The Quantitative Peace

The Military and Competitive Sports

I missed my last post, but thankfully I'm on top of this week's edition. 

Kyleanne Hunter and Oliver Kaplan have a piece at Political Violence @ a Glance discussing some of the military roots of the biathlon. I've never known much about the sport's history, but it certainly makes sense that its origins are so closely tied to the kinds of security needs that Hunter and Kaplan cite. This was particularly interesting to me as both my wife and I grew up close to Lake Placid, New York. Lake Placid hosted the winter Olympics twice—once in 1932 and again in 1980—and continues to be a destination for tourists and athletes alike. Additionally, the 10th Mountain Division is headquartered about three hours from there at Fort Drum, and they have an armory located in Saranac Lake, New York where I grew up. Two members of the US biathlon team are also from Saranac Lake: Annelies Cook and Tim Burke. 

I went to high school with both Annelies and Tim, and it's great to see them doing so well. Hunter and Kaplan's discussion of the biathlon's history also makes me appreciate the sport and where I grew up a little bit more, and it's neat to think about the sport in terms of how it intersects with my own personal historical/research interests. The idea that specific military assignments can evolve into cooperative/competitive sporting events is really interesting, and I'm sure there's been much more written about it than I'm aware of (which is little). Naturally this makes me wonder what other sports have evolved out of military activities. Archery comes to mind, but I suspect that has competitive origins that are less exclusively military. There are a number of other shooting-related events during the summer games (see here), but again, many of these events are not necessarily exclusively military in origin either. Some of the historical information the link provides, and the descriptions of some of the events, suggest more of a hunting-related background. And many of these events appear to have been phased out, or have only been held once or twice.

It also makes me wonder as to what kind of selection effects might be at work in terms of how these activities evolve into competitive sports. Presumably you need activities that are a mixture of some highly specialized skill, but also something that's not overly secretive. After all, you don't want other states knowing that you have individuals highly trained in a particular task if that will compromise their work in some way. You also need an activity where multiple countries have need of the same type of training or force. As Hunter and Kaplan discuss, multiple countries were deploying similar sorts of forces to patrol remote, mountainous border regions, thereby facilitating the development of some sort of competitive event based on these shared activities. So not every state needs to have a given force, but at least a few do in order for it to be competitive. 

So what are some contemporary examples of the sorts of military activities that could evolve into internationally competitive sports? And how has technological innovation changed the landscape, so to speak, in terms of the pool of potential activities that could evolve in this way? My mind immediately went to some underwater sports, thinking of some combination of navigating an underwater obstacle course, and then performing some task requiring a demonstration of dexterity. This list of underwater sports suggests there are some sports that at least partly resemble these activities. Underwater navigation and underwater target shooting, specifically. This article also indicates that no underwater sports have been a part of the Olympic games. This appears to be due to the International Olympic Committee selecting which games it will grant approval to. Still, these seem like activities that require a high degree of specialization, but are also pursued by enough countries to facilitate competition. 

Another future possibility would be sort sort of aerial drone competition. Competitors might be judged on their ability to take off, perform certain maneuvers, perhaps "paint" a moving target for a given period of time, and then land. Though there are more advanced military variants, less sophisticated and less expensive drone variants are already being experimented with for a variety of purposes (see Amazon's recent talk of drone-based delivery). Though this would certainly emphasize physical performance less than other athletic activities, I'm not sure it's all that different from other activities like shooting, much of which emphasizes hand-eye coordination. This is also technology that more countries are likely to pursue for security/military purposes as time goes on.

If anyone can think of other military activities that might translate into internationally competitive sports, please share in the comments. 

