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What is the relationship between civil war and terrorism? Most current research on these topics either explicitly or implicitly separates the two, in spite of compelling reasons to consider them together. The few attempts to unpack the similarities between these types of political violence have either focused on creating actor-based categories that elucidate the different reasons for being a terrorist or insurgent or comparing and contrasting each type of violence to discern whether they have similar etiologies. In this paper, we examine the extent to which terrorism and civil war overlap and then unpack various temporal and categorical patterns. To accomplish this, we use newly geo-referenced terror event data to offer a global overview of where and when terrorist events happen and whether they occur inside or outside of civil war zones. We investigate in detail, furthermore, six separate violent campaigns occurring in systematically different contexts to illustrate some of the patterns in terrorism and civil war. The data show a high degree of overlap between terrorism and ongoing civil war and, further, indicate that a substantial amount of terrorism occurs prior to civil wars in Latin America, but follows war in other regions of the world. While the study of terrorism and civil war mostly occurs in separate scholarly communities, we argue for more work that incorporates insights from each research program and we offer a possibility for future research by considering how geo-referenced terror and civil war data may be utilized together. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent scholarship suggests interstate war is on the decline. In fact, some scholars claim that war is nearly obsolete. But is this decline universal? Using newly coded data, we show that the general decline in the phenomenon of interstate war is not evenly distributed across regions of the world. We argue that this geographic shift of warfare is impacted by the interaction of the international norm of border fixity, a proscription of the forceful conquest and annexation of homeland territory, and state capacity. We examine current scholarship on the issue and explore cases that demonstrate several mechanisms that link our explanation to the shifting geography of war. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using a computer simulation of a common collective action problem, this paper investigates whether the structure of decision-making affects the propensity to cooperate. Democratic and authoritarian decision-making units are placed in a prisoner?s dilemma to determine whether a significant difference exists in their level of cooperation. Part of the purpose of the study is to discern whether regime type affects cooperation levels. Based on the outcome of the study, several conclusions are applied to the possible behavior of states including evidence that suggests significant differences exist between democracies and authoritarian regimes in their patterns of cooperation vis-à-vis their opponent and the context of cooperation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The appropriate role for the United Nations in international dispute resolution is a matter of high profile discussion and controversy. During the prelude to the war in Iraq, U.S. President George W. Bush repeatedly stated that, while he would like the UN Security Council (UNSC) to sanction military intervention in Iraq, he did not feel it was necessary. Others, most notably French and Russian diplomats, argued that the UNSC served a vital and valuable role in political-military affairs and should be empowered to authorize military action or to prevent unilateral military actions. This paper begins with this ambivalence about the appropriate role for the United Nations in the world and examines several sets of issues that relate to the future of support for the UN within the United States and the prospects for global governance more generally. First, we briefly discuss several bodies of literature as a way of framing the argument and data we present in latter portions of the paper. This brief review focuses on three thematic strands in previous and contemporary scholarship: 1) arguments for increased global governance in contemporary world affairs, driven by perceptions of the changing nature of the political, social, economic and military challenges in the contemporary world system; 2) examinations of the nexus between public opinion and foreign policy; and 3) why it is valuable to study how the current generation of adolescents perceive issues of global governance and the impact that their views may have on that nexus in the coming years [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]