The Quantitative Peace

Of QP Publications and International Relations

Two new pieces from QP authors.  First, Michael Flynn has a solo-authored piece in an upcoming Foreign Policy Analysis that has an early view avaible. Abstract: 

How does political competition among domestic actors influence foreign policy choice? Studies examining these questions often focus on the role of economic or partisan interests, and how they influence the preferences of decision makers who are subject to electoral institutions and pressures of their constituents. Less attention has been paid to how the preferences of other influential but unelected actors influence state behavior. I examine the influence of one such group by looking at how American military leaders shape decisions on military spending and force structure, while also examining how these decisions have been affected by changes to the institutions governing civil–military relations. Results indicate that military leaders occupying key positions can influence defense spending priorities in favor of their respective branches. Results also suggest the influence of military leaders has changed and is conditional upon the institutions governing the relationships between civilian decision makers and military leaders.

Chad Clay, Michael Flynn, and Colin Barry have also landed an International Studies Quarterly article (currently available in early view) which argues the following: 

Nonstate actors, such as international non-governmental organizations (INGOs) and multinational corporations (MNCs), have attained an increasingly prominent role in modern world affairs. While previous research has focused on these actors’ respective interactions with states, little attention has been paid to their interactions with each other. In this paper, we examine the extent to which the decisions of private actors seeking to invest abroad are affected by the reputational costs of doing business in countries publicly targeted by human rights activists. We find that ‘‘naming and shaming’’ by human rights INGOs tends to reduce the amount of foreign direct investment received by developing states, providing evidence that INGO activities affect the behavior of MNCs. An additional implication of our findings is that shaming by INGOs can impose real costs on targeted states in the form of lost investment.

Chuck Hagel and Bipartisanship in Foreign Policy

The news surrounding Obama's nomination of Chuck Hagel and John Brennan as Secretary of Defense and Director of the CIA (respectively) has primarily been focused on the "controversial" Hagel's previous statements and positions. Republican commentators have been complaining about Hagel's nomination, claiming that his nomination sends a powerful signal that the Obama administration is putting more "daylight" between the US and Israel, among other things. Steve Clemmons at The Atlantic has also reviewed several arguments for and against Hagel's nomination. The turf on that subject has already been covered pretty thoroughly, so I'll leave the issue be for now. What has received less attention, however, is that Hagel's nomination represents a continuation of a fairly long history of Democrats appointing Republicans to positions within the foreign policy bureaucracy. 

In 1940 FDR appointed Henry Stimson and Frank Knox—both Republicans—to be his Secretary of War and Secretary of the Navy (again, respectively). Stimson's appointment in particular is generally regarded as marking the onset of the bipartisan consensus that characterized the early Cold War period. Having previously served as Secretary of State under President Hoover and Secretary of War under Taft, Stimson was already a widely recognized figure in the foreign policymaking community (such as it was back then). Along with Stimson came John McCloy and Robert Lovett, both of whom were also Republicans and both of whom served as Stimson's assistants in the War Department.

By bringing these Republicans into his administration, Roosevelt was attempting to build support among opposition Republicans for increasing US activism in World War II. Primarily this encompassed moderate internationalist Republicans from the Northeast. Even prior to his nomination, Stimson and his mentor, Elihu Root, himself previously a Secretary of War and Secretary of State, had petitioned Congressional leadership to introduce some form of draft bill to prepare the US for involvement in the growing conflicts in Europe and East Asia. Stimson and Root had both been devout internationalists in the years leading up to the Second World War, and their appointment marked what many historians have labeled as the beginning of the "Eastern Establishment" in foreign policymaking. The Establishment narrative, broadly speaking, tends to emphasize bipartisanship in the foreign policy bureaucracy specifically, but it also encompasses themes of elite influence, economic interests, and political polarization in foreign policymaking.

This general narrative has been present for several decades in the US foreign policy literature, but it's largely been isolated to the qualitative political science and historical literatures. Quantitative political science research has delved into the more narrow issue of bipartisanship, but these studies have tended to focus on Congress. Accordingly, the central focus of this large body of work has gone unexamined in a systematic sense, and part of my dissertation research has attempted to address this gap. This is really all a long-winded way of saying that the Hagel nomination provides me with a timely opportunity to briefly share some of my work on the subject. Though I don't want to give away the farm here, this seems like a fine time to chime in. 

