Webpages

In the mid-1990s I realized that part of what we do as scholars and activists is uncover information that otherwise would not be discovered and/or distributed - this is especially the case with regard to conflict and contentious politics (i.e., non-institutionalized interactions between those trying to bring about change and those trying to protect the status quo).  While I used some of this information for diverse scholarly endeavors (i.e., articles and books), there is much more in the materials that were compiled than ever found its way into print or the classroom (e.g., newspaper reports, police records, movement records, NGO reports, picture books, posters, photographs, novels, biographies, journals, postcards, t-shirts, etc). As transparency is an important part of the scientific enterprise, I have always endeavored to make whatever I came across available to as wide an audience as possible, respecting the rights of those who provided the information as well as those that the information concerned.

Below are the different efforts that I have engaged in thus far.  As I digitize more material, I will make it available. 

Enjoy

[Christian Davenport]

Professor Research Professor Elected FellowDirector Co-Founder/Director ​Co-Director ​Co-Founder 
  • New Jack Academics with Professor Darren Davis
  • .EDU: opening minds & changing worlds with style with Professor Jillian Schwedler & Rodney Williams​

Anti-Patriot Act Resolutions

From 2010-11, a research team directed by Prof. [Christian Davenport] downloaded, coded and placed all relevant material regarding citizen resolutions against the Patriot Act into a database. This was done after Professors Ion Vasi and David Strang refused to share their data, which was exclusively interested in identifying whether or not an ordinance/resolution had been undertaken at a specific time and in a specific location. Our effort differed in numerous respects from this effort. Similar to Vasi and Strang, we coded the year that the resolution was passed as well as at what jurisdiction the ordinance/resolution was created (i.e., neighborhood, city, town or borough). Moving beyond earlier work, we also identified which specific documents were being objected to in addition to the US Patriot Act (i.e., Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003, Various Executive Orders and/or Justice Department Directives, Homeland Security Act and HR 2417 Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2004); we note the specific objection (e.g., surveillance, detention, investigations, recording/filing, immigration, profiling, gag orders, creating vague laws, military tribunals, torture, limiting access to Freedom of Information Act documents, etc.) and the reasons for the objections (e.g., violations of amendments, other documents like the UN charter, adding too much power to the executive and not providing enough oversight/scrutiny); we also coded what specific suggestions were put forward to remedy any problems that exist: e.g., amending/repealing the Patriot Act, amending/repealing other documents, opposing future acts, better monitoring the Patriot Act and specific local level solutions).

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The Conflict Consortium 

Here you will find information about joining the consortium and taking advantage of the network of conflict scholars from around the world, participating in our "virtual" workshop, seeking/providing advice about reviewing and reviews, collaboration, how to's and providing reviews on new data.

Become a Member: enter your information here
Conflict Consortium Virtual Workshop (CCVW): workshop your project.
Advice with Review(s/ing)
Collaborate (find co-authors, co-PIs, workshop participants, other papers for your panel, Chair, Discussant, etc.) (Coming soon!)
Conflict Consortium (CC) House
"Community, Contention and Coercion" (Triple C) Dinners
WIKIs (Coming Soon!)    
How do I...?    
Ethics 
Data Reviews


Conflict & Peace, Research & Development (CPRD)

The Conflict & Peace, Research & Development (C&P, R&D or CPRD) group comprises individuals and activities broadly concerned with political conflict (e.g., genocide, civil war, human rights violation, terrorism, protest, torture, domestic spying and everyday resistance) and peace (e.g., community building, inter-group relations and negotiation).  The range of topics is purposefully conceived in as encompassing a manner as possible.

Most individuals and activities of CPRD are based in political science on the University of Michigan's campus but several initiatives are coordinated with other institutions throughout the world (e.g., Florida State University, Peace Research Institute Oslo and Uppsala University Department of Peace and Conflict).  Many events involve face to face interactions but CPRD also employs diverse technologies whenever possible in order to advance knowledge, be efficient and reduce our carbon footprint. 

On this webpage, you will find the general research statement of the group, a listing of activities (i.e., the program), the participants, special events, a Michigan conflict/peace calendar, links to others whom we view as being engaged in similar efforts and a contact page. 


GenoDynamics

For approximately 17 years, GenoDynamics has been attempting to understand exactly who did what to whom in Rwanda during 1994 with an emphasis on evidenced-based research.  What we know is that there was a significant amount of violence.  What we do not know as well is exactly who was engaged in what activity at what time and at what place.

