Jaroslav Tir

From Harmony to Civil War: When Language Turns Deadly

Anonymous — Wed, 28 Aug 2024 17:57:45 +0000

From Harmony to Civil War: When Language Turns Deadly Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 08/28/2024 - 11:57

Jaroslav Tir, a member of the Political Science Department here at CU Boulder, explores why multi ethnic countries, that once lived in harmony like Yugoslavia, devolve into violent ethnic conflicts. His research, co authored with Shane Singh focuses on how not just the content, but the language used by governing authorities to communicate about how ethnic minorities can exacerbate tensions and lead to dehumanization.

To read the full article, on the Colorado Arts and Sciences Magazine click below:

/asmagazine/2024/08/26/harmony-civil-war-when-language-turns-deadly

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Jaroslav Tir Featured on UN Website

Anonymous — Tue, 20 Sep 2022 16:53:27 +0000

Jaroslav Tir Featured on UN Website Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 09/20/2022 - 10:53

Our very own Jaroslav Tir is being featured in the peace section of the United Nations (UN) Research website for his book, Incentivizing Peace: How International Organizations Can Help Prevent Civil Wars in Member Countries. Coauthored with CU Ph.D. Johannes Karreth, Incentivizing Peace describes how international organizations like the UN can intervene during critical moments in conflict escalation to prevent armed civil conflicts from turning into all-out wars. Dr. Tir specializes in international relations, with a focus on armed conflicts and conflict management.

Congratulations, Jaroslav!

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Latent territorial threat and democratic regime reversals

Anonymous — Thu, 01 Jul 2021 20:20:30 +0000

Latent territorial threat and democratic regime reversals Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 07/01/2021 - 14:20

Latent territorial threat and democratic regime reversals

By: Johannes Karreth, Jarroslav Tir, Douglas M. Gibler

Abstract:

Why do some democracies revert to non-democratic forms of governance? We develop an explanation of democratic reversals that emphasizes the influence of states’ external border relations on domestic politics. Latent threats to a state’s territory encourage political centralization of authority in the executive to defend against danger to the homeland. Latent territorial threat also facilitates the construction and maintenance of large land armies to fight threatening neighbors. Combined, latent territorial threat increases leaders’ domestic power, weakens democratic institutions, encourages other conditions threatening democratic survival, and, ultimately, leads to democratic reversals. Synthesizing prior research on territorial conflict, we generate a quantitative, continuous measure of latent territorial threat against all democracies with contiguous neighbors from 1946 to 2016, using Bayesian estimation. Empirical tests accounting for measurement uncertainty and other common determinants of reversals as well as brief reviews of individual cases of reversal provide robust evidence that democracy failed at higher rates in countries facing high levels of threats to their territory from neighbors. Our study implies that a complete account of the development of democratic institutions should emphasize that domestic factors alone fall short of explaining why democracies fail.

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Threat-Inducing Violent Events Exacerbate Social Desirability Bias in Survey Responses

Anonymous — Thu, 27 May 2021 21:16:29 +0000

Threat-Inducing Violent Events Exacerbate Social Desirability Bias in Survey Responses Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 05/27/2021 - 15:16

Threat-Inducing Violent Events Exacerbate Social Desirability Bias in Survey Responses

By: Jaroslav Tir

Abstract:

A key challenge in survey research is social desirability bias: respondents feel pressured to report acceptable attitudes and behaviors. Building on established findings, we argue that threat-inducing violent events are a heretofore unaccounted for driver of social desirability bias. We probe this argument by investigating whether fatal terror attacks lead respondents to overreport past electoral participation, a well-known and measurable result of social desirability bias. Using a cross-national analysis and natural and survey experiments, we show that fatal terror attacks generate turnout overreporting. This highlights that threat-inducing violent events induce social desirability, that researchers need to account for the timing of survey fieldwork vis-à-vis such events, and that some of the previously reported post-violent conflict increases in political participation may be more apparent than real.

