{"title":"Unfulfilled Aspirations: Autonomy, Regional Boundaries, and Self-Determination Conflicts","authors":"Andreas Juon","doi":"10.1177/00220027261444601","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00220027261444601","url":null,"abstract":"Administrative boundaries play a crucial but understudied role in managing separatist conflict in federal and decentralized states. I argue that closely aligning these boundaries with ethnic settlement patterns helps sustainably defuse separatist conflicts. When minorities control unified ethnic regions, autonomy enables them to pursue their policy goals, reducing grievances. Conversely, when they are fragmented across regions or remain minorities at the regional level, autonomy is more likely to violate their aspirations and fuel continued separatist mobilization. I test this argument using new spatial data on regional boundaries in 132 multi-ethnic countries (1946–2017). A difference-in-differences design exploiting within-group variation over time reveals that administrative boundaries critically shape separatist mobilization. The step-wise implications of my hypothesized mechanisms are reflected in analyses of intermediate outcomes and in influential case accounts. These findings underscore the importance of regional boundary design in managing ethnic conflict and offer insights for institutional responses to separatist pressures.","PeriodicalId":51363,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Conflict Resolution","volume":"19 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2026-04-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147743959","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Lisa Langdon Koch, Kristyn L. Karl, Matthew S. Wells
{"title":"Testing the Firebreak: Experimental Evidence on Low-Yield Nuclear Weapons and Deterrence in India and Pakistan","authors":"Lisa Langdon Koch, Kristyn L. Karl, Matthew S. Wells","doi":"10.1177/00220027261441496","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00220027261441496","url":null,"abstract":"A cross-national shift toward lower-yield nuclear weapons has generated renewed interest in the integrity of the firebreak: the conceptual barrier between conventional and nuclear warfare. We theorize that low-yield nuclear weapons alter nuclear nonuse mechanisms. They threaten to breach the firebreak by offering a more credible, but less costly, deterrent and undercut norms grounded in nuclear weapons’ effects. To test the integrity of the firebreak, we conduct simultaneous survey experiments investigating how Pakistani and Indian citizens consider low-yield nuclear weapons use in an escalating crisis. We find a low-yield nuclear weapons threat to be credible, but not necessarily stabilizing. Both publics in this rivalry exhibit substantial willingness not only to issue a nuclear response to a low-yield nuclear strike, but also to introduce nuclear weapons into conflict. However, neither universally seeks retribution. Vivid information about nuclear effects moderates retaliation preferences among citizens who strongly favor their co-nationals.","PeriodicalId":51363,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Conflict Resolution","volume":"280 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2026-04-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147708638","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Introducing the COW Arms Technology Data, 1816–2023: Structure and Applications","authors":"Jacob Gerner Hariri, Asger Mose Wingender","doi":"10.1177/00220027261440365","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00220027261440365","url":null,"abstract":"This article introduces a new global dataset tracking the adoption of 31 important arms technologies across all states from 1816 to 2023. Covering eight major categories – from small arms and artillery to combat helicopters and ballistic missiles – the dataset provides a comprehensive long-term view of the global evolution and diffusion of arms technology. We describe the conceptual foundations and coding procedures, as well as transformations of the final data relevant for scholars of international relations and comparative politics. We demonstrate the relevance of the data through three empirical applications: we show that arms technologies spread in ways consistent with the logic of the security dilemma; that technological superiority helps explain which states win wars, and that advanced arms help autocrats stay in power. These findings highlight the central role of arms technology in shaping both the global distribution of power and the durability of autocratic regimes.","PeriodicalId":51363,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Conflict Resolution","volume":"22 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2026-04-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147649117","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"On the Historical Roots of Interstate Conflicts: Evidence From Folklore Motifs","authors":"Marcello D’Amato, Francesco Flaviano Russo","doi":"10.1177/00220027261441301","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00220027261441301","url":null,"abstract":"We show empirically that interstate conflicts are less likely among countries that share more of their oral tradition. Popular tales and narratives are related to expectations and beliefs about other parties’ behavior, and larger cultural similarities reduce negotiation failures between states. To validate this interpretation, we show that countries with more oral tradition in common are more likely to form military alliances, more likely to participate in the same international organizations, more likely to vote similarly in the UN general assembly, more likely to trade with each other and, in case a conflicts breaks out, more likely to terminate it with a negotiation.","PeriodicalId":51363,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Conflict Resolution","volume":"113 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2026-04-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147641396","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Leader Similarity and International Sanctions","authors":"Jerg Gutmann, Pascal Langer, Matthias Neuenkirch","doi":"10.1177/00220027261436355","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00220027261436355","url":null,"abstract":"It is well-established that political leaders matter for domestic outcomes, but statistical evidence for their relevance in international politics is comparatively scarce. We ask whether the personal relationship between political leaders can change the propensity for nonviolent conflict between nation-states in the form of sanctions. Panel probit models with data from 1970 to 2004 are estimated to evaluate whether more similar leaders are less likely to sanction each other. Our results indicate that higher leader similarity reduces the likelihood of sanction imposition. The effect is most pronounced for sanctions imposed through unilateral political decisions. The probability of such sanctions ranges from 2.3 percent at the highest observed leader similarity to 7.2 percent at the lowest. Leader similarity especially matters for sanctions aimed at democratic change or human rights, for non-trade sanctions, and when at least one autocracy is involved. Finally, leader similarity has become more important after the Cold War.","PeriodicalId":51363,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Conflict Resolution","volume":"18 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2026-04-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147636107","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Adhering Indigenous