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BACKGROUND: Surveys have found concerningly high levels of agreement that the United States will experience civil war soon. This study assesses variation in expectation of and perceived need for civil war with respondent sociopolitical characteristics, beliefs, firearm ownership, and willingness to engage in political violence. METHODS: Findings are from Wave 2 of a nationally representative annual longitudinal survey of members of the Ipsos KnowledgePanel, conducted May 18-June 8, 2023. All respondents to 2022s Wave 1 who remained in KnowledgePanel were invited to participate. Outcomes are expressed as weighted proportions and adjusted prevalence differences, with p-values adjusted for the false discovery rate and reported as q-values. RESULTS: The completion rate was 84.2%; there were 9385 respondents. After weighting, half the sample was female (50.7%, 95% CI 49.4%, 52.1%); the weighted mean (± standard deviation) age was 48.5 (25.9) years. Approximately 1 respondent in 20 (5.7%, 95% CI 5.1%, 6.4%) agreed strongly or very strongly that in the next few years, there will be civil war in the United States. About 1 in 25 (3.8%, 95% CI 3.2%, 4.4%), and nearly 40% (38.4%, 95% CI 32.3%, 44.5%) of those who strongly or very strongly agreed that civil war was coming, also agreed strongly or very strongly that the United States needs a civil war to set things right. Expectation of and perceived need for civil war were higher among subsets of respondents who in Wave 1 were more willing than others to commit political violence, including MAGA Republicans, persons in strong agreement with racist beliefs or statements of the potential need for violence to effect social change, persons who strongly approved of specified extreme right-wing political organizations and movements, firearm owners who purchased firearms in 2020 or later, and firearm owners who carried firearms in public all or nearly all the time. CONCLUSIONS: In 2023, the expectation that civil war was likely and the belief that it was needed were uncommon but were higher among subsets of the population that had previously been associated with greater willingness to commit political violence. These findings can help guide prevention efforts.

BACKGROUND: A 2022 survey in the USA found concerningly high prevalences of support for and personal willingness to engage in political violence, of beliefs associated with such violence, and of belief that civil war was likely in the near future. It is important to determine the durability of those findings. METHODS: Wave 2 of a nationally representative cohort survey was conducted May 18-June 8, 2023; the sample comprised all respondents to 2022s Wave 1. Outcomes are expressed as weighted proportions; changes from 2022 to 2023 are for respondents who participated in both surveys, based on aggregated individual change scores. RESULTS: The completion rate was 84.2%; there were 9385 respondents. After weighting, 50.7% (95% confidence interval (CI) 49.4%, 52.1%) were female; weighted mean (SD) age was 48.5 (25.9) years. About 1 in 20 respondents (5.7%, 95% CI 5.1%, 6.4%) agreed strongly/very strongly that in the next few years, there will be civil war in the United States, a 7.7% decrease. In 2023, fewer respondents considered violence to be usually/always justified to advance at least 1 of 17 specific political objectives [25.3% (95% CI 24.7%, 26.5%), a 6.8% decrease]. However, more respondents thought it very/extremely likely that within the next few years, in a situation where they consider political violence justified, I will be armed with a gun [9.0% (95% CI 8.3%, 9.8%), a 2.2% increase] and I will shoot someone with a gun [1.8% (95% CI 1.4%, 2.2%), a 0.6% increase]. Among respondents who considered violence usually/always justified to advance at least 1 political objective, about 1 in 20 also thought it very/extremely likely that they would threaten someone with a gun (5.4%, 95% CI 4.0%, 7.0%) or shoot someone (5.7%, 95% CI 4.3%, 7.1%) to advance such an objective. CONCLUSIONS: In this cohort, support for political violence declined from 2022 to 2023, but predictions of firearm use in political violence increased. These findings can help guide prevention efforts, which are urgently needed.

