Francis A. Beer

Terrorists and Democrats: Individual Reactions to International Attacks

Three experiments conducted in 1997 and 1998 explored individual responses to reported fictitious international conflict involving the United States and other nations. Participants escalated the conflictual level of their responses to repeated attacks. In Experiment 1, escalation of conflict was greater in response to terrorist attacks than to military ones. In Experiment 2, after the initial attacks, men were more conflictual in responding to terrorist attacks by a democratic nation than by a nondemocratic nation, whereas the opposite pattern was found for women. In Experiment 3, participants responded with a higher level of conflict to terrorist attacks on military targets than to attacks on cultural/educational targets. Participants with greater personality dominance showed steeper escalation of conflict in their responses across successive attacks. These results are interpreted within the framework of an image theory of international relations and an expansion of the democratic peace hypothesis. Language: en

Validities: A political science perspective

Abstract Validity is a central legitimating word in the lexicon of political science, suggesting the connection of scientific theory and research with the political world. Validity is constrained by uncontrollable variance in sampling, context, text, and analysis. Judgements of validity include scientific and political dimensions, implying serious anomalies. These may be partly dissolved by more complex definition and decomposition into multiple, parallel, switchable validities.

Military conflict and terrorism: General psychology informs international relations

Several experiments, focusing on decisions made by young, voting-age citizens of the United States about how to respond to incidents of international conflict, are summarized. Participants recommended measured reactions to an initial attack. Repeated attacks led to escalated reaction, however, eventually matching or exceeding the conflict level of the attack itself. If a peace treaty between contending nations was in place, women were more forgiving of an attack, and men were more aggressive. There was little overall difference in reactions to terrorist versus military attacks. Participants responded with a higher level of conflict to terrorist attacks on military than on cultural-educational targets.

The Epidemiology of Peace and War

Epidemiology is a relatively advanced discipline which offers theories and methods that may be useful in helping us better understand peace and war. Similarities between peace and health, war and disease, center in concern with preservation and extension of human life, on the one hand, and prevention of physical damage and death, on the other. The epidemiological model suggests that description of peace and war should move toward an integrated definition which includes both broad and narrow dimensions. Standard measures of morbidity and mortality, and the distinction between endemic and epidemic configurations of disease, can help specify patterns of peace and war. Attempts to explain peace and war should not focus on a possible single primary agent. Instead, they should try to identify a system of multiple interrelated causes, including social, biological, and physical dimensions of the environment, as well as rational and irrational aspects of decision making. Prediction should include prognoses of the natural course of wars in general and of particular wars, as well as the identification of nations at high risk of war. Prescription implies intensive care in acute cases, positive alteration of chronic risk factors, and an experimental perspective.

Words of Reason

The linguistic turn in political science is an important step toward more sophisticated political knowledge. Greater awareness of political language implies attention to words such as reason. Reason is central to modern political discourse because of its historical and cultural importance and because of the contemporary dominance of the rational choice paradigm. Reason the concept therefore justifies closer scrutiny of reason the word. The meaning of reason is constructed as a variable. Standing by itself, reason seems relatively shapeless and empty; dictionary definitions are circular and tautological, although some subtle nuances derive from the network of reasons root words. Most of the variance in the meaning of reason is determined by other words that surround it, with a significant portion of reasons meaning being defined by its context. Anterior meaning shifters, nominal referents, spatiotemporal modifiers, and textual narrative all surround reason and fix it in a large lattice. The meaning of re...

Ranking international cooperation and conflict events

A set of psychological laboratory experiments were conducted to refine a scale that could be used to study cognition and decision‐making in international cooperation and conflict events. The COPDAB scale, ranking international conflict and cooperation, was expanded and reanalyzed. The original 15 point scale was augmented to include four actors and three new categories for nuclear conflict. The new 18 point scale was used as a template to generate separate sets of action and message items. These items were administered in alternative orders and ranked by political science graduate students and psychology undergraduates. There were four major sets of findings. 1) Action and message items across all 18 ranks provided separate and similar scaling outcomes. 2) Cooperative items in the bottom 7 ranks continued to be difficult to rank properly. They were given cooperative values, but did not increase monotonically across experimental ranks. 3) Conflictual items in the top 10 ranks increased more regularly acros...

Why wars end: some hypotheses

Many books, both scholarly and popular, consider how wars begin. There has also been a large number written on the question of limiting war in general and creating peace. Yet the question of how specific wars end has received far less attention. Except for memoirs and historical accounts of final battles and peace negotiations, it is difficult to find more than a handful of general works on war deescalation and termination.1 One reason for neglect of the question of war ending is that the answer seems obvious. Most people see wars as contests which end when one side beats the other. Yet the way wars end is more complex than this stereotype would suggest. War termination is related to war initiation, but is different from it. Some prominent scholars regard it as being even more problematic theoretically. For example, two generations ago Georg Simmel wrote:

Polysemy, sovereignty, and global discourse: a response to Filippo Costa-Buranelli

This is a reply to:Costa-Buranelli, Filippo. 2015. “‘Do you know what I mean?’ ‘Not exactly’: English School, Global International Society and the Polysemy of Institutions.” Global Discourse 5 (3): 499–514. http://dx.doi.org/ 10.1080/23269995.2015.1053195

Trends in American Major War and Peace

This article attempts to describe possible historical trends in American major peace and war. With caution, because of the small number of data points, it notes that (a) periods of major peace have become more frequent and shorter; (b) major wars that break up the peace periods have necessarily become more frequent; (c) the length of major wars shows no clear overall trend, though there may be reason to believe that major wars have become more frequent and longer in our own time; and (d) major war casualties appear to have increased absolutely, though not relative to population. These results are compared with possible historical trends in the more general international system, as well as with patterns suggested by probabilistic theory. One explanation for the American experience of peace and war lies in the dynamics of U.S. growth. If one assumes that the apparent trends will continue, the findings finally allow us to extrapolate the scope and limits of future American peace and war.

World Order and World Futures

International relations seems to be growing. The scope of international practice is widening as the number of nation states increases, as nongovernmental actors become more important, and as new issue areas like money, energy, food, and population join the traditional diplo-military concerns of high politics. The range of international analysis is also extending, partly to keep up with the expansion of international practice, and partly to meet a growing perception of crisis in international society. International relations also appears to be shrinking. Relations between states are taking place on a planet which is, both figuratively and literally, getting smaller. More international relations take place more often and more quickly, as our physical resources seem to melt away before our eyes. New approaches to international relations are simultaneously parts of the expansion and attempts to deal with the problems of contrac-