To shed some light on these issues, our research consulted numerous sources both inside as well as outside Rwanda.  Some sources directly interviewed/surveyed victims and survivors in Rwanda or refugee camps outside of it, asking them exactly what they lived through.  Other sources interviewed/surveyed bystanders, asking them what they saw as well as who was lost and how.  Still other sources interviewed perpetrators, asking them what they did and why.  Some of the data collection was conducted by ourselves (e.g., focus groups of civilians, interviews with civilians as well as genocidaires and a survey in Butare).  Some of the data was compiled by others: e.g., the Rwandan government, the International Criminal Tribunal on Rwanda (ICTR), Human Rights Watch, African Rights and Ibuka.  

Our research was funded by the National Science Foundation and undertaken with partners at the University of Maryland (the Center for International Development and Conflict Management as well as Government and Politics), Dartmouth College, the National University of Rwanda at Butare (The Centre for Conflict Management), The University of Notre Dame, the University of Michigan, the Office of the Prosecutor as well as the Office of the Defense at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.  

On this webpage, we provide a summary of our work thus far, the sources employed, the methodology used to combine them, the data that emerged from our efforts as well as responses to the project that we received.  In addition to this, you will find animations of diverse phenomenon relevant to the topic, links to other data that is generally not made available to the public as well as photographs of Rwanda that we took while in the field.   

GenoDynamics makes all of this information available in order to facilitate the systematic and transparent examination of what took place during 1994.  One of the difficulties with comprehending what occurred is that very few have had access to the information necesary to make an informed opinion.  Only by making all raw materials available are we able to overcome this problem.  We encourage all of those studying and interested in the Rwandan case to do the same.  There are still many data sources that have not been released (we will start listing them at the beginning of 2015 on our new blog regarding Rwandan political violence [forthcoming]).  This lack of disclosure and transparency has hindered analysis, discussion as well as truth.


MINDfields

The MINDfields project is the brain child of [Christian Davenport] who has recruited partners in crime (Jacqueline DeMeritt, Will Moore, Ragnhild Nordas and Ernesto Verdeja) to conduct interviews with senior conflict, violence and peace scholars.  The interviewees reflect on the trajectory of their research agendas during the arc of their careers, thus providing a unique perspective on conflict and peace research unavailable elsewhere.  

Inspired in equal parts by Charles Tilly's concern that new generations of researchers enter the profession with limited appreciation and understanding of the intellectual past of conflict scholarship, the scholarly community's response to Tilly's passing in 2008, and the Iconoclasts series on Sundance Channel, MINDfields will continue to grow as we add interviews to this website.  

Clear some time (interviews run roughly 35 to 60 minutes), get comfortable, and prepare to learn.  We are confident you will enjoy these conversations. We begin with the topics of conflict (such as genocide, civil war, interstate war, civil protest, protest policing, terrorism, counter-terrorism, insurgency, counter-insurgency and everyday resistance) as well as peace (including negotiation, integration, communication) because of their continued importance in the world, as well as the increasing attention paid to these issues by scholars, activists and policymakers.


NAACP Resolutions

While at the University of Maryland, [Christian Davenport] engaged in a project to study the NAACP. This was prompted by the upcoming 100 year anniversary as well as an interaction with the then NAACP Research Division, which soon dissolved.  Initially, we were interested in trying to get a comprehensive understanding of what the NAACP did across time and space.  The project never got off the ground but the group that [Davenport] had pulled together at the University of Maryland compiled a variety of different pieces of information.  One of these efforts involved resolutions that were created by the NAACP at their annual meetings, which were national-level policy statements that were used to guide subsequent local NAACP activities.  Specifically, we were interested in several issues:
           
            What topics do resolutions cover and when?
            Do the resolutions either track or lead legislation/court rulings?
            Do resolutions track general conditions (employment, education, etc.)?
            Using residuals, does the organization track conditions less over time?


The Northern Ireland Research Initiative (NIRI)

​This project is directed toward understanding the conflict in Northern Ireland commonly known as the "Troubles" which ran from 1968 to 1998.  While there has been a great deal said and written about what took place, nowhere has the raw material (the raw data) about what took place been made publicly available to individuals so that they could explore what was available for themselves.  
 
Additionally, most discussion of the "Troubles" concerns either individual events (like Bloody Sunday) or overall trends (there were approximately 4000 politically-related deaths).  Acknowledging that the conflict took place on and involved multiple levels: individual, familial, neighborhood, community, national, regional and international, our project is directed toward identifying and examining what took place on each level but also how the different experiences influenced the others.  In a sense, we intend to identify the component parts of the "Troubles" and build it one piece at a time.  
 
