leadership stay in power. Far from either country trying to destroy or cripple the other, this conflict has strengthened both leaders’ power within their own country.

Brendan Skip Mark is an assistant professor in the department of political science at the University of Rhode Island. His research examines the causes and consequences of human rights violations in relation to conflict and development policy. He is also a co-director of the CIRIGHTS human rights data project. Follow him on Twitter: @SkipMark1

Efe Tokdemir is an assistant professor of International Relations at Bilkent University. His research revolves around behavioral and attitudinal responses of individuals to violent vs. non-violent strategies pursued by the state and non-state armed actors. Follow him on Twitter: @efetokdemir

[1] They are tied for 11^th with 6 other countries.

The post An Alternative Explanation of the US-Iran Escalation: A War for Public Approval? appeared first on The Quantitative Peace.

The work was an interesting collaborative process and we may create a followup post that discusses writing the article and the strategy of framing and publishing the manuscript. You can find our lengthy appendix, replication data, our original data, and other material related to our work here. For now, you can enjoy the article on APSR’s first view. The abstract is:

How do citizens within countries hosting U.S. military personnel view that presence? Using new cross-national survey data from 14 countries, we examine how different forms of exposure to a U.S. military presence in a country affect attitudes toward the U.S. military, government, and people. We find that contact with U.S. military personnel or the receipt of economic benefits from the U.S. presence correlates with stronger support for the U.S. presence, people, and government. This study has profound implications for the role that U.S. installations play in affecting the social fabric of host nations and policy implications for the conduct of U.S. military activities outside the United States.

The post Outside the Wire: U.S. Military Deployments and Public Opinion in Host States appeared first on The Quantitative Peace.

A word on course design: I designed the course after the civil war class I took from Patrick Regan at Binghamton in graduate school. Each day has one assigned reading and a menu of optional readings for students. Each student must read three articles for the week and will weave the additional readings into the conversational flow of the course. As such, the list of readings can be lengthy as long as it is manageable for me to be familiar with the works.

Political Science 525 Syllabus – Civil War and Terrorism

The post Updating my civil war and terrorism syllabus appeared first on The Quantitative Peace.

Episode IX has been out for a week as of this writing and it has encountered mixed receptions from critics and fans alike. On the film critic aggregation site Rotten Tomatoes, it is the lowest-rated film of the five new ones (even lower than Solo), but among the audience score, it is tied for first with The Force Awakens. One of the main criticisms leveled against it is that it engages in too much fan service and, as a result of the distraction, loses some level of coherent storytelling.

One such moment is when Maz Kanata delivers a medal to Chewbacca from Leia. This medal is a callback to the first movie, Star Wars: A New Hope (ANH), when Leia gives out medals to the main characters of the film after destroying the Death Star. Notably, only Luke Skywalker and Han Solo get a medal while Chewbacca (and the droids) do not earn the honor. A well known, and argued, oversight from 42 years was remedied. There may have been production-related reasons why this occurred, but there are also a few in-universe explanations as to why Chewbacca left ANH without a medal. 

While this small moment in Episode IX seems to clearly be a nod to longtime fans of the series, it has other important implications that critics and social media commentators are quick to overlook. Before we get to the meaning of the medal, a few key points worth mentioning.

First, each of the new Saga movies (VII, VIII, IX) seems devoted to dealing with one of the three main characters from the original trilogy (again forgetting Chewbacca and the droids) and their relationship with the next generation. Episode VII primarily focused on Han, his present life, his past choices, his mistakes, and his attempt to reconcile with Kylo (which proves to be his ultimate end). Episode VIII focuses on Luke, his isolation after failure, his disconnectedness from being the hero, and his unwillingness to shoulder the burdens of others’ expectations. Eventually, he gets out of his force-isolating funk and sacrifices himself to buy the Resistance a bit more time. Episode IX was set to be Leia’s story, though Carrie Fisher passed away two years ago. While they had filmed some scenes with Fisher prior to her death, it seems clear that some of her lines and interactions had to be scrapped or given to other characters and her presence in the movie is weaker than originally planned. Leia’s final, posthumous act in the film is important, not just to Chewbacca or the fans, but to her story as well.