This article applies insight from the field of Black geography to the performance work of Henry Box Brown, a man who in 1849 mailed himself in a large postal crate from slavery in Richmond, Virginia to freedom in Philadelphia, PA. As a mobile subject, Brown had a unique purchase on how space and place could be sources of psychological and physical enslavement but also how they offered speculative geographies of liberation. During the (nearly) half century in which Brown performed, he sought to create an oppositional geography through four specific sites deployed during his performance work in England: the box in which he escaped; the slave ship he reproduced in his performance work; the panoramas he enacted in England until 1863 (with special attention to Brown’s Civil War panorama and its veiled indictment of the UK’s support for the Confederate Army); and the auction block he performed in his stage work during 1857. Geographical reconfiguration was, then, vital to the ways in which Brown manipulated and performed enslavement and to his strategies of performative resistance. Even as Brown demonstrated the omnipresence of enslavement, his geographical wake work struggled to create speculative, potentiate spaces where his fugitivity might be reconfigured. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article assesses the importance of an often-ignored vigilante group; the Catholic Ex-Servicemen's Association. 1969 saw the mobilisation of Irish Catholics in Northern Ireland who had served in the British Army as part of ad-hoc vigilante groups defending nationalist areas. These groups protected Catholic neighbourhoods from loyalist assault and from incursion by the security forces who were increasingly seen as a hostile force. In 1971, this ex-service personnel formed an all-Ireland organisation: the Catholic Ex-Servicemen's Association. At their peak in the early 1970s, they claimed a membership of 17,000 and an ability to mobilise a further 20,000 in a 'doomsday scenario'. CESA's prominence waned by the late 1970s. CESA has received very little academic attention. This article aims to ameliorate that, supplementing the scant secondary literature with newspaper and archival material to account for the emergence of the Catholic Ex-Servicemen's Association, analysing their importance in shaping the trajectory of the Troubles and saying something of the complexities of identity in the nationalist community in the early period of the conflict. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay outlines how Islamic State repressed local communities after conquering much of Iraq's territory in 2014, and how civilians, in turn, responded to insurgent governance. While there are as many ways to survive violence as there are people affected by it, most survival strategies fall into four general categories: flight, cooperation, neutrality, and resistance. Iraqis' experience under the harsh rule of the self-declared caliphate takes center stage, but the analysis includes generalizable lessons about how ordinary civilians survive terrorism, insurgency, and civil war. The essay concludes with an analysis of the core challenges confronting postwar governance in Iraq. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do ordinary citizens view elite-driven, post-conflict constitutional reforms? Established theories emphasize the role of constitutional reform in both postwar democratization and preventing conflict resurgence. This article contends that emphasis on fostering political inclusion and settling conflicts resonates differently across post-conflict societies. Focusing on Nepal, this study draws on a survey implemented with over 1,000 respondents shortly after the ratification of the country's constitution in 2015. The exploratory analysis shows that even when post-conflict constitutions grant greater rights to historically marginalized groups in absolute terms, they may still perceive that greater concessions would be possible; this makes such groups more likely to oppose the constitution and more likely to prefer extended negotiation periods. Conversely, Nepalis exposed to higher violence during the Maoist insurgency from 1996 to 2006 view the constitution as the conclusion of the peace process and are more supportive of the constitution and opposed to longer negotiation periods. The analysis further highlights that some excluded groups were less likely to learn about constitutional negotiations at all. We identify new pathways influencing the democratic legitimacy of post-conflict constitutions, offering insights for internal and external stakeholders involved in constitutional reform processes and their aftermath. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Revenge, estrangement, nihilism. These are the main feelings identified by historians to describe the political culture and anthropology of the subversive far right, from the second post-war period to the years of terrorism. Social scientists have placed at the centre of their analysis the radical right's process of coming to terms with the grief caused by the defeat of the fascist regimes in the Second World War. The emphasis on pessimism, however, has pushed into the background the specificity of the elaboration of defeat within right-wing radicalism. The efforts of far-right intellectuals, in fact, had been aimed at overcoming 'nostalgism', that particular form of political melancholy, widespread in neo-fascism, which led to regret rather than overcome the fascist experience. In this perspective, the outbreak of global protest in the 1960s opened a difficult generational confrontation within the Italian far right. Neo-fascist youth movements rediscovered the myth of the 'fascist revolution in its original form'. The division even ran through families, opposing veterans of the Italian Social Republic with extra-parliamentary militants who later entered underground terrorism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Medical missionaries made a breakthrough in Korean history in healing and caring for many Hansen and tuberculosis patients. There was a missionary who had no less good influence than medical missionaries at this time. The person is missionary Sarah Barry, who inspired and developed one of the most influential student movements in South Korea. The aim of the present study is to examine life of Sarah Barry and her ministry, focusing upon her positive influences on Korean intellectuals. The relevance of the study is conditioned by the fact that there is no professional academic research on her ministry except