Historical Cartography

Uri Friedman at the Atlantic has a nice piece entitled "12 Maps that Changed the World." It's based on a book by Jerry Brotton, professor of Renaissance Studies at Queen Mary University. It's worth checking out if you haven't seen it already. This article is interesting for a few reasons. First, it gives you some sense as to how views of the earth have changed over time. Second, Friedman's snippets for each map help to show how politics, culture, and religion all influenced the evolution of these views. And related to that previous idea, it points to that ever-present issue of measurement. Social scientists aren't the only ones who confront these kinds of issues, and information we now tend to assume away as being relatively objective and simple to define/convey (e.g. geography) can actually be more complicated that we might first think:

"All cultures have always believed that the map they valorize is real and true and objective and transparent," Brotton, a professor of Renaissance studies at Queen Mary University of London, told me. "All maps are always subjective.... Even today’s online geospatial applications on all your mobile devices and tablets, be they produced by Google or Apple or whoever, are still to some extent subjective maps."

There are, in other words, no perfect maps—just maps that (more-or-less) perfectly capture our understanding of the world at discrete moments in time. 

At this point in time I suspect the subjectivity associated with cartography is probably less a matter of relative size and space, and more a matter of content (i.e. borders, landmarks, etc.). Friedman addresses this a bit when he talks about Google's map-making efforts in #12.

Map #4 also stood out to me:

What's most striking about this Korean map, designed by a team of royal astronomers led by Kwon Kun, is that north is at top. "It's strange because the first map that looks recognizable to us as a Western map is a map from Korea in 1402," Brotton notes. He chalks this up to power politics in the region at the time. "In South Asian and Chinese imperial ideology, you look up northwards in respect to the emperor, and the emperor looks south to his subjects," Brotton explains.

There's also a clip from the West Wing attached to Map #11, the Peter's Projection. Something for everyone.

New Year's Resolutions for Academics

In six days, 2014 commences and people across the globe will make resolutions to change their habits in areas concerning health, wealth, family, and work.  I do not make such resolutions, but that minor detail will not stop me from providing some boilerplate resolutions for academics.  Here are a few ideas to kick off the resolution-making New Year.*

 

Research/Writing

- I will collect one data point per day.

- I will create one data point per day (perhaps per month if your data involves war onsets).

- I will make sure my "thank you" section includes more genuine choices than strategic choices.

- I will actually write a paper before I write the abstract and submit it to a conference.

- I will derive all of my hypotheses from theory.

- I will write my theory sections before I write my results sections.

- I will not gamble on the probability that a conference will extend its deadline for submissions.

- I will book my hotel/flight more than two days in advance.

- I will write more words of non-fiction than fiction.

- I will read and comprehend the formal theory articles I cite instead of just reading the titles.

- I will include more genuine citations than self-citations.

 

Teaching

- I will read the papers before I grade them.

- I will know the topic before I lecture on it.

- I will wake up at least ten minutes prior to any lecture I must give.

- I will answer all student emails; even if it is the same question from the same student for the third time. My dog is no longer "eating my emails."

- I will wear at least two different ties during the semester. 

- I will not include unsolvable riddles in my Power Point slides.

- During exams, I will not put Europe's "Final Countdown" on repeat over the speakers.

- I will make sure my students understand why proper international relations theory will allow them to achieve optimal victory conditions in Civilization V or Europa Universalis IV.

Service

- I will return reviews prior to an "outstanding review" email from an editor.  Failing that, I will return it before the third such email.

- I will not use a Two-Face style coin to determine whether or not to desk-reject each submitted manuscript to my journal. 

- I will not attempt to filibuster committee decisions.

- I will blog on substantive topics and not just on popular culture items like movies and holidays.

 

 

*To be clear, this does not suggest that I engage in any of the behaviors the above resolutions seek to correct. That is, this list is meant purely for humor.

 

The Dark Knight Rises and the Economic Impact of Bane's Occupation of Gotham

I started working on this post a long time ago and, for whatever reason, never got around to finishing it. So please keep in mind that this was largely written shortly after the film first came out. I should also disclose at the outset that this post will contain spoilers, so if there is some sort of unbelievably powerful force that has kept you from seeing this fantastic movie, please be warned. For those still interested, there's more after the jump.

