Francesco N. Moro

Ethnicity and strategy in the Bosnian civil war: Explanations for the severity of violence in Bosnian municipalities

The impact of ethnicity for the onset of conflicts has often been dismissed in the cross-country empirical literature on civil wars. Recently, however, several studies using disaggregated data have reached different conclusions and highlight the importance of the configuration of ethno-national groups. This article follows the latter approach and investigates a different phenomenon: the impact of ethnic heterogeneity on the severity of violence. Using disaggregated data at municipality level in Bosnia and Herzegovina, we perform a quantitative analysis to assess the impact of various indices of heterogeneity on the number of casualties that occurred in the 1992–95 war in the 109 municipalities composing the country. We argue that in a context where ethnicity plays a key role in shaping rivalry among groups, ethnic polarization, in particular, creates strategic incentives for severe violence as armed groups try to create ethnically homogenous territories in the first phase of the war. By also including the temporal dimension in the analysis, we show that ethnic polarization loses its impact as the war evolves over time; therefore, the geographic location of the municipalities becomes the best predictor of severe clashes because as the war goes on, ethnic groups shift their objective from creating internally homogenous municipalities to consolidating wider areas. As such, municipalities located on politically and militarily relevant frontlines experience the highest levels of violence.

The patterns of ethnic settlement and violence: a local-level quantitative analysis of the Bosnian War

Abstract The debate on the link between ethnicity and violence has been raging in political science literature since the end of the Cold War. Often, cross-country quantitative studies dismissed the importance of ethnic heterogeneity as a source of violent conflict. How the patterns of ethnic settlement within a country affect the severity of violence, though, has not yet been studied through similar techniques. In this essay, we build and analyse a data set of major violence-related variables collected at the local level during the 1992–1995 war in Bosnia-Herzegovina. What emerges is that the local distribution of the population, in terms of the number and relative size of the groups, is a key factor in explaining the intensity of violence in the Bosnian municipalities.

Transforming the Italian Armed Forces, 2001-13

Italian armed forces have undergone important transformations since the end of the Cold War. Exogenous changes in the strategic and operational environment have driven a reshaping of armed forces in all NATO countries, but the differences between the national responses that have emerged has not always been thoroughly analysed. Deep restructuring in military doctrine, field experience linked to intense force deployment and budgetary constraints interact in shaping the direction of transformation, sometimes in ways that deviate from classic hypotheses on what drives change in the military. The picture that emerges is a complex one, where relevant innovations co-exist with the persistence of problems that call into question the sustainability of the Italian defence model

Un nuovo "ircocervo". Privatizzazioni, regolazione e ibridizzazione nelle aziende multi-utility italiane

Il processo di privatizzazione che ha coinvolto le aziende municipalizzate in Italia a partire dagli anni ’90 ha portato alla formazione di compagnie multi-utility quotate in Borsa ma con maggioranza di capitale in mano dei Comuni che operano in mercati ad alta densita (e incertezza) regolativa. Questo nuovo assetto ha creato incentivi misti per le nuove aziende, e l’emergere di modelli di governance e strategie d’impresa molto diverse e talvolta inconsistenti.

Divergence in Convergence. Governance Patterns of Italian Former Public Enterprises through Social Network Analysis

The article analyses the boards of Italian listed companies and applies Social Network Analysis (SNA) to the members of board of directors of the former public enterprises in the Italian stock market. The description of these networks is a useful tool to envisage what relational resources public enterprises hold through their members, compare them within-country and cross-sector, assess individual resources, and describe the differences between companies owned by local and national governments. The overall aim is to provide a more complete picture of the patterns of state intervention in the economy and to develop measures and hypothesis for future studies.

The Foundations of American National Security

At a time when there is much talk of recasting the national security policies of Western countries, the United States for a start, as well as the institutions in charge of those policies, Douglas Stuart’s book on the 1947 National Security Act is a timely contribution in that it lays the historical foundations for such a debate. By reviewing how American policymakers responded to the challenges of the Second World War and the emergence of a new rivalry with the Soviet Union, Stuart looks at the complex interaction between individuals and organisations, interests and ideas, and provides a thorough account of how strong clashes and parochial concerns were as central as a dispassionate view of past and future threats to the drafting of this crucial piece of legislation. The first fundamental issue the book deals with is the all important role of past experience in shaping decisions on institutions and policies. Stuart looks at the US experience in World War II, which marked the birth of the American national security state through the emergence of an intricate balance between state and society and between the different institutions of the state. Two basic questions were raised by the war. First, as military institutions became mass institutions (much more clearly than during the First World War), there was a need to rethink what kind of division there should be between military and civilian. This was also the result of technological advances – the atom bomb being the most important – since they transformed the role of civilian scientists and industries into fundamental ‘‘military assets’’ and raised the population’s stakes in military issues (the bomb and missile technology made the American homeland vulnerable to attacks). Second, new arrangements had to be made in the national military establishment, the security complex: restructuring the Armed Forces evidently entailed intense bargaining as both the Army and the Navy wanted to enhance their standing and were worried about the emergence of powerful new actors (the creation of an Air Force