for one short paper, which discusses the importance of her role in formulating campus evangelism. In order to achieve the aim of the study, the method of analysis and synthesis of biographical and historical data was used. As a result of the study, Sarah Barry's biography was researched and systematized. It gave ground to a conclusion that her role in South Korea's gradual resurgence after the Civil War was seminal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the effects of civil conflicts in Burundi on its economic performance. The analysis of the structural effects using a structural VAR model points to the long-lasting effects of a civil conflict shock on economic growth in Burundi. After 10 years, the effect on economic growth is still noticeable. The cumulative effect of a civil conflict shock is found to be a 7.1% decrease in economic growth over a horizon of 10 years. Using the Synthetic Control method, estimates indicate that the Burundian civil war led to an average GDP per capita decline of approximately 138 dollars per annum, compared to what it would have been in the absence of war. The average annual loss as a percentage of the counterfactual GDP per capita is 34%. The total monetary cost of the war during this period is estimated at USD 1514 per person and almost 10 billion USD for the entire country. The estimated effects are robust to placebo checks conducted. We compare these results with costs of conflict in other countries to better understand the relative financial burden of the civil war. The study highlights the need to consolidate peace to achieve long-term economic development in Burundi. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article seeks to provide an answer to the question, "Why is China dismissive of India's great power ambitions?" It argues that China's dismissiveness of India's great power ambitions is explained by cognitive bias towards India based on its colonization and freedom struggle. This is because India was formally colonized by Great Britain, but China was never formally colonized. Second, India won its freedom from British colonial/imperial rule through a nonviolent struggle unlike China, which fought a bloody war of liberation against Japan and a civil war leading to the formation of the People's Republic of China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rise in splinter groups within rebel movements and opposition groups has serious implications for conflict resolution efforts. Yet existing literature has not sufficiently touched on the key implications and factors that lead to the split and fragmentation of rebel groups. One of the conflicts that have been impacted by the problem of fragmentation of warring parties is the South Sudan conflict. The Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM) has experienced internal fragmentation historically during the struggle for independence from Sudan and today during the civil war that began in 2011. New groups have emerged claiming to be paying allegiance to leaders and pursuing a different course. This paper argues that internal fragmentation within the SPLM constitutes a serious threat to peace in Africa's youngest nation. The author examines the motivations behind such fragmentations and their implication in the understanding of the South Sudan prolonged conflict. The paper begins by examining the causes of the South Sudan conflict and the patterns of violence, and it assesses wartime governance and the fragmentation of the groups. The study concludes with a set of recommendations for the resolution of the conflict. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Civil War allegiance has long been a preoccupation of early modern British historians. They have weighed geographical, religious, political, and pragmatic reasons for British people to choose sides in 1642. A study of the changes of allegiance in the years that followed is just as important. Side-changing reveals the fractures and difficulties that war, regime change, and an uneasy peace created. Most scholarship has examined figures whose ideas and beliefs remained consistent as the world around them changed. This article argues that others changed their minds (and their side) because their ideas fundamentally shifted, through an engagement with oppositional literature, a royalist social environment, and relationships built with royalist agents. Through a case study of the parliamentarian Major-General Sir Thomas Myddelton it examines this process of change. The article takes the study of allegiance into the Interregnum and beyond to the Restoration, tracing the impact of Myddelton's reading, experiences, and actions upon his declared loyalty. To do this, the article proposes a methodology that cuts across historical approaches, using evidence from financial accounts, libraries, and legal cases alongside surviving correspondence and printed pamphlets to build a composite image of a changing mind. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the impact of exposure to armed conflict on fertility in Sri Lanka. Using a difference-in-difference methodology, I find that exposure to civil war led to a reduction in female fertility in Sri Lanka, with evidence of an increased female age at marriage in high-conflict districts as a mechanism. The paper further focuses on ethnic disparities in demographic adjustments triggered by exposure to conflict. It determines if conflict altered the fertility patterns of the Sinhalese majority and the Sri Lankan Tamil minority differently. Estimates suggest that there is a differential in fertility adjustments of the two ethnic groups in response to conflict: the reduction in crude birth rate was significantly smaller for the Sri Lankan Tamils compared to the Sinhalese across various model specifications. The presence of an ethnic group-level replacement effect led to a lesser reduction in fertility for Sri Lankan Tamils. These results contribute to the literature on the impact of armed conflict and underscore the importance of studying demographic adjustments by sub-groups, specifically ethnicity in this context, as the intensity of adjustment often varies with the socio-political vulnerability of the group. Understanding these disparities is crucial as a sustained demographic differential has the potential to impact the ethnic composition of Sri Lanka and may further crystallize the ethnic divide in an already volatile political setting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Militias hamper state‐building by undermining the government's monopoly of violence, which creates an environment of anarchy. Yet many governments collaborate with them. These pro‐government militias (PGMs), such as paramilitary groups, are not only a poor‐country phenomenon, that is, economic growth does not seem to eradicate these armed nonstate actors: Intriguingly, cross‐country data reveals a U‐shaped relationship between GDP per capita and PGM presence. This article presents an economic theory of PGM supply that can explain this puzzling relationship and provide actionable ways for international actors (e.g., UN) to discourage the emergence of PGMs. However, the theory also cautions that some common international policies (e.g., development aid) may unintentionally encourage PGM supply. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Between 1965 and 1988, Gordon Tullock dramatically altered his view of the infamous Dred Scott v. Sandford decision of 1857 (Dred Scott v. Sandford. (1857). 60 U.S. 393.). In 1965, Tullock maintained the orthodox view that Dred Scott was incorrectly decided and justifiably reversed by the bloodshed of the Civil War. By the 1980s, Tullock changed his view, asserting instead that Dred Scott correctly interpreted a pro-slavery and racist Constitution. He maintained his earlier views on the emancipationist purpose of the Civil War in reversing Dred Scott. This paper explores Tullock's evolving understanding of the Dred Scott decision, the Civil War, and the Battle of Gettysburg through the interpretive lenses of constitutional mythology and Civil War memory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article documents a covert propaganda and civil society operation perpetrated by a consortium of Western governments, private contractors, and NGOs to justify and facilitate regime change in Syria by whitewashing and assisting rebel groups. Using leaked documents from key government contractors, corroborated with journalistic, academic, NGO, and government research already released, the author outlines their rebel media infrastructure to create news stories and feed them to Syrian, regional, and international outlets. This propaganda synergized with administrative programs that built social services in rebel-held territories, constructing media and civil society façades of legitimacy and liberalism for rebel militias. The consortium created the White Helmets, who recorded themselves providing services while documenting supposed war crimes, to serve as a bridge between these propaganda and civil society missions. The author argues that the controlled spaces of full-spectrum intellectual warfare created by this consortium, coordinating state-supported media and civil society and obfuscating it behind private and non-profit entities, can help scholars understand the narrative battles surrounding the Syrian conflict and gain insight into the evolving role of media and information warfare in the 21st century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the grand strategy of the Government of Sri Lanka (GoSL) vs. the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) during 2006–2009. It examines the conflict in terms of civil war and history, explores the concept of grand strategy, and suggests a typology of ways to bring change (Fight, Cooperate, Manipulate) along with a definition. The article argues that the grand strategic decision to Fight ended the LTTE's insurgency, and concludes that any sustainable political solution, let alone peace, should follow military victory, not the other way around. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article "Final Resting Places: Reflections on the Meaning of Civil War Graves" discusses the significance of Civil War graves and memorial practices. Editors Brian Matthew Jordan and Jonathan W. White explore the enduring power of Civil War graves as a prism through which successive generations have viewed and understood the conflict. The collection of essays delves into various themes surrounding death, memory, and the landscapes of Civil War graves, offering a diverse and thought-provoking perspective on the topic. [Extracted from the article]

This article explores the development of mass Black migration plans to Hawai'i and the Philippines both before and after emancipation. Through a transnational archival collection, it analyzes the political, intellectual, social, and material conditions that Black activists and white statecrafters faced in their attempts to secure state funding for Black migration within an ever-expanding US empire. From Northern white abolitionist cotton planters in Hawai'i to radical Black socialists employed by the US state in the Philippines, the complexities of Black colonization in the Pacific offer a fresh look at a Civil War Era and a Black internationalism largely fixated on the Atlantic World. In the end, this article argues that colonization in the Black Pacific reveals a deep and abiding dialectic between US slavery and its overseas empire--a relationship too often obscured by the existing historiography. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The definition of the concept of war crimes is studied in a transdisciplinary course in the close connection of criminal and international law. The author's position regarding the legal definition of the terms «war», «military conflict», «armed «conflict», «laws and customs of war», «aggression» and their combination is formulated and substantiated. It has been confirmed that the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court provides for the definition of war crimes, taking into account Art. 6 of the Statute of the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg, and recognizes war crimes as gross, serious violations of the laws and customs of war with a significantly expanded list of such violations. And this, taking into account the national interests of Ukraine, is enshrined in Art. 438 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine. It is proven that wars and armed conflicts: 1) are not identical concepts and it is incorrect to combine them in terms of content, apparently partially; 2) war is a type of military conflict, which is characterized by bilateral use of military force and 3) war can be a military conflict of a non-international character only in the case of civil war, which in the civilized world should be cut off forever through diplomatic efforts and peaceful resolution of conflict problems with respect for rights people and nations. Focused attention on the need for further terminological improvement of the edition of a number of international documents