The Day of the Doctor and the Veil of Ignorance (Warning: Spoilers!)

The 50^th Anniversary episode of "Doctor Who" aired this week in theatres throughout the world. There was an interesting scene towards the end of the movie, which I would like to share. Below I give a very simplified version of the scene.

There are two main characters in the scene, a human and a shape-shifting alien refugee that took on the human’s form.

The human and the alien are located in a secret storage facility in London and it has the most dangerous alien weapons on Earth.

The alien wants to take over the earth, and she plans to use the dangerous weapons in the room to do it. The human will do anything to stop them from using the weapons.

The alien has two choices: (1) continue to plan to take over earth, or (2) back down and leave earth with no other reasonable place to go, resulting in certain death of her species.

The human has two choices: (1) she can set off a nuclear warhead that will destroy the weapons facility and all of London, or (2) she can allow the alien to take the weapons, take over the earth, and destroy all humans. She prefers the first option. Even though she expects to destroy London, she believes she can save the rest of the earth.

The two figures below outline the game. There are two Nash equilibriums, {Take Over; Set Off} and {Leave; Set Off}. Since the Alien is indifferent between these two outcomes- she has nothing to lose, as her species would die regardless of what the human did- it is hard to predict what the alien should do. In the scene, the alien chooses to try to take over earth. Then the human starts the timer to set off the bomb, and this results in the {Take Over; Set Off} outcome.

When it seems like London is doomed, a third character, the Doctor, enters the room and tries to convince the characters to come to a peaceful agreement. When neither character backs down, the Doctor comes to an ingenious solution: he puts a veil of ignorance over the human’s and alien’s minds, causing them to forget whether they are human or alien. Immediately both players agree to halt the warhead timer and begin to negotiate an agreement.

Ultimately, the Doctor forces the alien and the human to consider each other’s preferences. The Doctor’s solution is similiar to Rawls’ veil of ignorance solution. According to Rawls, if people are unaware of their own personal characteristics at the negotiating table, they are more likely to come to equitable or fair agreements. Since people under a veil of ignornance are unable to determine if they are rich and powerful, or poor and weak, they will  develop an equitable agreement over the distribution of opportunities and rights. 

Not only does the Doctor force the alien and the human to take into account each other's prefereces, the Doctor also forces the characters to consider a third option: sharing the earth. It is possible that neither the human nor the alien believed they could credibly commit to sharing the earth, and this is why they did not consider it prior to the Doctor’s arrival. However, since the Doctor is forcing them to negotiate, they may be more likely to consider the option.

The two figures below outline the new game. The strategic form game takes into account that neither player knows their own preferences, so there is 50% chance of receiving the human’s payoff and a 50% chance of receiving the alien’s payoff. In addition, I think when both players are individually choosing their optimal strategies, they choose the set of strategies that best work out for both players, instead of just for themselves.

The Nash equilibriums of this new game are {Leave; Set Off} and {Divide Pie; Accept Proposal}. Note that neither of these solutions includes setting off the nuclear warhead, so the Doctor successfully changes the outcome of the game. In addition, since {Divide Pie; Accept Proposal} is a better outcome than {Leave; Set Off} (an expected payoff of 0 for both players is better than an expected payoff of -15), I think both players would end up choosing to {Divide Pie; Accept Proposal} as their final agreement.

The main issue I have with the Doctor’s solution is that there is no suggestion of an enforcement mechanism. Both the human and alien could come to an equitable agreement, but they might intend to renege once they find out who they really are. In the very least, after the agreement is reached, both parties would have to be locked out of the room before the veil is lifted. Otherwise, the alien could try to take over again and the human could set off the nuclear warhead. With respect to sticking to the agreement in the long term, both parties would have to come up with some way to force each other to adhere to the terms.