Despite the recognition that the foreign policy bureaucracy—indeed, the bureaucracy more broadly—plays a fairly prominent role in the policymaking process, we don't really have much in the way of systematic quantitative research on the subject. I've tried to get at some of these issues in my dissertation by collecting some new data on appointees to foreign policymaking positions within the foreign policy bureaucracy. I primarily focus on the State Department and the Defense Department, but I also focus on some other agencies like the CIA. In total, I've collected data on some 1,000+ individuals serving in these posts from 1948 through the present. One of the primary characteristics that I coded for each individual was what, if any, party affiliation that individual had. As a way to get at trends in bipartisanship within the foreign policy bureaucracy, the graph below shows the percentage of appointments included in the data set that are bipartisan in nature.* 

Some interesting points: Perhaps not surprisingly, the Truman administration represents an all-time high in the data. This is partially a function of the fact that Truman inherited many of FDR's appointments, but it's also partially due to the fact that the foreign policy bureaucracy was undergoing some pretty radical changes during this time period. In particular, the size of these agencies grew dramatically during the World War II period. Coding rules are also partially responsible, as I focused on individuals occupying positions at the assistant secretary level and up (where appropriate). By the early to mid-1950s, however, the rate of growth slows a bit and, while still increasing in size, it does so more slowly than in the first few years of the Cold War. The crash at the beginning of the Eisenhower administration might reflect some of the antics of Joseph McCarthy and Secretary Dulles, both of whom were more than a little keen to go after anyone remotely suspected of being communists. It could also be a function of the Republicans having been out of power for about two decades. Also of note, the late 1970s do see a slight slump in the level of bipartisanship, which is potentially in line with arguments concerning the impact of Vietnam on bipartisanship more generally. The Clinton administration sees a fairly sharp spike near the end, and the Bush administration also sees a dip in its later years, while the incoming Obama administration sees a slight increase.

More broadly, the work that I've done so far suggests a few general trends. First, I find some evidence that, all else equal, Democrats tend to be more likely than Republicans to make bipartisan appointments to the foreign policy bureaucracy—Even controlling for the Truman administration. Other models suggest this difference is more acute in the early Cold War period (again, also while controlling for Truman). Additionally, I also find some evidence to support the conventional wisdom concerning the use of bipartisan appointments as a means of building moderate coalitions and as a response to domestic political conditions. In particular Congressional support matters, but is perhaps a little more nuanced than the historical accounts often suggest, as the availability of moderates in Congress also seems to condition this relationship. It also appears as though Presidents make these appointments with an eye towards governing more broadly, as the composition of the Senate alone appears to have little impact.

So what? Well, with respect to current news my work would suggest that Obama's retention of Bob Gates and his appointment of Chuck Hagel are actually very much in line with broader trends in Democratic foreign policy appointments since World War II. Robert Lovett—formerly Stimson's assistant at the War Department—went on to serve as Truman's Secretary of Defense. Kennedy subsequently offered Lovett his choice of State, Defense, and Treasury. Though Lovett turned him down, Kennedy did end up appointing Robert McNamara and McGeorge Bundy—both Republicans—to important posts. While there are certainly other lesser-known bipartisan appointees, these folks are some of the more prominent. Furthermore, these trends emerged well before the Republicans had fully taken on the identity of the party of national security. Still, even in the early Cold War period the Republicans did attack Democrats for being soft on Communism, so this vulnerability was present in some incarnation. Accordingly, Democratic administrations perhaps had more to gain from trying to draw in Republicans than vice versa, as such appointments could confer some measure of credibility. 

Moving forward it will be interesting to see how these trends continue to develop. Despite the much publicized opposition to Hagel's appointment it is entirely possible that this is just media hype and Republican chest-thumping. David Karol at the Monkey Cage recently wrote about the House Republicans' position-taking when voting on the recent Fiscal Cliff deal. So it's easy to imagine that the Republican outcry over Hagel's nomination is really going to wither when it comes time for the Senate to vote. Though these situations are not completely comparable, giving Obama a hard time seems to be a means of gaining currency in the Republican Party these days. Beyond the current confirmation battle, much of this will depend on how the current debate over the GOP's foreign policy positions pans out (see Drezner's latest Foreign Affairs piece, for example). If the Democrats manage to become the party of national security moving forward, perhaps we might see a reversal of these trends. Given the current Republican field, however, I wouldn't hold my breath.**

 * Given that none of this work/data is published (yet?) please don't cite this post or data. I'm still very much hoping to update and improve this material as I go. I guess this is kind of the norm, right?

** In the off chance that anyone comments, please be aware that I have had trouble leaving comments in the recent past. On the rare occasion that we do get feedback, I feel rude not replying, so apologies in advance if this should happen.

