Blog Posts
Posted by Håvard Hegre, Nils W. Metternich, Julian Wucherpfennig & Håvard Mokleiv Nygård on Wednesday, 2 August 2017
Driven by the ever-increasing availability of (big) data, as well as computational power and resources, we are currently witnessing an important academic debate about the promises and pitfalls of predicting social and human behavior. Given its potentially disastrous consequences, the prediction of armed conflict and political violence more generally, not surprisingly takes a central place in this discussion. Why should we welcome this debate, what is the current state of the art, and what are some key future challenges? A special issue on forecasting in peace research published earlier this year in the Journal of Peace Research addresses these and ...
Two books were launched earlier this week from the East Asian Peace (EAP) program at Uppsala University, led by Stein Tønnesson of PRIO and Uppsala University. One is a monograph by the program director, Stein Tønnesson, Explaining the East Asian Peace, the other a volume edited by Elin Bjarnegård & Joakim Kreutz, Debating the East Asian Peace. The EAP is a very impressive program. The two books take on a key issue in the debate about the decline of war, the disproportionate reduction in conflict in East Asia. They provide a large range of different explanations for the East Asian Peace. ...
Posted by Halvard Buhaug on Sunday, 12 February 2017
Despite rapid scientific progress, firm knowledge about the societal consequences of global warming remains limited. What are the implications of climate change for peace and security? Should we expect more wars and more political instability as the world heats up? The real concerns linked to climate change are not about shrinking glaciers, eroding coastlines, or changes in precipitation patterns. Nor, strictly speaking, are they about coral bleaching, phenological changes, or species migration. The primary grounds for concern relate to the consequences these physical changes will have for societal development and prosperity, including human well-being and physical security. It is somewhat ...
Donald Trump has made statements sceptical of military interventions in the Middle East. This is perhaps a rare piece of good news. Military intervention as a means of building democracy has once again become a hot topic. The Norwegian government has been criticized due to the consequences of the intervention in Libya. Hillary Clinton has been branded a hawk because she is seen as more willing to use military force than Obama. Some supporters of Bernie Sanders seemed to prefer Trump to Clinton, in the hope that Trump would be less interventionist. Democracies rarely if ever go to war with ...
‘Calculations made by a former president of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters, with the assistance of historians from a number of countries, show that since 3600 BC, the world has known only 292 years of peace. Since 650 BC, there have been 1,656 arms races. Sixteen of them ended in economic collapse, the rest in war.’ This story, or slight variations of it, has been circulating in the media for well over 60 years. Military periodicals, in both East and West, as well as journals published by the peace movement, have taken this story at face value. This ...
In making the choice between pessimism and optimism, it may be a risky business to lean on everyday news. Let us rather have a look at figures that reveal more long-term tendencies. Steven Pinker’s book The Better Angels of Our Nature, published in 2011, painted an optimistic picture of mankind emerging from its violent past. Since then, however, the trend has gone in the wrong direction. My work on a book in Norwegian on the same topic has been conducted during this reversal. The US election has changed this reversal into fears of a major and dramatic setback, if we ...
Headlines from battlefields in Syria, Libya, Nigeria, Afghanistan, and Ukraine give the impression that the world is becoming ever more violent. Indeed, since 2013 the number of armed conflicts in the world and the number of battle deaths has risen. Fortunately, the long-term trends nevertheless driving the waning of war are still at work. Since the Korean War, battle casualties have been declining. As a result of the civil wars in Syria and Iraq, casualties have risen to the highest level in 25 years, but are still far below levels of the Cold War. The number of conflicts has also risen in 2013 and 2014, ...
Posted by Ragnhild Nordås on Friday, 8 April 2016
Is it just religious fanatics who blow themselves up as suicide bombers? Bernt Hagtvet, Professor of Political Science at the University of Oslo, has been active in the Norwegian media lately, stating that only religion (he focuses mostly on Islam) brings the fervor to commit suicide attacks as part of a political struggle – or “only religious totalitarian movements have capabilities to create a fanaticism strong enough to suicide.” This is not true. Firstly, there is ample evidence showing that a deterministic relationship between suicide missions and having a religious agenda or ideology is wrong. It is right that more ...