This type of disaggregation will facilitate asking previously unknown questions (e.g., how did individual family members experience political violence and how did it influence the specific family involved as well as their neighbors).  It also allows revisitation of other questions as well: exactly what happened during the "Troubles" and how does this reassessment influence our understanding of the conflict as well as the prospects of peace.
 
On this webpage, you will find a general overview of the project, the sources that we will use, personnel involved in the data collection, personnel involved with leading discussion about the data base construction, photos from Northern Ireland and relevant links.


Pathways

Pathways was created by Prof. [Christian Davenport] and Prof. Kathy Powers in an effort to increase the number of African Americans in the fields of comparative politics and international relations, which have historically been under-represented.  Accordingly, Pathways is attempting to take a creative as well as comprehensive approach to the topic.  We seek to identify, train, converse with, push, assist and guide those in need of assistance.

Our effort needs your assistance however. First, we need your help in identifying Assistant Professors, Post-Doctoral Students, Graduate Students and Undergraduate Students who might benefit from networking, information, advice, training, mentorship and sponsorship.  If you know someone, go to our contact page and send us a message.  Second, we need your help to effectively interact with, advise and assist those that are identified.  If you are someone interested in assisting this effort, go to our contact page and send us a message.


The Peace Continuum

If you were to ask someone (anywhere in the world) whether they preferred violence or peace, almost exclusively you would hear the former rather than the latter.  But what is peace, how can we create it and how can we study it?  To do this, we acknowledge that a first step involves defining and measuring it.  While there have been hundreds of efforts put forward concerning definition and measurement, however, most of these efforts or, rather, the most prominent and frequently used have maintained a dichotomous suggestion: we are either in situations of violence or we are at peace.  Professors [Christian Davenport], Erik Melander and Patrick Regan disagree with this position and suggest that there are degrees of violence and degrees of peace.  Indeed, we maintain that it is better to think of peace as being on some continuum - a continuous sequence in which adjacent elements are not perceptibly different from each other, although the extremes are quite distinct: at the fast end of the fast-slow continuum.​​

What should be on the continuum?  What are at the opposite poles?  What is in between?  How do we know a particular position when we see it?  Now, those are some good questions.  


Pop Struggle

This webpage is dedicated to identifying, discussing and understanding the portrayal of state repression and behavioral challenges directed against political authorities as depicted in popular culture. State repression refers to civil liberties restrictions such as political banning as well as censorship and personal integrity violations such as torture, political arrests and mass killing; behavioral challenges refer to political dissent, terrorism and insurgency; and, popular culture refers to ideas, images and/or sounds that are created as well as circulated throughout society.  Specifically, I am focused on film, comics and graphic novels. I will also be moving into board games, music, fine art and dance. Given where these products can be found, I refer to them as "POP Struggle" which is at once an old as well as a new genre like westerns and crime dramas. Actually, I will go one step further to suggest that you have been an avid fan of POP Struggle for years, you just did not know what it was called.  

What will you find on this site:

Discussion of different medium (i.e., film, graphic novels, comics - for now)
What Political Authorities are involved
What Challengers are involved
What contentious actions are involved (e.g., torture and mass killing for authorities; bombing and protest for challengers)
Some description of the back and forth between authorities and challengers
Who "wins" the conflict/confrontation Reviews of POP Struggle related products (i.e., film, graphic novels and comics as well as an occasional game)
Displays and discussions of original POP struggle materials provided by my students over the years


Radical Information Project

Most of what is known about spontaneous, disorganized and occasionally violent collective gatherings emerges from a very limited number of studies on specific time periods with a limited number of cities.   Perhaps the most prominent of these efforts was put together by Seymour Spilerman who explicitly attempted to investigate the validity of many of the claims put forward by the Kerner Commission. In an effort to improve upon this, The Lemberg Center for the Study of Violence undertook what amounts to the largest evaluation of these activities with a total of approximately 4000.  This effort was put together with a meticulous evaluation of news coverage.  In these data, many variables were coded. We are only just now getting around to cleaning them and soon making them available. Several graphs and figures from these data are provided below.