Mapping Leadership Tenure

Confession time.  One of my favorite subreddits on reddit is r/mapporn; a subreddit dedicated to the most visually appealing maps from all historical periods and dealing with a variety of topics.  We, at QP, cannot get our fill of maps as we (especially Michael Flynn) have blogged about it a few times (see here, here, and here). Yesterday, this map of leadership tenure was posted from The Economist:

 

 

The cutoff date of 1945 seems like a controversial choice and the single image of the map did not come with clear coding rules as how to decisions were made.  Being familiar with the Archigos data project put together by Kristian Skrede Gleditsch and Giacomo Chiozza (paper here), I figured this was an easy task to replicate to see what a common political science data set says about leadership tenure (one that I have used in my own research).  To replicate this, I created 1/1/1945 as the cutoff point and any existing regime is assumed to start freshly on that date (an untenable assumption of course).  This left me with the number of days of leadership that I divided by 365.24 (Leap years could be off, so I averaged the year length).  Then, by averaging out the leadership tenure for this time period until 2004, created a range of values for each country.  In Stata, creating a choropleth map is not overly difficult using spmap package and two different guides found here and here. 

 

Post-1945 Replication:

 

 

The pastel color provides a bit more contrast and makes the missing data cases easily identifiable. Some of this may be due to a quick use of the kountry package an dmissing a few obvious lacking cases.  Additionally, the data in Archigos goes back to 1875, so replicating the map again using the full data set is possible and done here:

 

 

Expanding the data backwards introduces a bit more variation than just starting from 1945.  Naturally, with two wold wars included, leadership turnover may be expected to be shorter in some countries.  Of note, the US average jumps up a category. 

 

Update: By request, a few maps that are more colorblind friendly. Blue: 

 

Greyscale: 

 

Updates

Just a couple of links, comments, etc.

1. Six seismologists in Italy have recently been convicted and sentenced to six years in prison (each) for issuing a "falsely reassuring statement" prior to the 2009 earthquake in L'Aquila, Italy (BBC Article). The seismologists have been charged with manslaughter over the deaths of over 300 people in the quake, and have also been barred from holding public office ever again in the future. Yesterday's BBC Global News Podcast (Monday, October 22 AM) has some additional details on the situation behind this particular event—apparently there were a series of smaller quakes in the preceding month, but it sounds like such clusters of quakes are pretty common. Some commentators interviewed by the BBC have suggested that this could pave the way for politicians in Italy and other countries to impose new laws criminalizing what I can only label as "bad advice" from scientists, thereby making scientists less likely to offer advice to policymakers. I can't really speak to how likely I think this is, though my initial thought it "not very." Still, I would not have thought it very likely for six seismologists to be sentenced to prison terms under such circumstances in an advanced industrial democracy either. If such laws did become more prevalent, however, I guess I'd be more worried that one potential implication is that failure to come forward to begin with would suggest culpability as well. Damned if you do, damned if you don't?
2. Dan Nexon has recently announced a new blogging reception at ISA's 2013 meeting in San Francisco.  It looks as though nominations for the various award categories are open in the comments thread. Some great blogs already appear to be listed, like Phil Arena's and IPE@UNC. If you somehow read this blog, but not any of these others, you should probably go check them out.
3. The presidential foreign policy debate was last night, and though I don't have a lot to say at this point I do have a couple of brief thoughts. First, Romney definitely seemed more tentative last night than in either of the previous debates. As many others have noted, it seems like this is partially because there's just not a lot of daylight between Romney and Obama on many of these issues. This could also be the result of Obama simply having a greater edge on this subject area because of the job he's held for the past four years, combined with the fact that he's proved far less a lefty on foreign policy than many on the left would have liked, and many on the right had feared. Romney clearly tried to steer the conversation away from what I'll say was a more traditional discussion of security issues to the economy. That's fine, so long as he could have framed it in a clear and convincing way. It's hard to argue that economic policy is not intimately tied in with national security. However, I don't really think Romney did that effectively. His reference to Mike Mullen's earlier comments were helpful, but I think it's getting harder for the Republicans to argue that Obama has reduced our military to some impotent shadow of its former self. Obama's comment on bayonets and horses, while cute, does carry some truth.* Further, that Obama highlighted the fact that we spend more than the next ten top spenders combined on our military helped to further discredit the idea that our military is languishing. He could have increased that number quite a bit and only strengthened that position. In short, I think Romney was weaker here not just because Obama had an experiential advantage, but because even on national security the facts just don't play out as the Republicans would like. 

 

*I'm curious as to how much of this total is simply smaller support vessels that we just don't need anymore. The way to support and maintain ships is quite a bit different now than it was in the early 1900s. The elimination of battleships probably cuts down on this as well. The period Romney referenced is often identified with a significant buildup of increasingly large big-gun ships. 

 

 

"Kountry" Package for STATA

I may be late to the ball on this one, but in discussing a project that we're working on, fellow QP blogger Michael Allen recently pointed me to the "kountry" package for STATA. The package was created by Rafal Raciborski for the purposes of facilitating the creation of country codes and switching between codes provided by different sources (e.g. COW, IMF, etc.). The cite for the STATA Journal piece corresponding to the package is below:

 Raciborski, R. 2008. kountry: A Stata utility for merging cross-country data from
        multiple sources.  Stata Journal 8: 390-400

Anyone that has worked with country codes knows that this can be a pretty big pain. I've used it once so far, but it seems to work pretty well. Others may have been aware of this before now and might be aware of any bugs, problems, etc. If so, please add to the comments section any notes that you might want to make on the matter.