Gifts for Political Scientists, 2013

It is a week before the American tradition of "Black Friday" starting on Thursday, and I have not done an updated list on "Gifts for Political Scientists" since 2010, so here is my proposed list for 2013.  Trying to find gifts for that special poltiical scientist in your life can be quite difficult.  Given the existing list from 2010 (that is, I am avoiding repeats) and inspiration from the source I originally stole the idea from, here is the supplement to the 2010 list. 

Board Games

The games on my 2010 list are still my go-to suggestions for people considering games for political scientists. However, for this year, I am adding a few to the list.

• Ticket to Ride (Amazon) - This game is relatively simplistic in its presentation and offers a variety of strategies based on hidden information that each player has.  There are two shared goals for all of the players, and at least two hidden goals for each player.  This game is fantastically appropriate for all age groups and allows some complexity even when there are a bunch of game theorists all playing the game.  I would strongly recommend this board game over something like Monopoly if you are looking for a game for the family.

• Mafia/Werewolf (Wikipedia) - This game is free and there are multiple versions of it available across the web. If you must buy the game, there are some options on Amazon.  I recommend this free game as it is similar to Bang! (see the 2010 list) in that it is a game of private information in which palyers are trying to determine other people's roles and take actions based on their evaluation of that information. In both versions of the game (Mafia or werewolf), the majority of the players are normal citizens who are trying to determine who the non-citizens are that are harming the town.  In Mafia, you are looking to determine who in your town is part of the mob. In Werewolf, you are rooting out werewolves that are destroying your community.  The citizens are attempting to identify and eliminate the mobsters/werewolves while the other party attempts to remain hidden and elminate citizens until they control a majority of the vote and win the game.  

This is a go-to game for large parties and is best played with seven or more people.

Card Games

• Dominion (Amazon) - Dominion is the top of my list for card games.  It is a "Deck-Building Game" that makes building a deck part of the game. For people who normally play collectible card games, deck-building is part of the pre-game strategy. Dominion makes this aspect front and center as many of your actions are built around creating your deck.  Dominion is flexible and boasts eight different expansions that allow you to engage in different settings, strategies, and fundamentally alter some of the rules of the game.

Video Games 

• Civilization V: Brave New World (Amazon/Metacritic Reviews) - Okay, this is slightly cheating on the no repeats rule, but it is cheating I can live with. The second expansion to the 2010 recommended item adds in a few important facets to growing a civilization and dealing with international relations. The biggest game-play addition for International Relations folk is the introduction of the World Congress. The ability to sanction belligerents, ban particular goods, encourage international festivals, and devote resources to science makes this expansion a necessary tool in international discourse.  Quite a long game, but solo play has improved dramatically. If you can find 2-5 people to sit and play competitively for hours at a time, then the experience of the game improves dramatically. To enjoy Brave New World, you do need the base game and I recommend also picking up the first expansion. 

• Bioshock: Infinite (Amazon/Metacritic Reviews) - In my 2010 list, I included Bioshock on the recommendation of Michael Flynn without my own exposure.  Now, I have played through Bioshock, Bioshock 2, and Bioshock Infinite.  The last in the series of games is a standalone game that you can play without having exposure to the previous games.  The setting is the city of Columbia in 1912; a city built in the sky.  Bioshock played upon Ayn Randian themes of an alternative societal structure during collapse.  Bioshock Infinite engages a mix of patriotism, jingoism, and racism.  Columbia is more patriotic and pro-America than America itself and ends up seceding from the Union. The game takes place after this secession.  There is much more to this game and the political themes are worth discussing for political scientists; however, I will not spoil much more of the story here. You can find a trailer for the game here on Youtube. 

• Tropico 4 (Amazon/Metacritic Reviews)- A simulation where you play the leader of a small Latin American Island and lead your country through economic, political, and social decisions. The setting of the game takes place during the Cold War, so you are balancing out trying to appease American and Soviet interests (the closer you move to either country, the more aid they give you) as well as dealing with other international factors.  You have elections every six years and you can make them free and fair, use election trickery, make false promises, or engage in outright assassination.  The choice is yours in creating your island government. This game is great if you are a builder, a planner, or into running your own country.