The century of peace. The 20th century laid the foundations for what could make our century a century of peace. The 20th century is often referred to as the bloodiest in human history. Towards the end of that century, the historians Eric Hobsbawm, Gabriel Kolko and Niall Ferguson published general narratives entitled, respectively, Age of Extremes, Century of War, and The War of the World. Last year there were many publications warning against the outbreak of a new world war of the same kind as the one unleashed by the Guns of August one hundred years earlier. Yet, in spite ...
More aid workers are being targeted in violent attacks than ever before, but the roots of humanitarian insecurity have nuanced and surprising causes. Syria. Afghanistan. Mali. Central African Republic. Today’s complex conflicts seem to be defined by insurgents, terrorist groups and other violent actors with ideologies that increasingly disregard the rules of war. Over 150,000 people died in conflicts around the world last year, with a further 59 million displaced – the highest total ever recorded. Troublingly, aid worker attacks have increased in tandem. Headlines relay stories of humanitarian aid workers caught in the middle, killed either in the fog of war – or ...
The UN’s new Sustainable Development Goals are ready for adoption. For the first time, the UN will measure the incidence of one of the most controversial, but important, development indicators: the amount of armed conflict in the world. On 25 September this year, a UN summit will adopt the new Sustainable Development Goals. These will replace the Millennium Development Goals dating from 2000, which expire this year. Originally Norway pressed for the Millennium Development Goals to include the goal of a more peaceful society. This turned out to be too controversial. Several countries feared that such a goal would legitimize ...
Posted by Håvard Mokleiv Nygård & Carl Henrik Knutsen on Monday, 10 August 2015
In Zaïre (currently DR Congo) in 1991, the country’s personalist ruler Mobutu Sese Seko faced popular unrest, army mutinies, and shrinking resources for patronage. Mobutu was seemingly starting to lose his grip on power, which he had held since the mid-1960s. In response, Mobutu ended the decades-long ban on political parties other than his own Popular Movement of the Revolution, promised free and fair elections, and entered into a coalition government. Yet, a couple of years later ‒ after the situation had “calmed down”, and after having shored up army support ‒ Mobutu reversed the liberalization measures. Almost 150 years ...
Posted by Erica Chenoweth on Monday, 29 June 2015
In his article in the May 2015 issue of APSR, Evgeny Finkel makes a splash by arguing that exposure to “selective repression” (such as surveillance, beatings, arrests, and torture) helps dissidents to develop a robust skill set with which to maintain enduring resistance later on. He supports this argument with data from an unlikely case—Nazi repression against three Jewish ghettos during the Holocaust—and shows how operational skills (the “resister’s toolkit”) often develop as an indirect result of past exposure to state repression. These skills then help dissidents to remain active in resistance even when the state is engaging in widespread, ...
Posted by Nic Marsh on Wednesday, 17 June 2015
The film The Lord of War and high profile trial of Victor Bout helped to seal in the public imagination the image of an illicit arms trafficker as being someone who smuggled planeloads of Kalashnikovs around the world and into war zones. Such characters do exist, but the reality of firearms trafficking (especially outside war zones) is very different. With two exceptions, the 48 participating countries did not have wars on their territories, so the study provides a picture of trafficking associated with criminality (and crime accounts for far more deaths than armed conflict). Some of the findings from the study show ...
Posted by Nic Marsh on Thursday, 21 May 2015
PRIO is a partner in a new global homicide monitor that has just been published. Hosted by the Igarapé Institute in Brazil, the monitor presents counts and estimates of global homicide over the period 2000-2014 and is intended to provoke reflection and stimulate debate. The Monitor reports 437,000 homicides in 2012, the last year for which global estimates are available. A small number of countries account for a disproportionately large share of the global burden of homicide. For example, it is estimated that 2 out of every 5 people murdered around the world live in Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, Venezuela or South Africa. ...