Communities to the State: Recognition Politics During Civil Conflict","authors":"Michael Albertus","doi":"10.1177/00220027261439068","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00220027261439068","url":null,"abstract":"Numerous countries in recent decades have formally recognized collective indigenous claims to territory and self-governance during civil conflict despite challenges to state authority and social order. How does collective indigenous recognition impact conflict violence within communities? This paper shows that indigenous recognition can shore up order and state reach. It does so in Peru, where the state recognized thousands of indigenous communities during an internal conflict from 1980 to 2000 that disproportionately impacted indigenous Peruvians. Using a staggered difference-in-difference research design and an original spatial mapping of conflict violence to indigenous communities, I find that formal recognition reduced wartime violence. Further analysis of community characteristics as well as state and community counterinsurgency efforts indicates that as recognition fosters greater legibility and transfers disputes into state institutions, it invites state penetration and coordination with state actors that ultimately adheres communities to the state.","PeriodicalId":51363,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Conflict Resolution","volume":"20 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2026-04-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147635987","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Paola Vesco, David Randahl, Håvard Hegre, Stina Högbladh, Mert Can Yilmaz
{"title":"The Underreported Death Toll of Wars: A Probabilistic Reassessment From a Survey with UCDP Coders","authors":"Paola Vesco, David Randahl, Håvard Hegre, Stina Högbladh, Mert Can Yilmaz","doi":"10.1177/00220027261423826","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00220027261423826","url":null,"abstract":"Event datasets, such as those provided by the Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP), provide high-quality data on conflict fatalities. However, such data are likely to suffer from an unknown extent of bias and uncertainties in the reports they are based on. Although a substantial literature documents reporting bias in conflict research, analyses that quantify this bias are mostly limited to single countries. Here, we combine a survey with UCDP coders and statistical modeling to derive a distribution of plausible number of fatalities given the number of battle-related deaths and the type of violence documented by the UCDP. We provide a generalizable, cross-national measure of uncertainty around UCDP reported fatalities that is more robust and realistic than UCDP’s documented low and high estimates, countering UCDP’s intrinsic tendency to under-estimate fatalities, and we make available a dataset and R package that can be applied to future releases of the UCDP data.","PeriodicalId":51363,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Conflict Resolution","volume":"64 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2026-04-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147635989","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Forecasting Peace Agreement Content: How Conflict Events Predict the Substance of Peace Settlements","authors":"Meri Dankenbring, Constantin Ruhe","doi":"10.1177/00220027261440163","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00220027261440163","url":null,"abstract":"Despite growing work on conflict forecasting, few studies predict conflict termination and none negotiation outcomes. We address this gap, assessing how well we can predict peace agreement content using conflict dynamics – particularly, insurgent distance from the capital. Thus, our study evaluates the predictive power of long-standing arguments in peace research, suggesting that conflict dynamics determine the prospects of negotiations. Utility theory posits that actors learn about their relative strength through conflict events and update their demands in negotiations accordingly. Ergo, actors’ demands become more compatible with increasingly similar perceptions of relative capability. Scholars often proxy relative strength using insurgent distance from the capital, as it holds information on their ability to win battles. We evaluate whether battle locations predict agreement content using PA-X data. We find that a simple, theory-driven model performs almost as well as more complex, data-driven models. Nevertheless, models excluding conflict dynamics also have comparable predictive power.","PeriodicalId":51363,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Conflict Resolution","volume":"439 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2026-04-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147635988","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Trading Arms, Trading Values? Experimental Evidence on Attitudes Toward Arms Exports Among Citizens and Political Elites","authors":"Tobias Risse, Christoph Valentin Steinert","doi":"10.1177/00220027261439065","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00220027261439065","url":null,"abstract":"Foreign policy making involves balancing ethical values and instrumental concerns. Do politicians and citizens differ in how they weigh these factors when directly confronted with this trade-off? Focusing on attitudes toward arms exports, we argue that citizens, but not politicians, tend to prioritize human rights concerns over the political and economic benefits for their own states. We tested these arguments in four survey experiments among citizens and parliamentarians in the United Kingdom and Germany. We presented participants with fictitious arms deals and varied the human rights records of recipient regimes as well as the benefits of arms deals to assess how these factors influence attitudes toward arms exports. While we find substantial effects of both human rights violations and benefits on support for arms exports, their interaction remains insignificant across all samples. Hence, our findings yield no evidence for an elite-public gap in weighing ethical and instrumental concerns in foreign policy attitudes.","PeriodicalId":51363,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Conflict Resolution","volume":"5 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2026-04-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147617464","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Targeted Sanctions Against Authoritarian Elites","authors":"Tsz-Ning Wong, Julia Grauvogel, Nikolay Marinov","doi":"10.1177/00220027261430751","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00220027261430751","url":null,"abstract":"A significant part of economic coercion deployed by the US, EU and the UN targets authoritarian regimes’ ruling elites. We develop a formal model to study the effects of such measures. The ruler chooses how much power to delegate to elites, while bracing for a challenge from the latter or from the masses. The elite decides whether to fight for the ruler, walk away, or stage a coup. Depending on how much the ruler trusts the elite, the imposition of individual sanctions may lead to more power being delegated, thus inducing coups and repression, or it may lead to less power being delegated, which results in liberalization. We illustrate these predictions with two case studies.","PeriodicalId":51363,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Conflict Resolution","volume":"77 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2026-03-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147462005","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}