 

Books/Reading

• Game of Thrones (Amazon/Audible) - I am late on this particular bandwagon.  I have yet to see the show as I am making my way through the books first. Most of my book consumption happens through Audible as I can listen to the audiobooks during my daily commute via bike.  This fantasy series has a decent mix of intrigue and politicking that has made many of a political scientist happy thus far.  My favorite moment from the series thus far is when one of my students wrote a reaction paper that tied a concept discussed by Robert Bates into the book and used it to explain the set of relationships between the various actors.  

• The Foundation (Amazon/Audible) - this foundational science fiction book by Asimov creates the social science theory of "Psycho-History"; a study of groups of people and has the ability to predict their behavior.  Psycho-history cannot predict individuals, but can predict the movement of large bodies as if they were unitary actors.  The parallels between Asimov's fictional social science and what we do should be obvious. This seven part series is a must-read for any political scientists interested in science fiction.

Movies

• The Hunger Games (Amazon) - The young adult novel hit the big screen a few years ago and the second in the series is out this week.  The movie lends itself to some discussion of civil war, protest, and rebellion in the context of dictatorships.  

• Brazil (Amazon/Wikipedia Entry) - One classic in addition to the contemporary blockbuster: Terry Gilliam's dark comedy Brazil.  This movie also lends itself to themes about dictatorship, repression, and resistance with a heavy backdrop of bureaucratic nightmares.  

For the Office

• Tardis Door cover (ThinkGeek) - In case you want to make your office seem bigger on the inside.

• Independents' Flag (ThinkGeek) - For the Firefly lover who wants to express their preferred political affiliation. 

 

The list is a bit truncated this year as I plan to make this an annual post. As such, there are plenty of other items that can make political scientists happy.  Of course, if you are an editor, then the simple word "accept" is more than enough. 

Political Words & Phrases in Hip Hop

Recently, my wife discovered the Rap Stats tool at Rap Genius, which plots the relative frequency of words and phrases in rap songs from 1988 to the present.  Of course, when she showed it to me, my immediate thought was to start plotting political words and phrases and see if we could pick up any patterns over time.  The first thing we did was take a look at the relative frequency of the names of U.S. presidents from 1988 to the present.

As you can see, the patterns are basically as one would expect. Reagan isn't mentioned much, possibly because the first year for which data are available was his last full year in office (although he seems to have enjoyed something of a resurgence lately). George H.W. Bush drives a a lot mentions of "Bush" in the late 1980s and early 1990s; Bush is used far less during the Clinton years, but nears its previous levels during George W. Bush's presidency, particularly during his second term.  Mentions of Clinton max out around 1994, but strangely never reach the levels achieved by other Presidents.  (This may have something to do with the seeming drought of political content in hip hop that occurred in the mid to late 1990s, which I discuss in further detail below.)  Finally, Obama bursts onto the scene in 2005 but seems to be experiencing a bit of a drop-off since 2010.

The distinctive pattern of Obama's appearance in rap lyrics gave us another idea: an examination of lyrical path-dependence.  That is, when certain words suddenly become more relevant for lyricists, do words and phrases that rhyme with that word also become more common?  Based on the graphs below, it would appear either that the Dalai Lama, commas, and llamas have become far more interesting to hip hop artists since 2005 or that Barack Obama's rapid rise to the presidency simply led lyricists to use words that rhyme with his last name more often.

Of course, one can use this tool to look at more substantive questions.  In the blog post announcing Rap Stats, Rap Genius Editor-in-Chief Shawn Setaro raises the possibility that word counts can be used to analyze the degree to which the profit motive led artists to embrace the "gangsta" identity as hip hop became an economic force in the 1990s, while simultaneously dropping challenges to the "white supremacist capitalist patriarchical" status quo.  Setaro demonstrates this with plots of "black" (to proxy Afrocentrism) and "wisdom" (to proxy the influence of the Five-Percent Nation), each of which fell out of favor to a large degree during the 1990s.  He then contrasts the decline in these phrases with the rise of phrases associated with the East Coast/West Coast rap wars of the 1990s.  The following graphs represent my attempts to replicate his results using other phrases that might proxy challenges to white privelage and the political status quo, as well as identities other than that of the gangsta.

