Ethnicity,class, and civil war: the role of hierarchy,segmentation, and cross-cutting cleavages

Why are some countries prone to ethno-nationalist conflict, whereas others are plagued by class conflict? This is a question that has seldom been raised and rarely been examined empirically. This paper presents a social-structural theory to account for the variable incidence of these two forms of political instability. These two types of conflict result from distinct principles of group solidarity – ethnicity and class – and since each individual is simultaneously a member of an ethnic group (or many such groups) and a particular class, these two principles vary in the degree to which they are mutually exclusive or cross-cutting. The degree of economic stratification between groups and economic segmentation within them shapes the relative salience of each principle of group solidarity in any society and is associated with a characteristic form of political mobilization. In places where between-group inequalities are high, and within-group inequalities low, ethnicity should be the dominant principle of group solidarity and serve as the primary basis of group conflict. By contrast, in countries where between-group inequalities are low, and within-group inequalities high, class is more likely to serve as the dominant principle of group solidarity, and conflicts along class lines are more likely. We test these conjectures with data in over 100 countries on cross-cutting cleavages, ethnic war, and class conflict. The results are supportive of the theory, and provide evidence that how groups are stratified and segmented in societies shapes the type of civil war.     

效率、公平与公共政策

效率是社会经济发展的重要保证,而公平是衡量人类文明的重要尺度,是维护社会稳定的价值基础。效率与公平是辩证的对立统一,既有矛盾性又有统一性。公共政策的关键就是要协调与整合二者之间的关系,确保既能提高经济效率,又能实现社会公平——借助市场机制达到资源的有效配置,以提高效率;依靠社会主义制度解决财富分配不公,以彰显公平。将效率与公平完美地结合于公共政策之中,是社会主义优越性的充分体现。     

Recruiters,advertising, and navy enlistments

Regression analysis is used to estimate the effects on Navy enlistments of recruiters, advertising, unemployment and other factors. In measuring the effects of these factors on enlistments, changes in both the demand for and supply of enlistments are taken into account. Advertising is treated as a capital investment; its effect is estimated using a maximum likelihood technique that was developed for measuring the effects of capital investments. We find strong evidence that recruiters and unemployment increase enlistments. Advertising also seems to increase enlistments, but its effect is highly uncertain. The results suggest that increases in recruiting resources would have eliminated the enlistment shortfalls experienced by the Navy in FY 1978–79.     

North Korea,deterrence, and engagement

The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) justifies its nuclear weapon arsenal with the concept of deterrence. It means that it will try to miniaturize and modernize its warheads and missiles. This leads to a first-use doctrine of nuclear weapons. Obama's policy of engagement does not offer a solution to the North Korean nuclear issue as yet. In the context of its policy of critical engagement with the DPRK, the European Union has three key interests: regional peace and stability, denuclearization, and human rights. The Conference on Security and Cooperation (CSCE) could be a precedent. The CSCE process was based on three “baskets”: security, economics, and humanitarian. The multilateral Trans-Pacific Partnership is a step in this regard. This article looks at three theoretical approaches: realism, liberal institutionalism, and liberal internationalism. It concludes that a political strategy to create a stable North Korean peninsula has to go beyond nuclear deterrence that is based on the realist notion of balance of power.     

Drones,spies, terrorists,and second-class citizenship in Pakistan

This essay reviews seven recent books and reports that focus upon the use of US armed drones in Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). This essay synthesizes a historical account of the program, critically interrogates key arguments and evidence advanced by the authors, and draws attention the particular problems that confront those who live in the FATA and the second-class citizenship that the Pakistani state has bestowed upon them for reasons of domestic and foreign policy concerns. This review essay does not intend to be the final word on any of the ongoing policy debates. But it does hope to enable a wider audience to take part in these important deliberations.     

Minimax trees,paths, and cut sets

The notions of minimax paths, trees, and cut sets are defined for undirected graphs; and relationships between these entities are established. Simple solution procedures based on these relationships are presented.     

Terrorism,insurgency, kidnapping,and security in Africa's energy sector

Energy continues to serve as the bedrock of modern economies and the main driver of modern society. For Africa, the production and supply of energy resources such as crude oil, natural gas, uranium, coal, biomass, biofuels and other renewables are an important source of employment, rents, taxes, royalties and profits. This sector brings in several tens of billions of dollars of revenue annually. The production and delivery of such resources, however, depend on critical infrastructures such as pipelines, refineries, processing plants, terminals, rigs, electrical energy pylons, substations, pump stations, vessels, and tankers. These infrastructures have been attacked by terrorists, insurgents, vandals and saboteurs, all of whom see them as targets against which to register their grievances and extract concessions from the state. This paper is a chronological account of some of the documented incidents of terrorism, insurgency, kidnapping, destruction, sabotage, and human casualties suffered in the oil and gas sectors in Africa between 1999 and 2012. It is based on data extracted from the databases of the RAND Database of World Terrorism Incidents and the University of Maryland's Global Terrorism Database (GTD).     

Muslims,Islamists, and the Cold War

A new devil has emerged to challenge Western values and public virtue, and ever so conveniently, the devil masqueraded in religious garb. Terrorism has become synonymous with Islamic fundamentalism if not with Islam itself, and a new iron wall has descended on the world, as Churchill said, separating East from West, Christendom from Islam. This study examines the question why US policy makers feel a persistent urge to draw foreign policy in moralistic terms and religious metaphor, often to their own detriment.     

Military and Veterans’ Health,Health Care,and Wellbeing

Abstract

The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) need to bridge a gap in their understanding of service members’ health outcomes and the issues involved in treatment, such as cost. In addition, clinicians and policy analysts must overcome existing knowledge barriers. Clinicians need to be aware of policy changes that will affect their patient load in numbers and in treatment needs. Policy analysts need to be aware of issues relevant to clinical treatment, such as quality and timeliness of care. Given the need for services and support to military personnel and families, and the fact that the fastest growing expenses in defense are health care costs, a multi-disciplinary line of research will help lawmakers understand the most efficient and effective resource use across the health care services.     

Dynamic pricing and replenishment: Optimality,bounds, and asymptotics

In many applications, managers face the problem of replenishing and selling products during a finite time horizon. We investigate the problem of making dynamic and joint decisions on product replenishment and selling in order to improve profit. We consider a backlog scenario in which penalty cost (resulting from fulfillment delay) and accommodation cost (resulting from shortage at the end of the selling horizon) are incurred. Based on continuous‐time and discrete‐state dynamic programming, we study the optimal joint decisions and characterize their structural properties. We establish an upper bound for the optimal expected profit and develop a fluid policy by resorting to the deterministic version of the problem (ie, the fluid problem). The fluid policy is shown to be asymptotically optimal for the original stochastic problem when the problem size is sufficiently large. The static nature of the fluid policy and its lack of flexibility in matching supply with demand motivate us to develop a “target‐inventory” heuristic, which is shown, numerically, to be a significant improvement over the fluid policy. Scenarios with discrete feasible sets and lost‐sales are also discussed in this article.     

Shifting power,preventive logic,and the response of the target: Germany,Russia, and the First World War

If a declining state has incentives for preventive war, the rising state should have incentives to delay a confrontation until it is stronger. We develop the theoretical paradox and examine the July 1914 crisis. Why did Russia, rising relative to Germany, not adopt a buying-time strategy? We argue that although most Russian leaders hoped to avoid a confrontation, they feared that the failure to support Serbia would lead to a loss of Russian credibility and a significant setback to Russia’s position in the Balkans, one that could not easily be reversed, even with Russia’s expected increase in relative military power.