Threat-Inducing Violent Events Exacerbate Social Desirability Bias in Survey Responses

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Threat-Inducing Violent Events Exacerbate Social Desirability Bias in Survey Responses

Anonymous — Thu, 20 May 2021 20:25:37 +0000

Threat-Inducing Violent Events Exacerbate Social Desirability Bias in Survey Responses Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 05/20/2021 - 14:25

Threat-Inducing Violent Events Exacerbate Social Desirability Bias in Survey Responses By : Shane P. Singh and Jarslav Tir

Published : 14 May 2021

Abstract:

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Incentivizing Peace: How International Organizations Can Help Prevent Civil Wars in Member Countries

Anonymous — Mon, 17 May 2021 20:11:54 +0000

Incentivizing Peace: How International Organizations Can Help Prevent Civil Wars in Member Countries Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 05/17/2021 - 14:11

Incentivizing Peace: How International Organizations Can Help Prevent Civil Wars in Member Countries

Published: 21 February 2018

Abstract:

Civil wars are among the most difficult problems in world politics. While mediation, intervention, and peacekeeping have produced some positive results in helping to end civil wars, they fall short in preventing them in the first place. In Incentivizing Peace, Jaroslav Tir and Johannes Karreth show that considering civil wars from a developmental perspective presents opportunities to prevent the escalation of nascent armed conflicts into full-scale civil wars. The authors demonstrate that highly-structured intergovernmental organizations (IGOs such as the World Bank, IMF, or regional development banks) are particularly well-positioned to engage in civil war prevention. When such IGOs have been actively engaged in member states on the edge, their potent economic tools have helped to steer rebel-government interactions away from escalation and toward peaceful settlement. Incentivizing Peace provides enlightening case evidence that IGO participation is a key to better predicting, and thus preventing, the outbreak of civil war.

Learn more here: Incentivizing Peace

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The Effects of Militarized Interstate Disputes on Incumbent Voting Across Genders

Anonymous — Sat, 20 Jun 2020 00:43:17 +0000

The Effects of Militarized Interstate Disputes on Incumbent Voting Across Genders Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 06/19/2020 - 18:43

By: Jaroslav Tir University of Colorado Boulder, Shane P. Singh University of Georgia

Published: 28 June 2018

Abstract:

Gender and politics research argues that men are more hawkish and supportive of militarized confrontations with foreign foes, while women ostensibly prefer more diplomatic approaches. This suggests that, after a militarized confrontation with a foreign power, women’s likelihood of voting for the incumbent will both decrease and be lower than that of men. Our individual-level, cross-national examinations cover 87 elections in 40 countries, 1996–2011, and show only some support for such notions. Women punish incumbents when their country is targeted in a low-hostility militarized interstate dispute (MID) or when their country is the initiator of a high-hostility MID. The low-hostility MID initiation and high-hostility MID targeting scenarios, meanwhile, prompt women to be more likely to vote for the incumbent. Importantly, men’s reactions rarely differ from women’s, casting doubt on the existence of a gender gap in electoral responses to international conflict.

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Geography, Territory, and Conflict

Anonymous — Sat, 20 Jun 2020 00:37:54 +0000

Geography, Territory, and Conflict Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 06/19/2020 - 18:37

By: Steven V. Miller Clemson University, Jaroslav Tir University of Colorado Boulder, and John A. Vasquez Illinios University

Orignial Publication: May 2010

Online Publication: Dec 2017

Abstract:

Traditional, structural theories of international relations may have eschewed the importance of geography and territory to understanding international conflict, but the past 50 years of quantitative scholarship have returned geography and territory to the fore of the discipline. The importance of geography and territory to the study of international conflict first emerged in the discipline of political geography and the early foundations of peace science. Subsequent empirical analyses demonstrated a robust connection between geography, particularly disputed territory, and all phases of inter-state conflict. Explanations for this robust relationship emerged concurrent to the empirical findings. The theoretical arguments are eclectic and focus on territoriality as human instinct, the tangible and intangible value of territory, and whether conflict over territory conforms well to implications from the bargaining framework. Though traditionally the domain of inter-state conflict scholars, civil conflict scholarship has greatly informed this research program on geography, territory, and conflict by expanding and enriching its theoretical arguments and empirical implications. The future of territorial conflict scholarship should focus on reconciling different theoretical arguments about the emergence of peace after World War II, wrestling with the future of territorial conflict as more territorial disputes are settled, providing richer data on territorial claims, and exploring the implications of global climate change for future conflict over scarce and changing waterways and maritime/river boundaries.