Leia’s background is important in understanding the importance of why and when Chewie gets a medal. After her mother’s death, she is given to the Organa family, an important political family from Alderaan with one spouse serving as a Galactic Senator and the other as Alderaan’s Queen. While part of the Senate, Bail Organa had become friends with Leia’s mother (both a Senator and former Queen herself) and together created a political faction that laid the foundations of political resistance that would later help create the Rebel Alliance. While the Organa family was not in favor of the actions of the Empire, they were participants in its political system and Alderaan was a member of it until the planet’s destruction. 

Being a member of the Empire subjects you not only to its policies but also to its propaganda. During Episode III, prior to the creation of the Empire, there is a battle between the Republic (clone troopers) and the Separatists (droid army) over the planet of the Wookiees, Kashyyyk. The Separatists desire to control the planet due to its strategic location. The Republic wins this battle and forces the separatists from the Republic-loyal planet. However, once the Republic gives emergency powers to Palpatine and he transforms it into the Empire, he uses the garrisoned troops on Kashyyyk to take over the planet and enslave the Wookiees. The Empire promptly blockades the planet and uses Kashyyyk for both its labor and resources. Han helping Chewie escape from Imperial enslavement is part of the life-debt that defines their relationship and drives their actions in various adventures, including Han and Chewie’s drive to free the planet after Episode VI. 

Along with the blockade comes quite a bit of propaganda to convince the Empire’s subjects that Wookiees are animals and sub-human.* The speciest propaganda is most evident in the canon non-film works, but we get small snippets of it throughout the films. This should not be too surprising as the Empire’s hierarchy is dominated by white, male humans and deviation from that serve as notable exemptions that exist mostly outside of the films. The Empire is a speciest, racist, and sexist totalitarian government. The rebel alliance also has a gender and race problem in the original trilogy but does far better on the species front. The non-film expanded universe shows more diversity for the rebels while also expanding the role of women in the Empire. The canon novels of the Aftermath trilogy and the young adult book Lost Stars both feature prominent women in the Empire. 

In Solo, Imperial soldiers refer to Chewbacca as a “beast” that they intend to feed Han to and, after they think Chewie kills Han, one soldier asks, “You tired, you mangy Kashyyykian moof-milker?” A campaign of propaganda would not only affect the soldiers that control Kashyyyk, but also the Imperial subjects of the Empire more broadly, and we see this in Princess Leia. Leia’s views of Chewbacca are not charitable as she often robs Chewie of both his agency and his humanity. Early in ANH, she yells, “Will someone get this big walking carpet out of my way?” When she rejects Han’s advances in Empire Strikes Back, she conjures up something much more horrifying to kissing him and suggests that she “just as soon kiss a Wookiee.” Her droid is not much kinder when C3PO calls Chewbacca a “Fleabitten furball” and tells Lando Calrissian at one point to excuse Chewie’s behavior because he is “only a Wookiee.”**

The freeing of Kashyyyk happens offscreen sometime in between Episode VI and VII and Leia’s awarding of the medals to just Han and Luke is consistent with her adopting the propaganda of the Empire. If we believe Lucas’ explanation, then Kashyyyk being enslaved. would make the following explanation he gives unbelievable and contradict other retcons: “The whole contingent from the Rebel Alliance went to Chewbacca’s people and participated in a very large celebration. It was an honor for the entire Wookiee race.” Instead, for Leia and the alliance, Chewie is a mostly non-sentient non-actor or, at best, a sidekick to Han. It is only at the end of Episode IX that she redeems her microaggressive slights and views by giving Chewie what he earned over four decades previously. 

Justin Vaughn and I have argued that science fiction is a useful tool to examine counterfactual political science topics and Star Wars not only provide insights into institutions and conflict, but also identity and recognition. The next struggle for the characters in the Star Wars universe is to recognize the work L3-37 was doing in Solo and elevate droids beyond the mere tools for human ends. After all, there are many a cantina, not unlike the one in Mos Eisley on Tatooine, where their kind are not served.

*Writers tend to define different aliens in Star Wars as being different species and not different kinds of humanoid races. As such, I will keep in line with that idea despite Star Wars having aliens that clearly come from exaggerated human cultural and racial stereotypes. 
**Wookiee should have two Es, not just one as the poster below incorrectly has.

The post Medals, Species, and Identity in Star Wars Episode IX appeared first on The Quantitative Peace.