and Art. 438 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine from the point of view of the further implementation of the principle of the rule of law and its key element - the legal certainty of the norms that determine criminal responsibility for the committed act. The author considers it expedient and offers a way to solve the problem of the correctness of the use of the legal construct «laws and customs of war» in the specified article and in international norms (primarily the so-called «Hague laws» and «Geneva laws»). Opinions are expressed regarding the adoption of a decision at the international level to ban wars as military conflicts of an international nature and any armed conflicts as phenomena unacceptable for humanity, and to criminalize violations of the ban on wars at the national level. The term «aggression» is presented as having a defining psychological component, which calls into question the validity of its use to characterize military conflicts as a type of war. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reconciliation is a central theme in Plutarch's political reflections, prominently discussed in his treatise Praecepta gerendae reipublicae. In this work, Plutarch criticizes the competitive nature of the aristocrats of his own time, which often led to factional conflicts (στάσεις) necessitating Roman intervention. Thus, he advocates for reconciliation as a proactive strategy to prevent warfare and maintain state harmony (ὁμόνοια). These considerations are crucial for interpreting certain passages in the Life of Pompey, where Plutarch reflects in depth on the dynamics that led to the Civil War of 49 BCE. In this biography, Pompey is criticized for rejecting Caesar's proposals for reconciliation, viewing this refusal as the direct cause of the civil war's outbreak. However, the deeper reason for the conflict is identified in the rivalry among Pompey, Caesar, and Crassus, which had been skilfully masked by their apparent friendship, achieved in part through the reconciliation between Pompey and Crassus. The Life of Pompey thus adds a layer of complexity to the explicit lessons of the Praecepta; nevertheless, it does not contradict them, since Plutarch's ultimate concern, both in the Moralia and the Lives, is the preservation of concord within the state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The European Union (EU) experienced two major instances of refugee influx: in 2015, refugees, mainly from Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq fled civil war, persecution, and dire conditions in neighbouring countries and in 2022, Ukrainians fled from Russia’s full-scale invasion. Fusing theoretical insights on framing and crisification of migration, we ask: How do EU actors frame situations of refugee mass influx? Employing a Discourse Network Analysis, we examine EU representatives’ framing of both instances with respect to three analytical foci: (1) who or what they considered to be in crisis, (2) their framing of refugees; and (3) who they saw to be responsible for solving the crisis. We show how, in 2015, EU representatives framed mass displacement predominantly as a crisis at and of Europe’s borders, and refugees as threats to Member States’ public, economic and cultural security. In contrast, in 2022, crisis framings are almost absent or pertain to Ukraine’s – and by extension the EU’s – security. Ukrainian protection seekers are framed as ethnically and culturally similar and their protection as a humanitarian imperative. Our analysis empirically substantiates debates about double standards in refugee governance and draws attention to actor constellations and the factors that shape crisification of mobility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1912, Ikaria, a Greek island in the North Aegean Sea, seceded from the Ottoman Empire in a short-lived Revolution, becoming the independent ‘Free State of Ikaria’ for nearly five months. Consequently, a culture of radicalism grew on the island, fuelled by emerging fascism in Greece and Europe, WWII, andthe Greek Civil War (1946–1949), where Ikaria was used as a prison for communist exiles. Ultimately, this radicalism transitioned into the diaspora, which had simultaneously been growing in Egypt, the United States, and from the 1910s, Australia, with South Australia being a significant place of settlement and community. This study examines the Ikarian diaspora in the context of the Ikarian Revolution (1912) and subsequent political radicalism. It explores their emigration, settlement, and community building practices in the United States, Egypt, and Australia, with South Australia taken as a case study due to its origins at the same time as the Revolution and growing left-wing activism on the island. It hopes to unravel and link the diaspora with the unique story and memory of the Revolution and its impacts on Ikarian culture and identity. Ultimately, it is argued that the revolutionary tendencies cultivated on Ikaria transferred into and persisted in the diaspora. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article is devoted to the problems and perspectives of the theory of separation of powers. The general aspects of the theory of separation of powers are outlined. The authors say that the multiplicity of types of power and types of social norms and factors, that ensure them, shows that separation is inherent to the phenomenon of power. It was noted that the issue of separation of powers has an important theoretical and practical significance and is closely related to the classification of political regimes into totalitarian, authoritarian, democratic and liberal. It was emphasized that, contrary to the established stereotype, the separation of powers, in certain forms, existed long before the epoch of Ch.L. de Montesquieu. It is noted that the ideas of separation of powers long before J. Locke and Ch.L. de Montesquieu was also expressed by Aristotle and Marsilius of Padua. It was substantiated that, in fact, the separation of powers has existed in some forms since the very beginnings of statehood. So, the theory of the separation of powers does not arise, but is only actualized in the XVII-XVIII centuries in connection with the struggle of the bourgeoisie against absolutism and feudal-clerical orders. It was noted that existence of the separation of powers for a long time before the period of the bourgeois society says that the separation of powers, as such, does not protect society from slavery and serfdom, arbitrariness and tyranny, inquisition and oppression, but, on the