Nobody cites nobody else: Mathematical models of domestic political conflict

Lichbach, Mark Irving

doi:10.1080/10430719208404742

Cited by 24 publications

(13 citation statements)

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“…In modeling conflict situations, a large variety of approaches is available and a comprehensive review can be found in Lichbach (1992). There, more than two hundred scholarly contributions are grouped into two broad categories: one includes those following the rational choice optimizing framework, and the other those employing stochastic models of conflict.…”

Section: A Review Of the Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Bohorquez et al (2009) go a step further and relate power-law distributions with other confrontational phenomena, from ecology to finance and to social dynamics. As noted by Lichbach (1992), such an atheoretical approach amounts to claiming that conflicts occur randomly, in sharp contrast with the schools of thought that interpret them as outcomes of rational calculation or a response to grievances. If anything, such contrasting views underline not just the vast possibilities open to researchers but also the huge gap that still divides alternative approaches to analyzing the dynamics of conflict and quantifying its effect.…”

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confidence: 99%

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Conflict dynamics and costs in the Greek Civil War 1946–1949

Christodoulakis

2015

Defence and Peace Economics

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Using a new set of data from Greek Army sources, US military archives and Communist Party documents, the paper provides a quantitative analysis of the armed confrontation that took place in Greece during [1946][1947][1948][1949]. A dynamic Lotka-Volterra model is estimated, pointing to the existence of a conflict trap that explains the prolongation of the civil war and its dire consequences for the country. A regional analysis finds that the mobilization of guerrilla forces was crucially affected by morphology and the local persecutions of political rivals. Using neoclassical growth-accounting, the economic cost of the conflict is estimated to surpass an annual GDP, in line with similar findings in contemporary civil wars. The same framework is employed to assess the outcome in counterfactual situations discussed in the paper.

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Section: A Review Of the Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

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confidence: 99%

Conflict dynamics and costs in the Greek Civil War 1946–1949

Christodoulakis

2015

Defence and Peace Economics

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“…However, even if online behavior merely reflects and hence reports on-street activity, this in itself can be very important in the absence of reliable media sources or in relatively remote locations. Among the human phenomena of interest, social instability is a particularly important one since it has long been a feature of state-society relations and also can lead to other problems such as widespread violence and insecurity [9, 29, 30]. Indeed socio-technical advances have created favorable conditions for forecasting certain types of mobilizations or protests while simultaneously generating large reservoirs of online data [31–33].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Open source data reveals connection between online and on-street protest activity

Manrique

Johnson

et al. 2016

EPJ Data Sci.

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There is enormous interest in inferring features of human behavior in the real world from potential digital footprints created online - particularly at the collective level, where the sheer volume of online activity may indicate some changing mood within the population regarding a particular topic. Civil unrest is a prime example, involving the spontaneous appearance of large crowds of otherwise unrelated people on the street on a certain day. While indicators of brewing protests might be gleaned from individual online communications or account content (e.g. Twitter, Facebook) societal concerns regarding privacy can make such probing a politically delicate issue. Here we show that instead, a simple low-level indicator of civil unrest can be obtained from online data at the aggregate level through Google Trends or similar tools. Our study covers countries across Latin America during 2011-2014 in which diverse civil unrest events took place. In each case, we find that the combination of the volume and momentum of searches from Google Trends surrounding pairs of simple keywords, tailored for the specific cultural setting, provide good indicators of periods of civil unrest. This proof-of-concept study motivates the search for more geographically specific indicators based on geo-located searches at the urban level.

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“…In Kauffmann's linear model (2007), short term and event interdependence matters. Given that rational people usually do not rebel, stochastic models show that instances of rebellion are largely random events (Lichbach, 1992;Blattman and Miguel, 2009). By the same token, the modelers could argue that rational people usually do not innovate (since they should know everything in advance, the ignorance as well as novelty have no room in their universe), as instances of innovation are largely random events.…”

Section: Predation Modelsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The following table summarizes theories on political violence. 7 In his survey of "models of domestic political conflict", Lichbach (1992), distinguishes two different branches of formal modeling in conflict theory: i) international conflict; ii) domestic political conflict (DPC). He claims that while formal modelers of international conflict think of themselves as working within a field, formal modelers of DPC do not cite each other and do not constitute a real field.…”

Section: Motivational and Instrumental Aspects Of Political Violencementioning

confidence: 99%

A Critical Review of Strategic Conflict Theory and Socio-political Instability Models

Vahabi¹

2009

Revue d'Économie Politique

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This paper provides a critical general overview of two strands of recent vast economic literature on social conflicts, namely strategic conflict theory and socio-political instability models. The first strand can be traced back to Haavelmo (1954) and has been further developed in a variety of ways by game theoretical models of rational conflict (Boulding, 1962;Schelling, 1963, Hirshleifer, 2001). Their goal is to understand threat power. A second version of conflict theory has been developed by the founders of the Public Choice School (Olson 1965(Olson , 1982Tullock 1974Tullock , 1980 Stringham, 2005 Stringham, , 2007 in order to tackle genuine political violence.The main finding of this paper is that both strands of recent economic literature have not yet come to grips with social conflicts. The application of standard microeconomic assumptions to the field of "social conflicts" has resulted in reducing conflicts either to "rational conflicts"-a threat of conflict without any real clash -or "real self-interested private conflicts". In other words, economic theory has considered social protesters either as looters or lunatics, but never as a group of people struggling for a common cause.Keywords: Strategic Conflict Theory, Socio-political instability models, Coase theorem, Appropriative activity, Social ConflictsUn survol critique de la littérature sur la théorie du conflit stratégique et les modèles d'instabilité sociopolitique Résumé Cet article fournit un survol critique de deux branches récentes de la vaste littérature économique portant sur les conflits sociaux, à savoir la théorie du conflit stratégique et les modèles d'instabilité sociopolitique. La première branche peut être retracée à Haavelmo (1954), et a été formalisée depuis par de nombreux modèles du conflit rationnel s'inspirant de la théorie des jeux (Boulding, 1962;Schelling, 1963, Hirshleifer, 2001. Leur objectif consiste à comprendre le pouvoir de menace. Une seconde branche de la théorie des conflits a été développée par les fondateurs de l'école du choix public (Olson 1965(Olson , 1982Tullock 1974Tullock , 1980 Stringham, 2005 Stringham, , 2007 qui essaie de traiter de la violence politique authentique. Notre survol critique démontre que l'application des postulats standards de la microéconomie dans le domaine des conflits sociaux conduit à réduire ces conflits soit en « conflits rationnels », c'est-à-dire en une menace de conflits sans aucune confrontation réelle, soit en « conflits réels pour les intérêts prives ». En d'autres termes, cette littérature décrit les contestataires sociaux comme des pilleurs ou des ignorants et irrationnels, mais jamais comme un groupe social se battant pour une cause commune. Mots clés :Théorie du conflit stratégique, modèles d'instabilité sociopolitique, le théorème de Coase, activité appropriative, conflits sociaux JEL Classification: D74, H41, H56 2

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Nobody cites nobody else: Mathematical models of domestic political conflict

Cited by 24 publications

References 118 publications

Conflict dynamics and costs in the Greek Civil War 1946–1949

Conflict dynamics and costs in the Greek Civil War 1946–1949

Open source data reveals connection between online and on-street protest activity

A Critical Review of Strategic Conflict Theory and Socio-political Instability Models

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