First, it’s just descriptively wrong. There are a lot of academics who get into academia after working in other fields, including private “business” (broadly defined), finance (more narrowly), public sector service at the local, state, or federal levels, non-profits and non-governmental organizations, the military, inter-governmental organizations, etc. Part of what motivates people to get into academia is often the fact that they observe things in the “real world” that lead them to ask questions for which they can’t find satisfying answers.

Second, it’s not at all clear that there is a meaningful divide between academic research and the “real world”. I mean, the basic gatekeeping mechanisms for entering academia require would-be researchers to work extensive hours for very, very low pay only to subsequently spend years searching for a job in their field. Oh, and try asking for a raise as an academic researcher—for most of us, this is a process that takes at least a year to even attempt, and the odds of securing an external job offer to use as leverage are…*checks notes*…nearly non-existent. But overall these things sound suspiciously similar to things people in the “real world” complain about.

Third, the type of work that academics do is often very similar to the kind of work done in other sectors. Is there really a difference between sitting in front of a spreadsheet analyzing data in a campus office and sitting in front of a spreadsheet analyzing data (but probably doing a worse job) while working for a private firm or some government agency? I don’t think so. In some ways this is a gross oversimplification. The topics that academics research often have a lot of real, substantive importance for “real world” issues, like war, defense, medicine, workplace safety, mental health, substance abuse treatments, engineering, communications technology, etc. Maybe the work that some academics do sounds really obscure, but most people get into this line of work because they care about something substantive, and the substantive importance is often due to the outsider’s ignorance—not the triviality of the research.

Fourth, the research skills and expertise that academics develop are often in demand by people living in the “real world”. I’ve learned a lot talking to folks working in government and the military. One of the things that I’ve learned is that these people have day jobs, and they’re often so busy doing their day-to-day work that they don’t have time to ask and answer the kinds of questions that might arise as a result of that work. They might also lack the research skills necessary to do these things.  Multiple military officials have talked about how their job has required them to perform tasks for which they are ill-equipped to monitor or track progress and effectiveness—this includes people working in literal war zones.

These folks try their best, and often in difficult circumstances, but working in “real world” environments/roles does not automatically endow someone with the knowledge and expertise they need to tackle all the problems they face. For a lot of academics, a huge part of their job is going out and talking to people from all sorts of different backgrounds, learning how things work, and synthesizing information from these different sources. And for many people in many different fields this means extensive, and repeated, bouts of international travel away from friends and family. Sometimes this may involve traveling to high-risk locations for long periods of time. Collecting insights and knowledge from practitioners in different fields, and then stepping back to analyze the “big picture”, is something that most practitioners are not always able to do, regardless of whether they’re working in the private sector, for the government, the military, or a non-profit.

Fifth, there’s all the other trivial stuff that academics must have to worry about, like bosses, coworkers, deadlines, “customer” feedback (re students), budgeting issues, funding shortfalls, childcare expenses, sickness, and so on. Oh yeah, and academics have to worry about getting fired. And if that happens, or if their contract simply expires, they may have to move across the country (or world) to find another job.

Finally, this last point may be a little more abstract, but it also suggests that the only way to acquire any sort of knowledge or expertise is to work in to have some sort of direct, first-person, hands-on experience with the underlying subject matter. It’s not that this kind of experience can’t be valuable (it certainly can be), but it’s very often unnecessary to learn about underlying phenomena of interest. Basically, all human knowledge and scientific achievement would be impossible if we couldn’t transmit knowledge and expertise to others, who can then use this knowledge to make their own advancements. And it also represents a fundamental misunderstanding of where many of the tools used in the “real world” come from. How many of the mathematical and statistical tools used in modern finance come out of academic research? Engineering? Insurance? Medicine? Epidemiology?

The “real world” argument is a dumb, simplistic, and lazy “argument”. Portraying the divide between academic researchers and people working in other fields as one of the “real world” versus not is only useful insofar as it’s a quick and dirty tool with which to dismiss arguments, ideas, and findings that you don’t like. Imagine how much better off we’d be if, rather than denigrating academic research, we came to better appreciate the ways in which research and practice can inform one another? Academics don’t have all the answers, but neither do practitioners.

The post The “academics don’t have real world experience!” argument is really, really, dumb appeared first on The Quantitative Peace.