Digital Commons Network^™

Mapping The Small Arms Trade: Insights From Social Network Analysis, David Todd Kinsella

Political Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

In recent years, researchers have increasingly turned their attention to the proliferation of small arms, a transnational trade amounting to over $7 billion in value during 2002. Small arms are difficult to track and are not the stuff of military parades, but they are immensely destructive. The trade in small arms should be understood not as a market but as a network, one that shares some important properties with networked forms of organization studied by sociologists. I make this argument and then employ quantitative methods developed for the study of social networks in an effort to show the basic structure …

Changing Structure Of The Arms Trade: A Social Network Analysis, David Todd Kinsella

Political Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

The global arms trade should be understood not as a market but as a network, one that shares some important properties with networked forms of organization studied by sociologists. I make this argument and then employ quantitative methods developed for social network analysis in an effort to describe the evolving structure of the arms trade network since the end of World War II. That structure has changed significantly over the past fifty years. It became less dense in the early years of the cold war as newly independent states joined the society of states, but had yet to develop many …

A Bounded Rationality Analysis Of The Cyprus Problem, Birol Yesilada, Jacek Kugler, Harry Anastasiou, Ahmet Sozen, Brian Efird

Political Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

The time frame for a final decision on the Cyprus problem is narrowing very rapidly. The latest peace plan proposed by the U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, known as the Annan Plan, to solve the problem between the Greek Cypriot (G/Cs) and Turkish Cypriot (T/Cs) communities underwent the last refinements in February 2003 to bridge the gap between the two sides. Yet, despite intense domestic (especially in the Turkish north) and international pressures on the two sides to sign the agreement the Turkish Cypriot leadership rejected the proposal as being insufficient in meeting their demands. Despite the apparent low in …

The Art Of Judgment: An Organizational Analysis Of The New York City Fire Department, September 11, 2001 (A Case Study), Terence Garrett

Political Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

The September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and the airliner crash in Pennsylvania have placed immeasurable stress upon the victims, cleanup crews and the American people. The grief and shock caused by the events will have lasting consequences. Currently organizations are in a stage of reassessing their roles played before, during and after the crisis in order to improve responses to any possible future tragedies. Additionally affected people in organizations involved in the events are trying to overcome tremendous pain and a severe sense of loss in moving beyond the attacks and its aftermath. …

The Wildlands Project Outside North America, David Johns

Political Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

The Wildlands Project seeks to create a connected system of protected areas across North America that will ensure the survival of all native species, including top predators and wideranging species, in the context of fully functioning ecosystems. Core protected areas are designated based on the biological needs of key species and the requirements of critical ecological processes. To work they must have, or will be restored to have, those attributes traditionally ascribed to wilderness. Some critics argue that The Wildlands Project model is inapplicable to other parts of the world, especially the developing world. The inapplicability is based on nonbiological …

Our Real Challenge: Managing Ourselves Instead Of Nature, David Johns

Political Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

As cultural animals we create meaning and order. Stories are the primary means our species uses to do this. Stories that rise to the level of myth exert powerful effects on behavior. The dominant myths that explain our relationship to the natural word have two serious failings: our self-importance and a superficial and simplified image of who we are. These stories obscure more than they enlighten, thereby preventing us from addressing the causes of the current extinction crisis. Conservationists can and must fashion new stories that take account of our disproportionate impact on the Earth and its origins in our …

Conflict Emergence And Escalation In Interactive International Dyads, David Todd Kinsella, Bruce M. Russett

Political Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

We examine whether the conditions affecting initial expressions of hostility are similar to those affecting militarized disputes. Analyzing dyadic interactions during the years 1951–1992, we estimate a model to take into account selection effects and check it against another allowing conjunctive causation. Both provide close approximations to theoretical models of the conflict process and yield similar results. We confirm Kant’s belief that all states are subject to the realist conditions of interstate competition that makes disputes likely, but that liberal influences, if present, can constrain the escalation of such disputes to war. Several influences on the conflict process have nonmonotonic …

Wilderness And Energy: The Battle Against Domination, David Johns

Political Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

This opinion piece discusses the problems associated with human energy extraction and the political ramifications.

