by Why We Fight fits well as a unit within a graduate seminar on conflict, international relations, economic development, political economy, or comparative politics. 2–3 Week Unit For example, I teach conflict theory and empirics in 3–4 lectures of a longer seminar for economics PhD students called Political Economy of Development, with James Robinson (syllabus). I like to teach a mix of classic theory and very current (often unpublished) papers to give students a feel for both the canon and the frontier. Here are the lecture slides I used in Spring 2021: Rationalist warfare [pdf] [tex] picks up on the material in Chapters 1, 2, 4 and 5 Non-standard theories of fighting [pdf] [tex] picks up on material in Chapters 2, 3, and 6 Frontiers of violence research [pdf] [tex] picks up on some of
Topics:
Chris Blattman considers the following as important: Teaching page, Why We Fight
This could be interesting, too:
Chris Blattman writes Cyber Warfare Is Getting Real: The risk of escalation from cyberattacks has never been greater—or the pursuit of peace more complicated
Chris Blattman writes The Hard Truth About Long Wars: Why the Conflict in Ukraine Won’t End Anytime Soon
Chris Blattman writes Presentation to the Joint Chiefs Operations Directorate
Chris Blattman writes From street fights to world wars: What gang violence can teach us about conflict
Why We Fight fits well as a unit within a graduate seminar on conflict, international relations, economic development, political economy, or comparative politics.
2–3 Week Unit
For example, I teach conflict theory and empirics in 3–4 lectures of a longer seminar for economics PhD students called Political Economy of Development, with James Robinson (syllabus). I like to teach a mix of classic theory and very current (often unpublished) papers to give students a feel for both the canon and the frontier.
Here are the lecture slides I used in Spring 2021:
- Rationalist warfare [pdf] [tex] picks up on the material in Chapters 1, 2, 4 and 5
- Non-standard theories of fighting [pdf] [tex] picks up on material in Chapters 2, 3, and 6
- Frontiers of violence research [pdf] [tex] picks up on some of the papers highlighted in Chapters 7-11 of the book
Other non-conflict lectures and slides from this class are here.
I also taught conflict as a 2–3 week unit within a longer political science PhD seminar at Columbia in 2012–15 (syllabus). In addition to the above three lectures, Chapter 10 (Interventions) is a nice accompaniment to the academic literature on sanctions, peacekeeping, mediation, and other interventions commonly covered in comparative politics and international relations classes.
In both cases, Why We Fight is useful a readable and non-technical accompaniment to the academic material. It gives PhD students a better sense of how to apply the theory to historical and contemporary conflicts—something individual academic papers seldom do, and something that can get lost in the game theoretic
Technical materials
Here is an online appendix for the “pie-splitting” examples in the book, in case you want to work through them in class or as a problem set.
Here is an example of a Master’s level problem set with solutions, to help students work through some of the examples in the book.
Longer more technical courses with models
For a longer and more technical class, I recommend looking to Sandeep Baliga’s Conflict and Cooperation syllabus at Northwestern. A great way to teach the class is to walk through the models in his article with Tomas Sjostrom, Bargaining and War: A Review of Some Formal Models.