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Meet Jaroslav Tir

Anonymous — Thu, 07 Feb 2019 16:19:02 +0000

Meet Jaroslav Tir Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 02/07/2019 - 09:19

Jeffrey Nonnemacher

Professor of Political Science

For Jaroslav Tir, coming to the University of Colorado has been a long-term goal. Graduating from the University of Illinois and spending an early part of his career at the University of Georgia, Tir jumped at the opportunity to come to CU in 2011.

“Professionally, the quality of the department is really strong. Personally, I love Colorado and have been coming here for a long time.” According to Tir, Colorado reminds him of home.

“I grew up on the Dalmatian coast of Croatia in Makarska, which is warmer than here and there is a sea, but it is a dry climate and there are a ton of mountains,” Tir explained, “The geographic similarities between Colorado and Croatia are something I really enjoy about Colorado.”

In 1990, Tir came to the United States as a high school exchange student and “the plan was to go back to Croatia after nine months.” However, the unexpected happened.

“In the 1990s, there was very brutal and surprising war” which ravaged Croatia and the surrounding countries. Instead of returning after high school, Tir stayed in the United States and attended college and graduate school wanting to understand what happened back home.

“I am very interested in what can be done to deal with civil wars, wars in general, and how those can be managed more proactively and avoided,” he explained. “I have this very personal motivation because of what I experienced, what my homeland experienced, and what people I know experienced.”

This research and personal motivation have resulted in a new book, Incentivizing Peace (Oxford University Press 2018), which is about “how to prevent civil wars”.

“We looked at the unusual suspects like international financial institutions to see if their involvement in the early stages of violent conflicts could prevent full-blown civil wars,” Tir summarized. “The idea was to see if there was a different way that civil wars could be prevented since a lot of civil war management techniques are employed only once the fighting has escalated to a full-blown civil war.”

“We found that the more of these organizations (e.g. the World Bank, IMF, regional development banks) a given country belongs to, the higher the likelihood that the escalation of small conflicts can be avoided. Participating in these institutions decreased the likelihood of civil war by over 50%.”

Broadly, Tir “studies why wars happen, their consequences, and what can be done to prevent them” and enjoys being a professor because of the flexibility to answer these questions from many angles. “For example, I was not really interested in climate change as a graduate student, but now that it has become a more notable issue, I am interested in how it impacts patterns of violence.”

Other than his research, Tir enjoys the Colorado things. “I love hiking and skiing is a passion of mine. I love going off-roading, exploring Colorado and am an avid cyclist.”

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The supply side of United Nations peacekeeping operations: Trade ties and United Nations-led deployments to civil war states

Anonymous — Tue, 10 Oct 2017 15:53:43 +0000

The supply side of United Nations peacekeeping operations: Trade ties and United Nations-led deployments to civil war states Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 10/10/2017 - 09:53

Stojek, Szymon and Jaroslav Tir. 2015. “The Supply Side of United Nations Peacekeeping Operations: Trade Ties and Locations of UN Led Deployments.” European Journal of International Relations 21(2): 352-376.

Abstract:

Peacekeeping operations have been identified as the most effective and efficient solution to the highly intractable problem of civil war recurrence; yet, only about 38% of civil wars receive peacekeeping assistance. To explain what determines whether an intrastate conflict receives a deployment of peacekeepers, we note that peacekeeping operations are costly endeavors requiring significant material investments. Focusing on the United Nations and its peacekeeping operations, we argue that because a relatively small group of states decides about (and funds) possible deployments, the supply of United Nations peacekeeping operations likely reflects the interests of these states. Specifically, we hypothesize that trade ties between the five permanent members of the Security Council and civil war states are among the factors that influence the decision to authorize United Nations peacekeeping operations. Testing the argument over the post-World War II and post-Cold War periods reveals that the economic interests of the permanent five members of the Security Council play a key role in explaining which civil wars receive United Nations peacekeepers.

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