This month, Special Topics examines the literature on armed
conflict from a socioeconomic standpoint over the past ten years and
over the past two years. The papers over the past decade have a
tendency to focus on more broad topics, whereas the papers from the
past two years tend to deal with specific cases of conflict, such as
the Congo.
Among the topics covered over the past ten years are papers dealing
with statistical analysis of social variables; ethnicity, insurgency,
and economic causes of civil war; liberal theories of democracy and
how they have panned out in world events; foreign policy in democracy;
political change in a post-Cold War climate; the role of argument in
social action; debates on the dyadic nature of democratic peace;
analyses of various types of conflict; and selection bias in the media
in terms of protest coverage.
Hot topics over the past two years include the role of natural
resources in civil war and factors influencing the causes and duration
of conflict. Specific issues that are addressed include selling the
Iraq War, conflict over diamonds, the treatment of terrorist suspects
at Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere, and public opinion on civil liberties
vs. security.
Methodology
To construct this database,
papers were extracted based on article keywords and subject categories
for Armed Conflict. The keywords used were as follows:
- Keywords:
- war OR civil war* OR
insurgenc* OR political change OR international peace* OR armed conflict* NOT posttraumatic stress disorder NOT post-traumatic stress disorder NOT PTSD NOT mental disorder NOT post World War II NOT post-war
- Subject
Categories:
- POLITICAL SCIENCE, INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS, SOCIOLOGY, ECONOMICS, SOCIAL SCIENCES, INTERDISCIPLINARY
The baseline time span for this database
is 1996-August 31, 2006. The resulting database contained 5,258 (10 years)
and 1,363 (2 years) papers; 5,311 authors; 73 countries; 403 journals; and
1,507 institutions.
Rankings
Once the database was in place,
it was used to generate the lists of top 20 papers (two- and ten-year
periods), authors, journals,
institutions, and nations, covering a time span of 1996-2006 (fourth bimonthly,
a 10-year plus 8-month period).
The top 20 papers are ranked
according to total cites. Rankings for author, journal, institution,
and country are listed in three ways: according to total cites, total
papers, and total cites/paper. The paper thresholds and corresponding
percentages used to determine
scientist, institution, country, and journal rankings according to
total cites/paper, and total papers respectively are as follows:
| Entity: |
Scientists |
Institutions |
Countries |
Journals |
| Thresholds: |
7 |
9 |
7 |
28 |
| Percentage: |
1% |
10% |
50% |
10% |
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