Repression Spells

Much of the literature concerned with state repression and human rights violation relies upon data that is aggregated at the nation-year.  While this has provided information that has been useful in exploring some explorations, it has hindered others.  For example, we have implicitly been focused on yearly aggregated influences and dynamics.  This is problematic because existing research has consistently identified that lagged repression is one of the most if not the most important variable in estimated models.  As a consequence, we should probably incorporate an investigation of lags explicitly into all of our investigations.  Related to this, it makes sense to shift our theoretical orientation from arbitrarily determined yearly aggregations to consider spells/campaigns of repressive behavior.  Such an orientation prompts us to consider the possibility that repression is begun for certain reasons, escalated for others, sustained for others, terminated for others and perhaps reignited for still other reasons.  Our project seeks to examine all of these topics as empirical questions.  Similar logic has been employed in the areas of interstate war and civil war for quite some time.

Toward this end, Professors [Christian Davenport] and Benjamin Appel have created a database on repressive spells.

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​Repression Dyads

Much of the literature concerned with state repression and human rights violation relies upon data that is aggregated at the nation-year.  While this has provided information that has been useful in exploring some explorations, it has hindered others.  For example, we are unable to examine whether different perpetrators act differently; we are unable to identify if different victims/targets are treated differently and we are unable to assess whether distinct explanatory variables influence different perpetrators differently.  These insights have provoked numerous scholars to engage in more detailed, country-specific evaluations but to date, we have not been able to examine the topic cross-nationally. Repression All the Way Down or RAW-d attempts to address this issue specifically through an evaluation of Repressive Spells investigated at the Dyad level.  
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What is a spell?  This is described at the following link.  What is a dyad?  Well, that is where you have a perpetrator and a target/victim or Perpetrator-Victim combination.  Of course, you could have multiple perpetrators and one victim in which case we identify each independently so that one can try to assess what each perpetrator did.  It is also possible that one perpetrator targets multiple targets/victims in which case we would see multiple dyads.

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Republic of New Africa vs. the US Government

The impetus for this project came from a series of conversations with different activists who prompted me to rethink the dynamic interaction between governments and challengers.  They suggested to me that repression was important for movements but not in the ways that I thought.  They argued for a more complex investigation - one that dove deeply into the institutions, individuals and interactions that took place both within movements as well as between those who challenged governments and those who protected them.  

For this project, with support from the National Science Foundation, I compiled data from arrest, surveillance, and informant reports as well as movement records concerning the Republic of New Africa - a black, nationalist, and secessionist movement based in Detroit, Michigan, from 1968-1973 (by the day and, generally, the hour). This case proves particularly interesting for it takes place within a political opportunity structure that most would deem "closed" (with increased repressive applications and the development of particular police agencies), with limited mobilizing structures (after the decline of civil rights organizations), and with a historically neglected cultural frame (U.S. nationalism). The data allows the exploration of everyday group dynamics as all the group meetings provide information about who was there, what was said, when the meeting started/ended, and occasionally how individuals responded to each other in non-verbal fashion. The activity that precedes and follows protest behavior is thus documented, allowing us to investigate what cultural framing activity, what aspects of mobilizing structures, and what political opportunities are relevant to different stages in the social movement process as well as what influence repression really has on the internal workings of dissident organizations.  The records also provide detail information about state repression - specifically, who did what to whom.  


State Repression.Com

For about twenty two years, I have been studying state repression (i.e., coercive activities undertaken by political authorities against those under their jurisdiction).  This includes surveillance/domestic spying, harassment, arrests, pepper spraying, censorship, banning political organizations, torture, disappearances and genocide. 
 
Some would call these civil or political liberties, human rights violations, counter-insurgent activities or instances of protest policing - revealing a specific take on the topic.  As a general category, however, I feel that repression does a pretty good job but admit that the phrase is associated with diverse political orientations, depending upon which part of the world one was considering.  Below, it is clear that whichever label one is using, as one looks from 1900 to 1996 there is a general increase in some phenomenon referenced by the different names.  Awareness of repression has grown tremendously over time.
 
On this site, I provide 
 
    1) a basic introduction to state repression (borrowing from my Annual Review of Political Science [2007] article), 
    2) some data on repression, 
    3) an opportunity to advance scholarship and make money,
    4) a must-read reading list, 
    5) some miscellaneous pieces of information that might be of interest, and 
    6) some random insights about repression called Caveat Civis (meaning "Citizens Beware").  
 
As I start going through my older files and/or come across interesting information that is relevant to the topic, I will put up additional material.  Additionally, feel free to send me information that you think is relevant to the topic.

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Database Webpages (Forthcoming)

​My Glorious Failures in Data Collection and Analysis
Protestor-Police Interaction Data Project: Anti-NATO/G8 Protest