JoGSS is a new security journal in the International Studies Association’s (ISA) stable of journals. Frank Gavin asked me to write a brief essay for ISSF on the origins and foundation of this new journal, which aims “to publish first-rate work addressing the variety of methodological, epistemological, theoretical, normative, and empirical concerns reflected in the field of global security studies. More importantly, it encourages dialogue, engagement, and conversation between different parts of the field.”[1]
Category: Essays
Authors’ Response to Michael C. Horowitz’s “Adoption Capacity and the Spread of Suicide Bombing: A Response to Andrea Gilli and Mauro Gilli”
We thank Michael Horowitz for his response to our article, “The Spread of Military Innovations: Adoption Capacity Theory, Tactical Incentive and the Case of Suicide Terrorism.”[2] We are glad for Horowitz’s close reading of our work, and for the several insightful and constructive comments that he has offered. Such comments significantly contribute to the academic debate on the diffusion of military innovations and should drive further research in the field. However, Horowitz’s response to our article fails to address the problems we originally raised. As a result, the conclusions we reached in our article are still valid: because of the problems in Horowitz’s research design, we cannot conclude that the variation in organizational constraints across terrorist groups explains the variation in adoption and non-adoption of suicide bombing.
Review Essay 27 on The Good War: Why We Couldn’t Win the War or the Peace in Afghanistan
Review Essay 26- Adoption Capacity and the Spread of Suicide Bombing, A Response to Andrea Gilli and Mauro Gilli
In “The Spread of Military Innovations,” Andrea Gilli and Mauro Gilli question the importance of organizational factors in explaining whether violent non-state actors decide to use suicide bombing. Instead, they argue that the strategic environment faced by groups generates tactical incentives that better explain who adopts suicide bombing. While they are right to point out that tactical incentives shape the choices made by groups (a perspective shared by adoption capacity theory, the argument they criticize), their argument is based on a misunderstanding of the way that adoption capacity theory functions in the case of suicide bombing. Reassessing their evidence shows that Gilli and Gilli’s results actually demonstrate the strong robustness of adoption capacity theory, showing how organizational factors significantly influenced whether violent non-state actors adopted suicide bombing between 1981-2007. It is only their alternative measure of organization size, one inappropriate for testing adoption capacity theory, that is not significant. This reassessment also reveals new insights about the overall relationship between organizational politics and military innovation for both state and non-state actors, including the conceptual risks involved when importing ideas from the business innovation literature, and the utility of accounting for both capacity and interests in future research.
Review Essay 25 on Logics of War: Explanations for Limited and Unlimited Conflicts
Essay 24- “Did History End?”
Twenty-five years ago, Francis Fukuyama advanced the notion that, with the death of Communism, history had come to an end.[2] This somewhat fanciful, and presumably intentionally provocative, formulation was derived from Hegel, and it has generally been misinterpreted. He did not mean that things would stop happening— an obviously preposterous proposal.
Review Essay 23 on Psychology, Strategy, and Conflict
Review Essay 22 on Counterinsurgency: Exposing the Myths of the New Way of War
Review Essay 21 on Arguments that Count: Physics, Computing, and Missile Defense, 1949-2012
Response to Essay 20 on Reconceptualizing Deterrence: Nudging toward Rationality in Middle Eastern Rivalries
I want to thank H-Diplo for publishing this response, and James A. Russell for taking the time to read and review my book. I also want to thank Robert Jervis for the additional comments on Russell’s review. Because the review did not fully address the book’s main arguments and findings, thereby missing the main points of the book, I wish to briefly describe and clarify the book’s main goal, as well as some of its important findings.
