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Research findings on the relationship between climate and conflict are diverse and contested. Here we assess the current understanding of the relationship between climate and conflict, based on the structured judgments of experts from diverse disciplines. These experts agree that climate has affected organized armed conflict within countries. However, other drivers, such as low socioeconomic development and low capabilities of the state, are judged to be substantially more influential, and the mechanisms of climate-conflict linkages remain a key uncertainty. Intensifying climate change is estimated to increase future risks of conflict. Climate has affected organized armed conflict within countries, and intensifying climate change is estimated to increase future risks of conflict, although other drivers are substantially more influential and the mechanisms of climate-conflict linkages remain uncertain., Author(s): Katharine J. Mach [sup.1] , Caroline M. Kraan [sup.2] , W. Neil Adger [sup.3] , Halvard Buhaug [sup.4] [sup.5] , Marshall Burke [sup.1] [sup.6] , James D. Fearon [sup.7] [...]

This is a Focus Article with Commentaries that was published on the Social Evolution Forum

If democracy is to have any of the good effects said to justify it, it must be self-enforcing. Those who control the government must want to hold regular, competitive elections for the highest offices, and all parties must be willing to comply with the results. I consider a model in which citizens can always protest or rebel against the current ruler, but can unseat the ruler only if enough people rebel. When individuals privately observe a signal of the government's performance (e.g. their own welfare), they face a difficult problem of how to coordinate to pose a credible threat of rebellion necessary to keep the ruler from stealing. Further, if the signals are noisy, inefficient rebellions must occur in equilibrium to keep the ruler honest. Allowing for the possibility of elections makes for equilibria that eliminate both problems. The convention of holding elections at particular times provides a public signal for coordinating rebellion in the event that elections are suspended of blatantly rigged. The electoral results themselves aggregate private information about the ruler's performance, providing the ruler an incentive to stick to the terms. Int he case of noisy signals of government performance, the electoral results act as a cheap talk signal that allows the public to commit to rebel if a losing ruler does not step down, avoiding the need for costly rebellions. These arguments pose an explanation for self-enforcing democracy, whereas the several models in the literature do not because they do not explain why anyone would want to use elections to allocate power.

An examination of villages in northern Liberia that received international development assistance found that the introduction of new local-level institutions can change patterns of social cooperation in ways that continue even after the program is finished. Villages that were exposed to high levels of community-driven reconstruction programs were also found to have higher levels of social cooperation.