New Estimates of Over 500 Years of Historic GDP and Population Data

Gross Domestic Product (GDP), GDP per capita, and population are central to the study of politics and economics broadly, and conflict processes in particular. Despite the prominence of these variables in empirical research, existing data lack historical coverage and are assumed to be measured without error. We develop a latent variable modeling framework that expands data coverage (1500 A.D--2018 A.D) and, by making use of multiple indicators for each variable, provides a principled framework to estimate uncertainty for values for all country-year variables relative to one another. Expanded temporal coverage of estimates provides new insights about the relationship between development and democracy, conflict, repression, and health. We also demonstrate how to incorporate uncertainty in observational models. Results show that the relationship between repression and development is weaker than models that do not incorporate uncertainty suggest. Future extensions of the latent variable model can address other forms of systematic measurement error with new data, new measurement theory, or both.

The Public Relations of Armed Groups: Competition and Emulation in Multifaceted Conflicts

Research on rebel movements associates group fragmentation with infighting, spoiling, and defection as victory against a common enemy nears. In contrast, we show that pro-government militias (PGMs) face unique incentives which lead them to emulate government behavior. When confronting a common enemy, PGMs highlight their value by signaling their comparative advantage vis-a-vis the central government. As victory nears, however, PGMs act to ensure their survival beyond the conflict by emulating the rhetoric and behavior of state security forces. We illustrate these patterns through a case study of the Iraqi coalition against the Islamic State (IS). We collect a large corpus of social media messages from accounts associated with the Iraqi government, the Kurdish Regional Government, and the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), a collection of pro-government militias mobilized to defeat IS. We find that the content of PMF messages shifts as conflict progresses. At the height of the IS threat, PMF messages played to the group's base and emphasized its distinctiveness from government forces. As victory over IS became more likely, PMF messages converged with government messages, increasingly emphasizing professionalism and eschewing sectarianism. This behavior sheds light on the changing incentives and constraints confronting PGMs as conflict processes evolve.

Modelling organizational conflict processes: the organizational value of employee commitment and the moderating role of transformational leadership

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to model the nature of intra-group conflicts and to show how conflict process phases that are beneficial to the organization can be supported and how disadvantageous conflict process phases can be prevented or managed. Task (process) and relationship conflicts can appear alternately in the same conflict process, so the overperformance cannot be estimated by the number of intra-group conflicts alone. By exploring the intra-group conflict processes, the author can identify patterns of employee commitment that can increase, mitigate or prevent certain phases of conflict processes. Design/methodology/approach The study presents three intra-group conflicts from the same multinational company using the narrative tool. Qualitative methods are particularly suitable for modeling feelings, thoughts, fears and workplace attitudes. The cases come from the immediate managers of the conflict-affected groups. Findings The process of intra-group conflicts can typically be divided into four phases: task (process) conflict; relationship conflict; task (process) conflict; end of conflict (end of teeming). Task conflict, which provides overperformance for the organization, is supported by the employees’ normative and professional commitment, while the prevention of relationship conflict, which is detrimental to performance, is supported by increasing the employees’ affective commitment. The relationship between affective commitment and relationship conflict is moderated by transformational leadership. Finally, the minimum of team performance is affected by both the degree of relationship conflict and the lack of affective commitment, while the maximum of team performance is positively affected by the degree of task (process) conflict and the employees’ normative and professional commitment. Research limitations/implications In the future, the results should be confirmed by researches using quantitative methods. Practical implications The results suggest to managers that enhancing employees’ affective commitment is primarily important for preventing the disadvantageous relationship conflicts, while enhancing their normative and professional commitment is important for fostering the performance-related task conflict. The results show that increasing commitment goes beyond the organizational value of employees’ loyalty alone, and also highlight the importance of training and development. Originality/value In the literature on intra-group conflicts, most studies treat task and relationship conflicts independently of each other in conflict processes. This paper shows that both conflicts can be part of the same process at the same time. In addition, little research had addressed how employee commitment reduces or increases the certain phase of a specific type of conflict process.

Policing and Political Violence

The police are often key actors in conflict processes, yet there is little research on their role in the production of political violence. Previous research provides us with a limited understanding of the part the police play in preventing or mitigating the onset or escalation of conflict, in patterns of repression and resistance during conflict, and in the durability of peace after conflicts are resolved. By unpacking the role of state security actors and asking how the state assigns tasks among them—as well as the consequences of these decisions—we generate new research paths for scholars of conflict and policing. We review existing research in the field, highlighting recent findings, including those from the articles in this special issue. We conclude by arguing that the fields of policing and conflict research have much to gain from each other and by discussing future directions for policing research in conflict studies.