Posted by Rebecca Bryant on Monday, 18 May 2015
Northern Cyprus held the second round of its presidential election on 26 April, with Mustafa Akıncı defeating the incumbent President, Derviş Eroğlu. Rebecca Bryant writes on what the result of the election might mean for the people of northern Cyprus and future negotiations with the Greek Cypriot-controlled Republic of Cyprus. She notes that while Akıncı’s victory has been met with euphoria on both sides of the island, all indications are that he will not only work toward a federation, but will also seek to defend the interests of Turkish Cypriots. Entrenched political parties are crumbling these days in the Eastern Mediterranean. The ...
Political violence correlates strongly with climate: Civil conflict risk is seven to ten times higher in dry and tropical climates than in continental climate zones. Yet, there is little evidence that climatic variability and change are important in understanding this pattern. The prospect of climate change causing forced migration and food and economic insecurity, meanwhile, raises new concerns about possible future conflict scenarios. Climate change is not likely to have a common and universal effect on armed conflict risk. Indirect effects of climate on conflict may work via migration, food insecurity or economic shocks. Many of the factors that increase ...
Posted by Isak Svensson & Magnus Lundgren on Thursday, 30 April 2015
When do we see international mediation, and what are the impacts? International mediation is a form of diplomatic intervention aimed at reaching negotiated solutions to armed conflict, political violence and international crises. Used by states, organizations, groups or individuals, mediation continues to be an important form of peacemaking. We outline the major trends in international mediation, identify relevant empirical trends and discuss implications for policy. Mediation increases the likelihood of short-term peaceful settlement of conflicts. While international mediation has become increasingly common, many conflicts are still unmediated. The distribution of mediation is globally skewed, with Europe and the Middle East ...
Posted by Ida Rudolfsen on Wednesday, 15 April 2015
The number of civil wars worldwide has fallen in recent years, but meanwhile the number of civil wars in Muslim countries is increasing. From early on in the 21st century, we have also seen a marked growth in the number of active groups of Islamist insurgents. The media in Western countries focus strongly on terrorism and threats from the Muslim world. Are Muslim countries really more violent than others? And if they are, is it the West that is paying the price? In 2012, there were six civil wars worldwide (defining “civil war” as a conflict resulting in more than ...
War is a development issue. War kills, and its consequences extend far beyond deaths in battle. Armed conflict often leads to forced migration, long-term refugee problems, and the destruction of infrastructure. Social, political, and economic institutions can be permanently damaged. The consequences of war, especially civil war, for development are profound. In this two-part post, we examine the development consequences of internal armed conflict. Part 1 focuses on how conflict affects development. Part 2 turns to the conflict trap and the post-2015 development agenda. Development in reverse The Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO) has investigated the consequences of internal armed ...
Generally speaking, the global map of conflict is increasingly shaped by armed conflicts involving Muslims on one side or the other, or on both. Are Muslim countries particularly belligerent? Is the religion to blame? Despite the numerous items of bad news delivered by the mass media on a daily basis, a global overview of armed conflict shows several positive trends. During most of the Cold War, there was an increase in the number of ongoing armed conflicts worldwide, but the number decreased sharply after the fall of the Berlin Wall. This trend is even stronger if we restrict our survey ...
Posted by Kristian Skrede Gleditsch on Wednesday, 4 March 2015
Since wars in oil-producing countries may affect the price of, and access to, oil, the so-called conspiracy theorists may be correct that the presence of oil may be a weighty factor in favour of intervention. When a third-party country intervenes in a civil war, the intervention is usually justified as being in pursuit of honourable political or humanitarian goals. NATO cited protection of the civilian population as its primary goal when intervening in Libya in 2011, while France cited prevention of Islamic terrorism when intervening in Mali in 2014. But many sceptics have expressed doubt about these stated goals, instead ...
Posted by Ukoha O. Ukiwo & Siri Camilla Aas Rustad on Monday, 16 February 2015
On 14 February, the population of Nigeria, Africa’s largest democracy, were supposed to go to the polls to elect a new president. This election might have proven a watershed in Nigerian history. For the first time, the opposition had a realistic opportunity to take over from the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), which has held power ever since free elections were re-introduced in 1999. The security problems in the north-east of the country have made the Independent Electoral Commission (INEC) postpone the election until 28 March. This may prove an effective barrier for the opposition, and increase the risk of an explosion ...
