January 15th, 2013

Empirical Studies of Conflict Project launches data archive

CISAC Senior Research Scholar Joe Felter and colleagues at Princeton and UC San Diego launch an exhaustive research and data archive for the Empirical Studies of Conflict Project. Read more »

May 20th, 2010

Report: Deploying civilian forces in aftermath of war

A report for the Norwegian government by CISAC Research Scholar Eric Morris examines the civilian capabilities that must be deployed early in a United Nations peace operation.
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July 11th, 2007

Jeremy Weinstein, CDDRL faculty member, on "Africa's Revolutionary Deficit" in latest issue of Foreign Policy journal

In his latest published work, Jeremy Weinstein writes on the violence that has engulfed 27 of the 46 countries in subSaharan Africa since independence and how the revolutionary movements that emerged to wage these wars of "liberation" and "transformation" have rarely behaved better than the regimes they sought to uproot.

• » Africa's Revolutionary Deficit

February 16th, 2007

Perry, Diamond, Fearon argue against more troops in Iraq

William J. Perry, former secretary of defense and Iraq Study Group member, was joined by Larry Diamond, former Coalition Provisional Authority advisor, and James Fearon, professor of political science at Stanford, for a Jan. 22 panel discussion on "Iraq: The Way Forward." In the discussion, which took place at FSI, Perry, Diamond, and Fearon all argued against sending more troops to Iraq, with Perry noting that the "cumulative effect of all these strategic errors has been a disastrous security situation." Audio transcript available
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December 13th, 2006

CISAC civil war experts influence policy debate on Iraq

November's mid-term elections, in which Democrats won a majority in both houses of congress, were widely interpreted as a referendum on the administration's prosecution of the Iraq war. As public debate intensified over an anticipated change of course in Iraq, policymakers, commentators, and reporters turned to CISAC civil war experts James Fearon and David Laitin for insight into the current violence and possible outcomes. News media drew on Fearon's testimony before a house subcommittee in September, echoing his warning about the likely failure of an attempt to partition the country's land or resources among Sunnis, Shiites, and Kurds. Some news organizations announced a new policy to call the fighting in Iraq a civil war, citing the opinions of Fearon and Laitin. Laitin appeared on CNN's Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer to discuss the question of whehter Iraq is engaged in a civil war. Fearon discussed the question on NPR's On Point.

• » Iraq: Democracy or Civil War?
• » NPR's On Point: "The civil war in Iraq"
• » CNN's Situation Room: "Civil war in Iraq?"
• » New York Times magazine: "The way we live now: Iraq 2013"

November 29th, 2006

Professor Weinstein publishes a new book: "Inside Rebellion: The Politics of Insurgent Violence"

"Some rebel groups abuse noncombatant populations, while others exhibit restraint. Insurgent leaders in some countries transform local structures of government, while others simply extract resources for their own benefit. In some contexts, groups kill their victims selectively, while in other environments violence appears indiscriminate, even random. This book presents a theory that accounts for the different strategies pursued by rebel groups in civil war, explaining why patterns of insurgent violence vary so much across conflicts. It does so by examining the membership, structure, and behavior of four insurgent movements in Uganda, Mozambique, and Peru. Drawing on interviews with nearly two hundred combatants and civilians who experienced violence firsthand, it shows that rebels' strategies depend in important ways on how difficult it is to launch a rebellion. The book thus demonstrates how characteristics of the environment in which rebellions emerge constrain rebel organization and shape the patterns of violence that civilians experience." Jeremy Weinstein, Cambridge University Press

• » Inside Rebellion: The Politics of Insurgent Violence

October 20th, 2006

Newsweek columnist cites CISAC's Fearon on likely failure of Iraqi power-sharing

After six months in power, the Iraq government has failed to gain control and secure the country, writes Newsweek International columnist Fareed Zakaria. It is time, he says, to acknowledge the new government's failure as well as the U.S. military's inability to stem an ongoing civil war. Citing CISAC faculty member James Fearon's research on civil wars, the columnist warns against placing hope in power-sharing among Iraq's Sunnis, Shia and Kurds. "Power-sharing agreements rarely work," Zakaria writes, echoing Fearon's research and his recent testimony before Congress on the situation in Iraq.

• » Iraq: Democracy or Civil War?

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