My way or the highway: Narcissism and dysfunctional team conflict processes

Individuals higher in grandiose narcissism strive to create and maintain their inflated self-views through self-aggrandizing and other-derogating behaviors. Drawing from the dual-process model of narcissistic admiration and rivalry, we proposed that individuals higher in narcissism may contribute to more competitive and less cooperative conflict processes. We tracked over 100 project design teams from inception to dissolution, gathering data at three time points. We evaluated how team levels of narcissism (i.e., maximum team score, team mean, and team variance) related to latent team means of cooperative and competitive conflict processes. Team mean scores of narcissistic rivalry corresponded to less cooperative and more competitive team conflict processes as teams approached their final project deadline. Our results show how narcissistic rivalry (but not admiration) alters the types of team conflict processes that arise within groups, and is particularly consequential as teams approach major project deadlines.

Metaphoric characteristics of perpetuum mobile and its conductorial interpretation (based on the examples of compositions by D.Shostakovich)

The authors give theoretical substantiation and offer the ways to define the metaphoric images of perpetuum mobile in European music of the 19th - the first half of the 20th century. The research considers the common formative characteristics of an image (monothematism, variational nature, subordination to the continuous flow-through tempo), intonational components (noise and onomatopoeical effects, ostinato character, repetition of rithmic, texture and melodic formulae). The authors detect individual stylistic peculiarities in the realization of perpetuum mobile in the process of conducting a piece of music: sarcastic invariants of a theme (D. Shostakovich). Using the material of musical compositions, the authors substantiate and explain the universal character of the image of perpetuum mobile and its strong potential. The transformations of the image reflect the development of European music from pantheism of romanticists to the newest technicist tendencies of the 20th century, and represent complex conflict processes of the spiritual life of a person in the age of industrial civilization. The research of the image of perpetuum mobile of the previous ages doesn’t explain all the peculiarities of the phenomenon and determines the need for further research of the postmodernist music art of the late 20th - the early 21st century. Based on the offered images of perpetuum mobile in music, the authors detect their transformation from the sound images of the 19th century to anthropogenic allusions of the first half of the 20th century. It is proved that in the music of the early 20th century, perpetuum mobile is one of the implementations of the image of a “human-machine” - in music culture, becomes controversial due to wars and confrontation in the world, therefore the sound images of perpetuum mobile reflect a militarized conflict (a vivid example is Shostakovich’s Symphony No 7). The article characterizes the artistic and stylistic aspects of perpetuum mobile in the instrumental music of the 20th century. The authors note that in the beginning of the century, the image of perpetuum mobile gains the features of technicism, which promotes the development of a different interpretation and means of conducting a piece of music.  

Concessions for Concession’s Sake: Injustice, Indignation, and the Construction of Intractable Conflict in Israel–Palestine

In intractable conflicts, what factors lead populations to accept negotiated outcomes? To examine these issues, we conduct a survey experiment on a representative sample of the Jewish Israeli population and a companion experiment on a representative sample of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. We find that holding the negotiated settlement outcome constant, approval of the settlement is strongly influenced by whether it is framed as a negotiating defeat for one side—if and only if respondents are primed to be indignant—and that these effects are strongly mediated by perceptions of the fairness of the settlement outcome. Moral indignation produces a desire for concessions for concession’s sake. Such conflicts over political framing violate assumptions of the rationalist literature on conflict processes and suggest important new directions for conflict theorizing.

Political conflict interactions of urban communities: network aspects

The article deals with the problems of network interactions of urban communities in the context of political conflicts. The theoretical foundations of the study are developed in line with the theory of political networks. In particular, the concept of “heterarchies” is used to describe interactions in the course of conflicts between hierarchical and network structures. The explanatory model proposed by the authors is also focused on the components of the network approach, revealing the mechanisms and ways of shaping the political agenda and making decisions using the potential of political networks. In addition, an analysis of the impact of network interactions on the development of urban communities was carried out. The empirical component of the article is based on the results of research conducted by the authors in three large regional centers of the Russian Federation in 2019– 2020. The 2019 study was conducted in the format of semi-structured expert interviews with leaders of urban communities in Voronezh, Krasnodar and Yaroslavl. In 2020, an expert survey was conducted in the same cities. In total, 34 experts were interviewed, representing urban communities, authorities, research centers, business structures, etc. Based on the results of the research, conclusions were drawn about the empowerment of urban communities to participate in decision-making at the municipal level within the framework of network relations, as well as the prevalence of a constructive approach to interactions with opponents in political conflict processes. At the same time, limiting their influence on decision-making processes to the role of the “attentive public”, which is observed at the present time, can contribute to the expansion of destructive, in particular, protest forms of political activity.