Posted by Idean Salehyan & Henrik Urdal on Monday, 9 February 2015
Quality data is at the heart of quality research. The scholarly community depends on valid, reliable, and easily accessible data in order to empirically test our theories of social and political processes. Yet quantitative data is not “truth” in an absolute sense, but rather, is a numeric representation of complex phenomena. For conflict researchers, the challenge of collecting quality data is particularly acute given the nature of our enterprise. Given the costs and risks involved, it is practically impossible to observe every battle, civilian massacre, human rights violation, or protest event. Therefore, we often rely upon other sources — journalists, ...
An assessment of the effectiveness of UN peacekeeping operations The increase in the deployment of UN ‘blue helmets’ is a key driver of the gradual decline in the number and severity of armed conflicts worldwide since the mid-1990s. This brief summarizes a study that assesses the complete, long-term effectiveness of UN peacekeeping operations. It shows a remarkably strong combined effect of UN operations’ ability to contain the lethality of wars as well as preventing them from reerupting or spreading. Peacekeeping reduces the level of violence in conflict Peacekeeping decreases the duration of conflict Peacekeeping increases the longevity of peace An ...
On 22 December I reported in this blog on an article by political science professor Øyvind Østerud 18 December in the leading Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten that attacked Steven Pinker and ‘large parts of peace research’ for using ‘relative numbers’, i.e. numbers weighted by population, to assess long-term trends in the severity of war. In my brief response to Østerud, published in the print version of Aftenposten on 28 December, I pointed out that both absolute and relative numbers of battle-related deaths have declined after World War II. I also argued that although criticizing established truths is an important part of the ...
A Norwegian political scientist published an article in the Norwegian daily Aftenposten on 17 December where he criticized the ‘waning-of-war’ argument promoted by, among others, Steven Pinker and ‘major parts of peace research’. Curiously, the article was published in the paper’s column for ‘dårlig forskning, flau formidling, kunnskapsløse politiske forslag og ren fusk’ (‘incompetent research, poor popularization, political proposals without a knowledge base, and sheer fraud’). The article does not explain which of these mortal sins were committed by Steven Pinker and the peace research crowd. Be that as it may, below follows my reply to the article. A shorter ...
On 10 December Nobel’s Peace Prize 2014 is awarded to Kailash Satyarthi and Malala Yousafzai. Critical voices have claimed that their work is more about rights activism than promoting peace and that there is no obvious association between education and peace. Research into the causes of war suggests, however, that the Nobel Committee was right on target. A good prize The human rights activists Kailash Satyarthi and Malala Yousafzai were awarded the Peace Prize in recognition of their campaigns for the rights of children and young people and for the right to education. While in the past the Nobel Committee ...
The development consequences of armed conflict are profound and far-reaching. While the direct victims of war understandably receive most attention, the effects of conflict extend far beyond battlefield casualties and refugee camps. Research has shown that conflict affects all aspects of development covered by the Millennium Development Goals, and that conflict has been an important impediment to achieving these goals. The consequences of conflict extend far beyond the battlefield. PRIO has documented substantial negative effects of conflict on most developmental indicators. The indirect effects of conflict may be as great as the direct effects. There is a clear case for ...
As a result of civil wars, some of the world’s least developed nations are now further away from achieving the UN’s Millennium Development Goals than they were when the goals were first adopted. The UN General Assembly adopted the Millennium Development Goals in September 2000. Following lengthy debate, the assembly agreed on eight goals that the whole world could endorse. The eight goals centred on poverty and hunger; child mortality; maternal mortality; education; HIV/AIDS; equality; sustainable development; and global partnerships for development. The deadline for achieving the goals is the end of 2015. Many countries have now achieved all eight ...
