1. Political Science 200A Week 7 Levels of Analysis: Political Violence

3. Levels-of-Analysis Distinction
1. Levels-of-analysis distinction in international relations
Kenneth Waltz. Man, the State, and War.
2. Level-of-analysis shapes
The cases for analysis/comparison
The dependent variables
The independent variables
In short, the question that you ask

4. Levels-of-Analysis Distinction
3. Levels of analysis is not an ontological issue
Actor Level System Level
Individuals
Group Group
State State
Dyad
International system
4. Levels of analysis is a general epistemological issue
Fallacy of composition
Fallacy of division
At the operational level: Ecological inference fallacy

5. Ted Robert Gurr (1936- ) Ph. D. NYU (1965)
Appointments at Princeton ( ), Northwestern ( ), Colorado ( ), Maryland (1989-)
Violence in America (1969) with Hugh David Graham
Why Men Rebel (1970)
Polity Project, Minorities at Risk Project, State Failure Task Force

6. Ted Robert Gurr 1. How would you categorize Gurr’s analysis?
2. What does Gurr’s middle-range theory purport to explain?
What are the key explanatory variables?
3. What empirical, testable hypotheses follow?
4. What is the causal mechanism that underlies the middle-range theory of political violence?

7. Barry Posen (1952- ) Ph. D. Berkeley (1981)
Appointments at Princeton (1984-7), MIT (1987-)
The Sources of Military Doctrine (1984)
Inadvertent Escalation (1991)
Restraint (2014)

8. Barry Posen 1. How would you categorize Posen’s analysis?
Research programme
Level of analysis
2. What are the key testable hypotheses advanced by Posen?
How does Posen elaborate these with the contingencies encountered during the transition from empire to independent nation-states?
3. What are the theoretical foundations?

9. Samuel P. Huntington (1927-2008)
Ph. D., Harvard University
Career: Harvard, Columbia, Harvard
Retired 2006
1957. The Soldier and the State
1968. Political Order in Changing Societies
1991. The Third Wave
1996. The Clash of Civilizations

10. Huntington. Clash of Civilizations
1. What are the key testable hypotheses?
[DV]Patterns of cooperation and conflict
[IV] Civilizations
Cooperation within civilizations
Conflict across civilization divides
Cleft states
Torn countries

11. Huntington. Clash of Civilizations
2. What is the middle-range theory that leads to these hypotheses?
“In the post-Cold War world, the most important distinctions among peoples are not ideological, political, or economic. They are cultural.”

12. Huntington. Clash of Civilizations
3. Axioms and key auxiliary hypotheses:
a. Postulate about human motivation: Fundamental importance of “Who are we?”
Why we enter politics
b. Cultures and civilizations: “both involve the ‘values, norms, institutions, and modes of thinking to which successive generations in a given society have attached primary importance.’”
Religion as most fundamental
Civilization as broadest cultural entity/identity
c. Civilization as foundation (base)

13. Huntington. Clash of Civilizations
“political systems are transient expedients on the surface of civilization, and the destiny of each linguistically and morally unified community depends ultimately upon the survival of certain primary structuring ideas around which successive generations have coalesced ”

14. Theda Skocpol (1947- ) Ph. D. Harvard (1975)
Professor, Harvard University
States and Social Revolutions (1979)
Protecting Soldiers and Mothers (1992)

15. Theda Skocpol 1. How would you categorize Skocpol’s analysis?
2. What is the key dependent variable?
3. What empirical, testable hypotheses does Skocpol advance?
4. The comparative historical method

16. James Fearon
1992 Ph.D., Berkeley
Professor at Chicago, Stanford

17. III. Fearon on Rational War
Central puzzle--Ex post inefficiency of war
1. War is costly
2. There should always be a contract that leaves parties better off
Assumptions necessary for this model to apply
Public good
Divisibility
Fungibility

18. III. Fearon on Rational War
B. Postulated Model: War as an Anomaly/War is costly War is costly And there is always a contract that would leave parties better off
after conflict
without conflict
8 slices
16 slices
Bargaining range Anything in this range is preferable to 0-8, but within this range there is pure conflict

19. III. Fearon on Rational War
C. War as Bargaining Failure 1. Asymmetrical information with incentives to misrepresent 2. Inability to credibly commit to fulfill bargaining 3. Indivisibility