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The study of public opinion has a long, rich history in political science in the advanced industrialized world. Over the past several years, scholars have increased efforts to collect similar data from the developing and/or autocratic world. One such effort has been realized by WorldPublicOpinion.org, in collaboration with the U.S. Institute for Peace and Search for Common Ground, by the completion of two rounds of public opinion surveys in Iran spanning the years 2006 and 2008. To date, there has been no rigorous analysis of the descriptive and potential inferential properties of the data set. In this paper, we supply the first such analysis and examine the relationship between and among responses to a variety of questions ranging from support of the government regime to attitudes toward foreign leaders. We hope to highlight the strengths and weaknesses of data collection in Iran and other developing/autocratic countries. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The existing debate in the literature posits that there is no direct relationship between poverty, education, and support for terrorism. Krueger and Maleckova (2002) assert that most terrorist operatives have a higher level of education and better socio-e ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2004, the adoption of UN Security Council Resolution 1540 reflected an emerging consensus that more should be done by the international community to restrain WMD proliferation. UNSCR 1540 articulates a new, legally binding international nonproliferatio ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies of public opinion as it relates to government policy focus on two areas of inquiry: The beliefs determining public support or opposition to a given policy and, related, the effect of public policy preferences on the policymaking of the state. Without exception, these studies have been confined to democratic states; in fact, scholars of the opinion-policy nexus view their work through the lens of democratic theory. I argue that the findings of this body of work possesses broader applicability than generally assumed, beyond democratic and Western contexts. Using 2006 public opinion data from Iran, I find striking continuity between the Iranian case and similar studies conducted in democratic contexts, suggesting greater generalizability for this body of research as well as a window into the opaque world of autocratic domestic politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper tests whether the Proliferation Security Initiative is best explained as a screening mechanism to identify states with like-minded security concerns or as a vehicle for pressuring states into adopting the norms of its founders. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study pits the DIMEFIL and PMESII strategy sets head to head by empiricallyanalyzing mapped Item Response Theory scaled CAMEO event codes of each categoryset (e.g., D, I, M, E, etc.). The authors conclude that the frameworks yield utility inunderstanding the effects of insurgent and counter-insurgent strategies and tactics on oneanother. An analysis of the Philippines conflict from 1991-2005 yields new insights intothe direct and indirect effects of the different DIMEFIL and PMESII instruments ofpower on each other. In addition to analyzing the frameworks head to head, we pit DIMEagainst nonviolent, violent, and terrorist activities of dissidents and examine the differingeffects of DIME on various militant tactics. The authors find that, in analyses offrequencies, DIME only has effects on nonviolent behavior as opposed to violent andterrorist behavior. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recognition of the importance of the growing international impasse over Iran's nuclear program and the paucity of robust, nationally-representative data reflecting Iranian popular views of this program's perils and advantages both for Iran and the international community, Fair (under the auspices of USIP) fielded an in-country poll of Iranians in collaboration with PIPA and Search for Common Ground in the summer of 2006. The nationally representative sample was comprised of 1,000 Iranian adults. Unlike other polls of Iranians that use standoff calling, this poll employed face-to-face interviewing. Attesting to the robustness of the polling effort, its margin of error was +/-3.3% and had high contact and completion rates (94% and 86% respectively). Each respondent answered some 150 questions, averaging slightly more than an hour in duration. This poll was unprecedented in its scope, scale and depth of questioning. The poll queried respondents about their level of support for Iran's nuclear program and queried reasons for this support. Participants answered a battery of questions about the perceived economic, political, diplomatic and military benefits and costs of the program and provided insights into policy measures that could contribute to dampening the standoff between Iran and the international community. Iranians were asked about their knowledge of and support for the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) and Iran's commitments therein. They were also queried about their knowledge of other countries' commitments to the NPT and the degree to which they are honoring or reneging upon their commitments. Respondents answered an array of questions to assess levels and sources of threat perception as well as questions eliciting their views on numerous domestic and regional foreign policy concerns. Basic demographic and ethnographic data were collected on respondents. This paper, using this unprecedented dataset, will exposit the correlates of respondents' support for Iran's nuclear program using several outcome variables instrumenting different kinds of support for this program as a function of the different threat perceptions, perceived costs and benefits and anticipated actions of other nuclear-weapon states and non-nuclear weapons states alike. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is widespread agreement among scholars and practitioners that the counterterrorism literature suffers from a lack of primary-source field research.2 The absence of solid ethnographic research has yielded studies that suffer from a lack of rigorous analysis and often result in opinion masquerading as analysis. The lack of field research is also due to a failure to integrate ethnographic research into modeling efforts, as well as a failure more broadly to appreciate the significance of ethnographically valid data in human, social, cultural, and behavioral studies in a systematic investigation of terrorist behavior. The project briefly outlined in this paper seeks to redress this deficiency by combining the strengths of ethnographic field research (collected by social scientists at Penn State) with the sophisticated modeling capabilities of computer scientists (at Carnegie Mellon University). Specifically, we are analyzing data from interview transcripts, news reports, and other open sources concerning the militant activist group Al-Muhajiroun and the terrorist groups Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA) and Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). Using competitive adaptation as a comparative organizational framework, this project focuses on the process by which adversaries learn from each other in complex adaptive systems and tailor their activities to achieve their organizational goals in light of their opponents' actions. Ultimately, we will develop a meso-level model of militant networks that combines insights from political science, organizational theory, psychology, network science, and computational modeling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]