A few months ago I wrote about an alarming new research program from ODNI that wanted to investigate how an individual's online behavior should impact their clearance adjudication. From the original synopsis, "From the perspective of personnel security, cyber-behavior represents an emerging area of behavior that should be considered as an important part of the adjudication process for granting security clearances for personnel working in national security positions."

This morning, FBO announced that the research has been awarded to two companies, the Syracuse Research Corporation and the Personnel Decisions Research Institutes. The combined values of the contracts is over $800,000, so the government must be expecting quite a bit from this agenda. Neither group has any official press release on the award on their website, but I look forward to any public disclosure of their general findings, and of course, consequent changes in DSS policy.

The Monkey Cage alerts us to a very interesting article in the latest issue of the APSR, related to the question I posed on Tuesday, which is, "Are voters sensitive to terrorism?"

The authors use Israel for their case study, and conclude:

terrorism not only affected the composition of every Israeli parliament during the time period at issue, but also may have very well determined which party obtained a plurality in two of the elections analyzed. This appears to be the case for the elections of 1988 (where…Likud defeated Labor by one mandate) and the elections of 1996 (where Netanyahu defeated Peres by less than 30,000 votes). Moreover, note that an additional terror attack within three months of the 1992 elections could have shifted the majority of the parliament from the left to the right bloc of parties.

The problem with using Israeli voters as the data is these voters have an extremely uniuqe perspective on terrorism. In an environment where terrorism; sadly, is a part of daily life, what general conclusion can be drawn from this analysis? Given this reality, however, I am surprised the authors found that there is such a strong effect. My intuition would be that such "jaded" voters would not react so strongly, which in itself may help us understand how strongly voters less accustomed voters might react (e.g. Spain).

This entry is a detailed introduction to a new open-source project I am starting called PyVote, which is a pure Python framework for simulating legislature voting behavior. This entry provides some background as to how I came to start PyVote, and my intentions with its development, but for those of you who like to cut to the chase, please visit the project's home page.

This is a question that I have been pondering for several weeks. By definition, a terrorist event is a failure of policy. This can be any combination of international or domestics policies (security, intelligence, etc.), but in the aftermath of these tragic events, democratic legislatures will frequently hasten to create new policy in an attempt to rectify this failure and prevent future attacks. The logical progression is to ask, "how will this occur, and what will the new law look like?"

As I considered how to construct a research design for answering this question, my immediate thought was to dig into the data. Examine the legislation produced by various countries, with different democratic formations (bi-party, bicameral, parliamentary, etc.), after a terrorist event had occurred. The difficulty with this strategy is two-fold; first, the inherent sampling bias of collecting this data; and two, attempting to compare outcomes across government types. The small differences add up, and quickly similar governments look very different when examining their mechanics.

The most effective way to control for this is to construct a model that allows total control over the voting environment. The only way to accomplish this, is through the use of an agent-based model. Enter PyVote.

Continue reading "How Do Democratic Legislatures React to Terrorist Events?" »

DARPA’s Math Challenges have been making their way around the web for a second time, and it got me thinking about how someone—much smarter than me—might go about addressing the second challenge on the list. For reference, here is what DARPA wants us to think about:

Math Challenge 2: The Dynamics of Networks

Develop the high-dimensional mathematics needed to accurately model and predict behavior in large-scale distributed networks that evolve over time occurring in communication, biology and the social sciences.

This certainly fits the commonly referenced “DARPA hard” beltway vernacular, but does this challenge actually move the science forward? I do not say this to be pedantic, or make excuses for myself (or other network researchers, who have not been able to meet this challenge in the year since it as first issued). Instead, I point this out because I think this challenge embodies a fundamental problem in how the scientific community is attempting to address the analysis of dynamic networks.

Continue reading "Thoughts on DARPA’s Math Challenge #2: The Dynamics of Networks" »

Michael at a The Quantitative Peace makes very clever observation regarding Bayesian statistics and Donald Rumsfeld.

I will let you see for yourself, but suffice to say, 'known unknowns' are very confusing...

I will join the rest of the blogosphere in pointing you to reading Noah Shactman's great (expanded) article on Dr. Montgomery McFate. The Senior Social Science Adviser for the US Army’s Human Terrain System Program was recently named to Wired magazine's 2008 Smart List.