For those of us whose interest in politics was at least partially inspired by artists like Public Enemy, KRS-One, Mos Def, or Talib Kweli, these plots present a bleak reality.  Across all graphs, it appears we are getting fewer songs like "Rebel Without A Pause," "You Must Learn," and "Fight the Power" today than we got back in the late 1980s and early 1990s.  However, this doesn't necessarily mean that political messages have completely fallen out of fashion. While the growth of hip hop as an economic force may have initially reduced the relative frequency of political messages, it would appear that the advocacy of both non-violent and institutionalized political strategies may be on the rise.  Indeed, mentions of terms associated with electoral democracy have largely risen in the 2000s, as have mentions of Martin Luther King.

Of course, humans are adept at seeing patterns where none exist; further analysis would be necessary to determine if any of the stories presented here hold up against alternative explanations.  Still, the Rap Stats tool is a lot of fun for music fans.  I hope we see more lyrical analysis tools like this in the future.

Taking Surveys Seriously? (II)

            In the previous post, I looked at whether it’s possible to code the answers to open-ended survey questions in such a way as to flag respondents who perhaps weren’t taking the survey seriously. My primary concerns were whether these outbursts of respondent hostility can affect our inferences, but also whether we can use characteristics of respondents or of particular questions to predict when these outbursts will occur. I think looking at these hostile responses is an important reminder of just how many different stories there are within a single survey. If social scientists want to generalise about these stories, then I think we ought to acknowledge that some individuals in our dataset don’t want to be generalised about. Frustration is one way to gauge this.

Taking Surveys Seriously? (I)

Time Magazine: “Do you care about what you sing?”

Bob Dylan: “How can I answer that question if you’ve got the nerve to ask me?”

In this post I discuss whether we should exclude a respondent from survey analysis if their answers show that they’ve lost patience with the process. This stems from my discovery that the American
public can get pretty sassy when they’re taking political science surveys. If you ask enough questions that people don’t appreciate, they’ll get sick of giving reasonable answers.

Links Galore

It's been a while since my last post, so I thought it was time to put up at least a little something:

Senate Republicans are, for the moment, blocking Chuck Hagel's nomination as Defense Secretary. Admittedly, my attention to current events has been spotty over the past couple of months, but it seems that every time I turn my attention back to this the basic rationale for opposing Hagel has changed. Initially it concerned his comments regarding Israel, then it morphed to include a means of obtaining more information about the attacks on Benghazi, and now it seems to have evolved further to include concerns over compensation Hagel received for giving some speeches since he left the Senate. Ultimately I guess I remain unsure as to how this works out for the better for Republicans—now, or in the long run. 

A meteor injured several hundred people in Russia. 

Spencer Ackerman has a piece up at Wired looking at the mistakes made by the Galactic Empire at the Battle of Hoth. There is also a broader set of responses to Ackerman's piece at Wired, and the folks at the Duck of Minerva have several followup posts debating the shortcomings of the Empire in a wider context. Itemize these posts, I will:

1. Here's Ackerman's post.
2. Wired's symposium.
3. Dan Nexon's piece for said Wired symposium.
4. Patrick Thaddeus Jackon's piece at the Duck.
5. Robert Kelly's piece at the Duck.
6. Steve Saideman piece at the Duck.
7. Patrick Thaddeus Jackson's followup at the Duck.

As these discussions have mirrored some of the lunchtime discussions I've had over the past few years with fellow bloggers Chad Clay and Michael Allen, I've enjoyed reading them immensely. I will try to update this list if there are any new additions.