Posted by Henrik Urdal on Friday, 5 September 2014
Humanitarian organizations may easily succumb to the temptation to misuse numbers and statistics in order to promote their own causes. Does the end justify the means? Disasters are most dangerous for moms reported Save the Children’s Carolyn S Miles in Huffington Post when presenting the organization’s State of the World’s Mothers report for 2014. The claim was followed by a number: women and children are ‘14 times more likely to die in a disaster than men’. A sky-high number when one is talking about differences in death rates and a colossal injustice if the information is reliable. But it’s not. ...
Posted by Erica Chenoweth on Friday, 18 July 2014
In recent weeks, a number of people have asked me whether I think we’re headed for World War III. Maybe it’s the intense media coverage of the centennial of WWI. Maybe it’s all the violence heating up in Israel & Gaza, Iraq, and Ukraine, and wars raging in Syria, Nigeria, and DRC. Maybe it’s the fact that several of these wars are activating great power tensions in ways that haven’t been seen since the Cold War, or that diplomatic crises are shaking the United States’ friendships with foundational allies. Maybe it’s the speculation by some pundits that we are, indeed, ...
The recent uprising in Ukraine echoes what happened in the earlier Orange Revolution. Much can be learned by comparing these events and looking at similar uprisings in other countries. This comparison clearly shows the important role played by security forces in determining whether brutal repression or successful regime change will follow. How the security forces react is intimately linked to the tactics employed by civil society. Brief Points: Nonviolent revolt is much more likely to succeed. This has been evident in Ukraine and the Arab Spring. The actions of security forces largely determine the success of popular uprisings, as seen in ...
The last 20 years have seen a gradual decline in the number and severity of internal armed conflicts worldwide. This trend is partly due to widespread improvements in factors such as education levels, economic diversification, and demographic characteristics. These factors are projected to continue to improve for the remainder of this century. As a consequence, the world should continue to grow ever more peaceful. In a new policy brief – launched at the JPR 50th anniversary celebrations today – and the first one out of the PRIO Conflict Trends project – we offer more in-depth comments on the following points: ...
The day after the publication of the latest report from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) on the effects of climate change, Norwegian daily newspaper Dagsavisen was able to report that Norway’s Minister for Climate and Environment now envisaged a future world with more conflicts. This is in line with claims made earlier by the Norwegian Nobel Committee. Against this background, I embarked with some anticipation on the report’s 2,679 pages. I found that each of the four chapters that address this question gives a slightly different answer. The question is discussed most thoroughly in the chapter on ...
Posted by Marianne Dahl on Monday, 24 February 2014
The Ukrainian opposition is more likely to succeed if its campaign remains primarily non-violent, writes Marianne Dahl, Doctoral Researcher at PRIO. This is not the first time that Kiev’s streets have been filled with demonstrators wanting to end Viktor Yanukovych’s days in the presidential palace. In 2004, the Orange Revolution spread across the country and brought Viktor Yushchenko to power. While demonstrations against Yanukovych’s incumbent regime had started as early as 2001, it was first on 22 November 2004, following well-documented vote-rigging, that the protesters’ ranks swelled dramatically with millions of Ukrainians defying the bitter cold to express their discontent. ...
Posted by Håvard Hegre on Sunday, 12 January 2014
The ‘Arab Spring’ demonstrated that political transitions tend to occur together in space and time. Samuel Huntington coined the term ‘Waves of democratization’ in his book The Third Wave. The figure above shows that changes to the proportion of the world’s countries that are democracies occurs in spurts. Confirming Huntington’s three waves of democratization, spurts occurred from the 1890s up to 1920, from 1935 to 1945, and from 1975 up to today. There are also reverse waves — from 1920 to 1935 and from 1945 to about 1970. Huntington demonstrated the waves empirically, and provided a number of explanations for why they occur. He did not ...
When Wangari Maathai, a Kenyan known for her work in human rights and environmental conservation, including efforts to fight deforestation, won the Nobel Peace Prize last month, many took note that the Nobel Committee had evidently expanded its notion of “peace.” “Peace on earth depends on our ability to secure our living environment,” it proclaimed, seeming to embrace an extended concept of peace as “human security.” More probably, the committee intended to highlight scarcity of renewable natural resources as an important cause of war. Their statement, it is true, didn’t deal with that issue directly, but Maathai herself said that ...