I enjoyed the article, though I think it is important remember that there are many aspect of the HTS that are not worth celebrating, and though I think it is critical that the next president listen very carefully to Dr. McFate, for HTS to be a true success it must undergo a serious internal review.

There are a lot of interesting items floating around the web this afternoon...

• Robert Bateman has a great op-ed piece at Intel Dump on the Minerva Initiative, and the predicable response by most academics
• Nature reminds us that bad models are...bad
• Cyber-warfare or hooliganism?
• Addendum: NYC Computer Science and Economics Day
• And on a much lighter note, Nader may have reached an all-tine low [brought to you by Phil Klinkner, GO CONTINENTALS!]

In Punishing the Prince, McGillivray and Smith detail their reasoning for implementing a Leader Specific Punishment (LSP) strategy to induce compliance and cooperation in international relations. Though the mathematical derivations of their model are quite complex, the foundation on which the authors build their argument for when LSP is a good strategy result from two simple—yet critical—observations: leaders are motivated by maintaining power, and the cost of removing a leader must be sufficiently low. The authors present a very compelling argument for LSP with regard to treaty compliance; however, their treatment of LSP in conflict scenarios misses a critical internal dynamic observed in nations during crisis moments.

Continue reading "The “rally effect” on Leader Specific Punishment in conflict scenarios" »

The Journal of Organizational Behavior has put out a call for papers with a research focus on terrorism, disaster, and organizational management.

From the listserv notice:

Research is needed on organizational efforts to address threats from catastrophic events such as terrorism and natural disaster. To this point, however, the organizational sciences have given relatively little attention to studies aimed at understanding terrorism/disaster prevention and response by either single organizations (be they private- or public-sector or non-profit ones), or by multiple-organization networks. Some theories and models adapted from organizational topics might have some relevance to understanding terror/disaster management, but explicit, systematic examination of the relevance of such theories is necessary. Moreover, the unique dynamics (e.g., near-universal generation of powerful emotions; potential substantial disruption of organizations? surrounding environments) of disaster and terror events are likely to render such catastrophes somewhat distinct in processes, worker outcomes, and organizational effects from even other types of crises. On the other hand, the extreme nature of the dangers and demands that disaster/terror can pose for organizations and their members may allow them to be used to illuminate fundamental organizational strategies, mechanisms, processes and outcomes such that broadly-relevant scientific and practical knowledge results.

The deadline for submissions is April 10, 2009. The special issue is intended for publication mid-2010. Papers to be considered for this special issue should be submitted online via http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/job (selecting "Special Issue Paper?" as the Manuscript Type). Please direct questions about the submission process, or any administrative matter, to Managing Editor, Kaylene Ascough, k.ascough@uq.edu.au

The editor of the special issue is very happy to discuss initial ideas for papers, and can be contacted directly:

Keith James, Special Issue Editor, keithj@pdx.edu

Though it is not exactly new (the first issue was released in March 2008), the Dynamics of Asymmetric Conflict is new to me so I wanted to pass it on. I came across it quite accidentally, but the mission statement gave me pause to dig deeper...

Dynamics of Asymmetric Conflict (DAC) is a pioneering interdisciplinary journal that publishes original papers and reviews that contribute to understanding and ameliorating conflicts between states and non-state challengers. These conflicts too often lead to violence, sometimes to the extremes of terrorism or genocide. Understanding the trajectory to violence requires examination of conflicts that do not escalate to violence as well as those that do. This means studying individuals, groups, and movements who challenge the state without violence, as well as those who turn to radicalism and terrorism. Similarly, it is necessary to study state agents, agencies, and policy makers who respond to challenge without violence, as well as those who turn to torture, ethnic cleansing and genocide. It follows from this multi-level and dynamic perspective that every social science is welcome in the journal.

The inaugural issue covers some very interesting topics related to terrorism, but those that jumped out to me were:

• Jemaah Islamiyah's radical madrassah networks
  Justin Magouirk; Scott Atran


• Terrorism in the year 2020: Examining the ideational, functional and geopolitical trends that will shape terrorism in the twenty-first century
  Paul J. Smith


• Conflict resolution in asymmetric and symmetric situations: Northern Ireland as a case study
  James W. McAuley; Catherine McGlynn; Jon Tonge