Symbols Of Statehood: Military Industrialization And Public Discourse In India, David Todd Kinsella, Jugdep S. Chima

Political Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

This article examines the forces driving the pursuit of military production capacity in India, including those behind the Indian nuclear and space programmes. We are mainly interested in whether symbolic motivations regularly find expression in the public discourse. We review all articles on the subject of weapons development and production appearing in India Today from May 1977 to April 1999. There are three closely interrelated yet distinguishable concerns in the public discourse that we consider symbolic: that military industrialization is a means of asserting India's autonomy in international affairs, that it is a means of establishing India's international status and …

Bureaucracy And Organizational Performance: Causality Arguments About Public Schools, Kenneth J. Meier, Jerry L. Polinard, Robert D. Wrinkle

Political Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

One key policy dispute in the school choice debate concerns whether the education bureaucracy is a cause or a consequence of poor performance. This dispute is striking because both sides accept the same neo-institutionalist organization theory. This article uses a large panel of school districts to address the dispute. The evidence suggests that poor performance results in a growing bureaucracy not vice versa. Further evidence then shows that the growth in bureaucracy is associated in an increase in teachers and smaller class sizes; in short, bureaucracy increases as schools take actions that are linked to improved performance.

Biological Science In Conservation, David Johns

Political Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

Large-scale wildlands reserve systems offer one of the best hopes for slowing, if not reversing, the loss of biodiversity and wilderness. Establishing such reserves requires both sound biology and effective advocacy. Attempts by The Wildlands Project and its cooperators to meld science and advocacy in the service of conservation is working, but is not without some problems. Scientists and advocates have differences in methods of work, different understandings of the origins and place of values in conservation, and differing expectations about the efficacy of biological information in achieving protection. Despite these differences, successful relationships can be forged where these differences …

Representative Bureaucracy And Distributional Equity: Addressing The Hard Question, Kenneth J. Meier, Robert D. Wrinkle, Jerry L. Polinard

Political Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

Research on representative bureaucracy has failed to deal with whether or not representative bureaucracies produce minority gains at the expense of nonminorities. Using a pooled time-series analysis of 350 school districts over six years, this study examines the relationship between representative bureaucracy and organizational outputs for minorities and nonminorities. Far from finding that representative bureaucracy produces minority gains at the expense of nonminorities, this study finds both minority and nonminority students perform better in the presence of a representative bureaucracy. This finding suggests an alternative hypothesis to guide research: that representative bureaucracies are more effective than their nonrepresentative counterparts.

Arms Transfers, Dependence, And Regional Stability: Isolated Effects Or General Patterns?, David Todd Kinsella

Political Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

There are two parts to this paper. The first part examines the impact of arms transfers on the conflictual behavior of third world recipients. I conceptualize conflict as a multiplicative function of total arms imports and the extent to which the recipient is dependent on relatively few arms suppliers. My hypothesis that arms imports encouraged belligerence but that arms-transfer dependence diminished this effect is not widely supported by my time series analyses: only twelve of 86 countries analyzed exhibit this dual pattern. The second part of the paper examines the impact of arms transfers on the aggregate level of military …

The Worsening Eu-Turkey Relations, Birol A. Yeşilada

Political Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

In recent years, two developments have challenged Turkey's national and cultural identity--a growing Islamist movement at home and the European Union's (EU) orientation toward Turkey. While the Turkish government and the military continue to pursue a pro-NATO foreign policy orientation, an increasing number of Turks have begun to question whether the country could not be better served by reducing their ties to the EU. The apparent dissatisfaction with the West stems, to a significant extent, from the EU's decision to exclude Turkey from the next wave of EU membership expansion. At the Luxembourg summit in December 1997, the European leaders …

Integration With Global Financial Markets And Domestic Political Reform: Comparing Poland And Turkey, Birol A. Yeşilada, Janusz Puzniak, Ahmet Sozen

Political Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

This paper is about the political economy of policy reform in contemporary Poland and Turkey. It focuses on the period of 1980-97 in Turkey and 1989-97 in Poland during which the economies of these countries underwent significant structural changes and became integrated with global financial markets with the rise of the Warsaw Stock Exchange in 1991 and the Istanbul Stock Exchange in 1986.

The first part of the paper provides an overview of the contending theoretical perspectives on "Phoenix risen" and on how external and domestic economic factors influence domestic political reforms in countries where integration with international financial markets …

Getting From Here To There: An Outline Of The Wildlands Reserve Design Process, David Johns, Michael Soulé

Political Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

Turning back the assault on the natural world is a monumental and complex task; even the first step – planning a network of reserves – is an enormous undertaking. This paper is intended as a general guide to the steps needed to produce a regional proposal for a Wildlands reserve system. It is based on an assessment of work underway in some regions, and extensive discussion with regional groups throughout the continent.

The Practical Relevance Of Deep Ecology, David Johns

Political Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

As proponents of Deep Ecology and Biocentrism have begun to define both a vision for the future and a critique of the existing human relationship with the rest of nature, they have often been the subject of criticism from the Third World and from leftists in the developed world concerned with Third World issues. They are commonly charged with failing to adequately take into account the complexity of the human social dynamic involved in destruction of the environment; ignoring that human societies are under the control of elites who benefit from the degradation of nature while most people suffer; failing …