Tag Archives: violence

How can we get more ‘output,’ and of the right sort, from policing? The question has only taken on greater importance with recent, widely publicized instances of police misconduct; declines in public trust in police; and a rise in gun violence, all disproportionately concentrated in economically disadvantaged communities of color. Research typically focuses on two levers: (1) police resources, and (2) policing strategies or policies, historically focused on crime control but increasingly...

Yesterday Russia moved to consolidate its control over eastern separatist regions of Ukraine. People bickered over whether this constituted an invasion, at which point Noah Smith won Twitter for the day: If it’s not from the Invasion region of southern France, then it’s not an invasion, it’s just a sparkling annexation — Noah Smith 🌐+🧦=🐇 (@Noahpinion) February 22, 2022 I’m only medium-good at tweets, and I don’t have much experience at all with Russia or Ukraine. But what I can do is parse...

It began a few years ago, when prominent democracy rating organizations started downgrading the United States, putting its institutions on par with Panama, Argentina, or Romania. In retrospect, that seems like the good news. Last year, the international security and intelligence expert Greg Treverton predicted the breakup of the union in a piece titled Civil War Is Coming. And early this year, in a book titled The Next Civil War, journalist Stephen Marche outlined America’s many future...

If more U.S.-Russia talks are to happen, what should be on the table? Thomas Graham and Rajan Menon, writing in Politico Magazine, attempt to thread the needle of Russia’s Ukraine demands by considering a moratorium on the country’s future NATO membership amid a larger security compromise. “Now is the time to think big and imagine a new, more durable order, one that can encompass Russia,” they write. Others go further, with Anatol Lieven, writing in the Quincy Institute for Responsible...

Guest post by Jeff Mosenkis of Innovations for Poverty Action Stanford Political Scientist Hakeem Jefferson hosted a great conversation with a number of scholars on race and the criminal justice system [embedded content] The readings mentioned are assembled in this Dropbox folder and thread, and the Stanford Daily summarized the conversation. A couple of points that jumped out at me were what counts as research/evidence in academic research circles (it seems common for scholars of the black...

Guest post by Jeff Mosenkis of Innovations for Poverty Action IPA’s Peace and Recovery initiative, led on the academic side by Chris, has an open call for funding. We define peace and recovery pretty broadly:Reducing violence and promoting peaceReducing “fragility” (i.e. fostering state capability and institutions of decision-making)Preventing, coping with, and recovering from crises (focusing on conflict, but also including non-conflict humanitarian crises), It also funds a variety of types...

Guest post by Jeff Mosenkis of Innovations for Poverty Action.  A slight, shy, balding, 49-year-old when the 1980 Nobel was announced, Cronin was relieved when the university sent Larry Arbeiter to his home at 7 a.m. to help him handle the deluge of requests for press interviews. Arbeiter, a writer in the university’s press office, suggested that Cronin satisfy all the interview requests at once by holding a 10 a.m. news conference. ”Oh,” Cronin insisted, ”I can’t do it then. I’ve got a 10...

Guest Post by Jeff Mosenkis of Innovations for Poverty Action. Alex Tabarrok summarizes the story from the new book on RCTs, Randomistas, about how TOMS shoes invited an external evaluation of their program giving away shoes and discovered it wasn’t helping recipients very much. This isn’t that unusual in development, but faced with the evidence, they agreed to be named in the paper and be public about it, and tried to figure out how to use the insights to do better. (See study author Bruce...

Guest post by Jeff Mosenkis of Innovations for Poverty Action. IPA is offering funding for research on ideas about “Peace and Recovery” very broadly defined – looking to test new ideas for counteracting violence (including state and electoral), helping refugees, recovery from humanitarian crises, or countering extremism, and is accepting proposals from Ph.D. students. (The photo above is from research in a Colombian FARC demobilization camp). Expressions of Interest are due NEXT FRIDAY...

Guest post by Jeff Mosenkis of Innovations for Poverty Action. A quick housekeeping item, if you haven’t seen. Chris migrated his site to new servers so had some downtime this week, but all the content should be back up by now. They’re still getting SSL set up so your browser may warn you that you’re not reading in https yet (so don’t enter your credit card information into the comments till that’s squared away). Jobs: A really interesting feature story and blog posts from the New York...