Christopher K. Butler

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors investigated sexual violence committed by government security forces and found that sexual violence is more likely to be attributable to the selfish motivations of agents and it is an act that is likely to remain hidden.

Abstract: This article examines the effect of climate change on a type of armed conflict that pits pastoralists (cattle herders) against each other (range wars). Such conflicts are typically fought over water rights and/or grazing rights to unfenced/unowned land. The state is rarely involved directly. The rangeland of East Africa is a region particularly vulnerable to drought and livestock diseases associated with climate change. To analyze the possible effects of climate change on pastoral conflict, we focus our analysis on changes in resource availability, contrasting cases of abundance and scarcity. The role of resources is further contextualized by competing notions of property rights, and the role of the state in defining property and associated rights. We employ a contest success function (CSF) game-theoretic model to analyze the logic of range wars. This CSF approach emphasizes the low-level, non-binary nature of raiding behavior between pastoralist groups over limited natural resources. A central contributi...

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors show that between 1982 and 2007, in over 60 countries governments were linked to and cooperated with informal armed groups within their own borders, and they argue that such informal agents increase accountability problems for the governments, which is likely to worsen human rights conditions.

TL;DR: In this paper, a model that demonstrates the differences between expected value and prospect theory when applied to strategic interaction is presented. But this model is restricted to the case of power-based, equity, variants of the status quo, and extreme I-want-it-all reference points.

TL;DR: A substantial body of this "neo-institutional" work, often organized around th... as discussed by the authors, focuses on the impact which political institutions have on policy outcomes, and the role of political institutions in policy outcomes.