contrary, can increase the number of tyrants, independent of each other. The authors say that the separation of powers into the legislative, executive and judicial branches does not protect society from tyranny and usurpation of power by one party, while the incompleteness of the separation of powers (in particular, in the countries of the Anglo-Saxon legal family) does not turn the state into a tyranny. The authors pay attention to the critical view on the separation of powers in the works of J. Bodin, T. Hobbes, G.F. Szerszeniewicz, who say that the real separation of powers is dangerous to the unity of the state. It was emphasized that the theory of separation of powers contradicts the basic characteristics of the state sovereignty, defined by J. Bodin, because if the power is limited and separated into several branches, then it cannot be unified, supreme, absolute and permanent. The historical experience of different riots, rebellions and civil wars, that confirms the validity of the mentioned concerns, was provided. It was noted that the separation of powers in the state can have only a functional nature. It was noted that excessive separation of powers can paralyze state management or significantly complicate the system of state authorities and intensify the struggle between them, which will contribute to the establishment of a dictatorship. The authors support the position of G.F. Szerszeniewicz that the «legal self-limitation of the state» is a fiction and indicate that, theoretically, the limitation of the state by law is most likely in the states of the Anglo-Saxon, religious or traditional legal family, where the legislation, created by the state, is not the main source of law. Following B. Constant, it was stated that, in fact, the number of branches of power in the state is much greater than 3, and it was noted that, in particular, in modern Ukraine, we can talk about 9 branches of government, which creates the need to rethink the classical postulates of the theory of the separation of powers and the mechanism of checks and balances, as well as the necessity of expansion and addition of the typology of political regimes, etc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ending civil conflict is difficult, particularly through negotiated settlements. The research finds that the durability of peace guaranteed through a negotiated settlement can be affected when the opposing elites politicize the concessions made with rebels. Through politicization, the space in societal acceptance of rebels in post-war negotiations can be used by the opposing elites to gain a political support base, thereby challenging the delicate power-sharing agreement. Further, the politicization of the deal remains a hindrance to the sequencing of Transitional Justice (TJ) goals making the society more polarized and pushing it to violence, as the transition from the civil war to peace needs compromise and calculated sequencing of goals of TJ. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractThis article intends to interrogate a common figure that seems to have become accepted in research concerning the number of the ʿAlawis in Syria during the last century. A thorough examination of the dramatic shifts in Syria during the last decades, mainly from the rise of the Asad family to power in 1970, indicates that the number of the ʿAlawis in the Syrian population has diminished gradually, while the number of the Sunni majority remains relatively high. Apart from official surveys and assessments, this study takes into consideration several factors, such as religious conservatism, socio-economic status, immigration into the country, urbanization and other aspects. All the relevant factors indicate that the number of ʿAlawis in the eve of the civil war (2011) was significantly lower than accepted in research, a conclusion that sheds new light on the degree of the threat to their survival which the sect has faced during this conflict. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Francoist Spain, food and hunger were empathically politicized and, though conspicuously absent from State discourses, Spain's infamous 'hunger years' (1939–1952) pervade Spanish fiction. Literature is a particularly illuminating medium for (re)constructing (post)memories of food and hunger, as historiography underscores how trauma, shame and censorship refract memories of hunger. By interrogating the politics of food and hunger in the post-Civil War novel, fictionalized memoirs and postmemory texts, this article unpacks how Republican, Nationalist, sexual, gender and memory politics intersect, building on the burgeoning field of food cultural studies in Spain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims to explain the pattern of state sponsorship of civil wars in Afghanistan, Syria, and Yemen. Recent studies have improved our scholarly understanding of decisions regarding intervention and sponsorship. Yet, our understanding of state sponsorship decision in conflict that precedes an escalation remains limited. Herein, I develop a multicausal framework to analyze state sponsorship decisions, employing fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis to account for state support. The results suggest novel insights into how strategic interests drive states to influence civil war dynamics for desired benefits. Contrary to conventional wisdom, bilateral rivalry alone does not guarantee a sponsorship decision. States tend to support when they perceive opportunities that are aligned with their economic interests or when countering transnational threats from violent non-state actors who are backed by another state. These findings elucidate how initial state sponsorship decisions might relate to conflict escalation over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After the defeat of Poitiers, a storm of chaos swept over France, threatening the French government. Amidst these events, which included the Paris Revolution, the Reform Movement in the Estates-General, the civil war on the part of some feudal factions, the tangled political conspiracies, and the complex relations with England, the figure of Robert Lecock emerged, described by some as a pioneer in the Estates-General, and one of the most skilled and dangerous figures of the time. This man had a major role, as he took advantage of the unfortunate circumstances after the defeat at Poitiers and played a major role in the EstatesGeneral. Robert Lecock had a great influence on the political scene, whether this influence was overt or covert. Despite the difference between contemporaries about his personality, between blame and admiration, he succeeded in gaining the trust of all parties, and was for a period of time the actual ruler of the country by controlling the Royal Council and the Crown Prince. But he lost everything in the end, after he threw himself into the arms of Charles the Bad, King of Navarre, enemy of the French kingdom and ally of England, and that was his end as a clergyman and statesman. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the end of the Civil War, courts consistently misread and under-utilized the historical sources available when interpreting the scope and meaning of the Reconstruction Amendments. Even as historians updated their understandings of Reconstruction history, the courts lagged, shackling themselves to incorrect historical accounts and outdated precedents. Entering the twenty-first century, the Supreme Court engaged in a more thorough historical review of Reconstruction, prompting historians to question whether the Court was beginning to finally utilize Reconstruction history correctly. Students for Fair Admissions answers this question: No. This Note describes the history of the Court’s limited review of Reconstruction sources, notes the perceived shift to increased historical review in more recent cases, and outlines Students for Fair Admissions and its uniquely extensive, yet still underwhelming, review of history. Finally, and most crucially, this Note points to sources that were easily accessible to and missing from the opinions in Students for Fair Admissions to argue that the Court continues to misinterpret the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment through a flawed approach to Reconstruction history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Forty years after its publication, Theda Skocpol's States and Social Revolutions confronts us with a series of questions: Are social revolutions different today compared with 50 years ago, and if yes in what ways and why? What is the state of the study of Revolutions in political science and sociology? More generally, how do we understand and relate to social revolutions in the post-Cold War world? Why do we pay more attention to civil wars now compared with then – and vice versa? If the 40th anniversary of Theda Skocpol's path-breaking book forces these questions on us, answering them opens up fundamental concerns about how we approach the study of social phenomena and the way we are embedded, as social scientists, into the politics of our world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although conflict issues – the stated goals of actors engaged in conflict – hold a privileged position in many theoretical explanations of the occurrence, dynamics, and resolution of civil war, global issue data are scarce beyond datasets that focus on specific thematic areas. This article aims to bring issues into the forefront of civil war scholarship by presenting the UCDP Conflict Issues Dataset (CID). This global yearly dataset contains 14,832 conflict issues – divided, at the most disaggregated level, into 120 sub-categories – raised by armed non-state groups involved in intrastate armed conflict in 1989-2017. By bringing issues back in, the UCDP CID provides opportunities to reevaluate several central questions about the onset, duration, intensity, and resolution of civil war. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How can people talk about the past in a deeply fractured society, wounded by two centuries of colonial and postcolonial violence? In Oran—Algeria's second‐largest city—people find creative ways to speak without speaking about unspeakable pasts. They do this by creating poetic parallelism between urban forms—from skeletons of buildings to martyr images—in everyday speech and image‐events. In poetics, parallelism deploys similar linguistic forms to suggest equivalence of meaning for certain effects. In everyday life, parallelism is emergent social action that brings new publics to life through its performance. This parallelism enables ordinary people to talk to each other across entrenched sociopolitical divides, especially in contexts of authoritarian censorship. Through poetic parallelism, Oranis revivify the martyrs of independence as agentive witnesses to their decaying city's housing crisis. In doing so, they reconfigure the relationship between the colonial past and postcolonial present. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Do UN missions reduce forced displacement? Facing insecure environments, civilians are left with three choices: staying; moving to a safer community; or moving outside their country. Their aspiration and ability to move depend on individual characteristics and macro-level factors, such as the social, economic and political context in which these people live. Research shows that UN missions can impact and reset the macro-level context altered by war, especially in the security and economic domain. However, we lack empirical evidence on whether this impact helps UN peacekeeping tackle forced displacement and returns. This article offers the first global analysis of whether and how UN missions can shape aggregate population movements during civil wars. We combine data on outflows and returns of refugees and internally displaced people (IDPs) with data on distinct UN missions' features that we expect to affect population movements, namely the size of their contingents and their mandated tasks. Using matched samples, we find that the unfolding of the outflows and inflows processes are affected by different features of UN missions. Sizeable deployments decrease IDPs flows and encourage their return; refugee outflows, on the other hand, may increase in presence of UN missions. Furthermore, missions with displacement-related mandates are associated with decreasing IDP flows overall, but only encourage refugees' returns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article studies the long-run effects of slavery and restrictive Jim Crow institutions on Black Americans' economic outcomes. We track individual-level census records of each Black family from 1850 to 1940 and extend our analysis to neighborhood-level outcomes in 2000 and surname-based outcomes in 2023. We show that Black families whose ancestors were enslaved until the Civil War have considerably lower education, income, and wealth than Black families whose ancestors were free before the Civil War. The disparities between the two groups have persisted substantially because most families enslaved until the Civil War lived in states with strict Jim Crow regimes after slavery ended. In a regression discontinuity design based on ancestors' enslavement locations, we show that Jim Crow institutions sharply reduced Black families' economic progress in the long run. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following the Mongol invasion of China, the Yuan (1260–1368) dynasty was the first political regime to introduce a precious metal standard and deploy paper money as the sole legal tender. Drawing on a new dataset on money issues, prices, warfare, imperial grants, taxation, natural disasters, and population, we find that a silver standard initially consolidated the Chinese currency market. However, persistent fiscal pressures eventually compelled rulers to ease the monetary standard, and a fiat standard was adopted. We show that inflation was high in the early and late periods of the dynasty but remained moderate for nearly half a century. We find that military pressure, particularly civil war, generated fiscal demands that led to the over‐issuance of money. By contrast, natural disasters and imperial grants did not trigger the over‐issue of money. Warfare was much more likely to increase paper money issues under the fiat standard than during the silver standard period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores rebel legitimacy building by investigating rebel network formation during civil wars. Through a longitudinal study of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, it examines various mechanisms through which a non-state armed group (NSAG) embellishes and enhances its legitimacy among domestic and international support networks. The research also theorizes the complex interaction between domestic and international legitimacy, when and why NSAGs prioritizes politically prestigious network over initial resource-based one, and the impact of the shift on rebel behavior. The causal process explores how rebels' legitimacy consideration affects their lobbying and coalition-building efforts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

President Abraham Lincoln's tenure is often heralded for its profound influence on the socio-political fabric of the USA, yet its economic implications, particularly through the lens of monetary policy, are equally transformative. As the nation found itself ensnared in the throes of the Civil War, Lincoln's administration faced not only a military insurrection but also an economic quandary of monumental proportions. Lincoln, recognising the limitations of traditional gold-backed currency and the dispersed state banking system, advocated for a bold reconfiguration of national monetary policy. This reconfiguration was predicated on two groundbreaking initiatives: the issuance of 'greenbacks'—legal tender not backed by gold but by the government's promise—and the establishment of a national banking system under the National Banking Acts of 1863 and 1864. It is within this context that Lincoln's monetary strategies emerged as a cornerstone for the Union's eventual triumph. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Youngsters participate as combatants at the forefront of armed conflicts around the globe, be it as part of state forces, as members of rebel groups, or as drivers of armed civilian resistance. This contribution explores the social trajectories of (ex-)civil self-defense militia members in Peru who fought alongside the state forces to defeat the Maoist rebels of Shining Path in the 1980 and 1990s. On the one hand, by taking the Peruvian Comités de Autodefensa (CAD) as a somewhat atypical case-study, the article aims to enhance a more nuanced understanding of youth as drivers of and participants in civil war violence which transcends the victim-perpetrator dichotomy. On the other, by analyzing the social trajectories of CAD leaders and members from their youth until the present, it seeks to gain insight into ex-combatants' claims for recognition, reparation and citizenship in the aftermath of armed conflict. The trajectories of the CAD members demonstrate how the morality of soldiering, steered by ideas about masculinity, militarism and patriotism, gets intertwined with structural societal conditions such as the lack of educational and economic perspectives for youngsters, and the state's failure to provide protection and security against rebel group violence to those who might need it most. In the aftermath of the conflict, militia service and the corresponding macho warrior identity form a basis of demands for inclusion by an historically marginalized rural population group. The findings on the Peruvian self-defense committees presented in this article have several implications for research and policy in the fields of Transitional Justice and Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration, and open both thematic and conceptual avenues for further research into civilian participation in armed conflicts around the globe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The assassination of Ignacio Ellacuría and seven others at the Universidad Centroamericana José Simeon Cañas (UCA) in San Salvador in 1989 has had a deep and profound impact on the world-wide Jesuit community and the Catholic Church. His philosophy and theology of liberation have been carefully studied, as has his vision and operation of the UCA which was rooted in the preferential option for the poor. This preferential option for the poor at UCA was practised at a time of extreme oppression of the ordinary people and during a brutal civil war in El Salvador. This article provides a concise examination of his life, work and vision for the university and the lasting influence of his ideas on Jesuit thinking on social justice, social outreach and the Catholic university. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why do civilians engage in Civilian Defence Forces (CDFs) to confront insurgents if it is more dangerous than pacific resistance? This paper addresses two cases of peasant-centric CDFs in southern Tolima, Colombia. Based on secondary sources and interviews, a rich historical account of the CDFs is presented, allowing the application of process tracing for analysis. A framework to explain CDFs, recognising the interweaving of local security dilemmas and the macro-cleavage of the civil war, is proposed. Three determinants were found: previous participation of civilians in organised violence, legitimation of violent responses and the cooptation of community conflict resolution institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]