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On another note, I just wanted to reiterate the earlier message that posting will continue to be sparse for a while longer. While we would all very much like to be blogging more regularly—especially in light of the recent debates, and the final upcoming foreign policy debate—everyone is currently engaged with other professional responsibilities. I believe this will prove to be time is well-spent, though, as everyone seems to be keeping busy and is pretty productive. 

Military Capabilities

Phil Arena has a very cool post up wherein he explores a potential alternative to the ubiquitous CINC score for measuring military capabilities. This strikes me as something that is long overdue.  And there are a couple of things that I like about the measure just from taking a quick glance at it. First, given that China just launched its first aircraft carrier, which is actually a refurbished Soviet carrier if I recall correctly, I think the notion that China has already surpassed the US in terms of military capabilities is a big pill to swallow. Second, just glancing at his figures for European powers during the late 19th century, Phil's measure looks more noisy, which in truth is kind of what I'd actually expect to see. The CINC measure makes there appear to be a lot more stability than I would expect to come along with a period where many of these European powers are vying for access to colonial possessions, foreign markets, etc. Furthermore, there were definite differences in terms of how each of these countries allocated their military resources. England certainly had the dominant navy during the late 1800s, but countries like France, Germany, and Russia had advantages in terms of their ability to field ground forces that the British just didn't possess.  

As Phil mentions, the measure may need some further development, but I still think this is really neat. 

Don't Call It A Comeback (This Civil War Has Been Here For Years)

Well, maybe not years. And LL Cool J references aside, while perusing my usual news outlets this morning I've found that in the wake of what is reported to be a fresh massacre, Syria is again a common theme in the headlines (see CNN, BBC, FP). More after the jump.

Math's PR Problem OR Changing our Educational System

I was listening to the BBC's Global News Podast this morning and found an interesting segment on the utility of mathematical modeling. Professor John Adam's book (which can be found here) looks at how one can model various aspects of urban life—pollution, traffic congestion, number of dentists offices, etc. I've not read the book, but Adam's message in his interview was something that I can sympathize with. In particular, Adam talks about the degree to which the educational process divorces math from any kind of applied usage. Learning math in this way, he goes on, is partially responsible for why more children/people are not as interested in mathematics as they might otherwise be. 

Sure, there are the ubiquitous "if a train leaves city A at rate X, and a train leaves city B at rate Z, when will their paths cross," kind of examples. But seriously, is that the best we can do? Now, I recognize that I'm far from being the strongest, or the quickest, when it comes to picking up a lot of the methods that I've been taught over the past few years. I, like many people I suppose, was not the biggest fan of math class in high school. Some of this was laziness on my part, but some of it was also the framework in which the subject matter was taught. Even in college it was far from clear that any kind of math beyond balancing a checkbook would play as big a part in my life as it currently does. I did well enough in these classes, but it was not until graduate school that I really had to seriously engage math and statistics.  

As it turns out, I've really enjoyed the quantitative side of my training here at Binghamton, and I'm far more willing to work at developing my understanding and skills now than I was when I was 16. Had I known in high school that I this stuff could be used to study things like war, human rights, etc., I might have cared a bit more. These are things that I've always been interested in. And this is perfectly rational behavior, right? If the expected utility of learning this material is zero, or even negative, then why expend the effort? Where is the payoff? If this is the case, then a major part of the reason that the expected utility of learning this material is so low is because the people that should be able to provide you with the relevant information to update your expectations simply do not do a very good job of that. In fact, I'd say that I didn't really get that at all until grad school. And being able to make that initial connection between math and statistics, and the substantive topics that I care about, has subsequently led me to develop a greater appreciation for the math itself that underlies the models I often use. 

I don't have any answers for how the educational system could be modified to address this issue. I also realize that you would have to find a way to incorporate applied mathematics into most subject fields, as not everyone has the particular set of interests that would make more math in history or government class a sufficient solution to the problem. Still, there must be a better way. With folks like Neil deGrasse Tyson going around trying to promote greater scientific literacy, and the recent attacks on NSF funding for political science, it seems like there is a space for us to modify how we educate our younglings and how science, math, history, etc., can be better integrated in this process. Maybe if people developed a better understanding of science as a process, or math as something with real world and substantive applications, rather than something that existed strictly from 1pm to 1:45pm during 8th period, people would be better able to develop a more robust appreciation for how mathematics and science fit into, and matter for, our daily lives. This is fairly obvious when phrased like that, but the fact is that it's not really what we do currently, is it?

Am I missing something?

Also—and this is a total aside—Brian Rathbun at the Duck of Minerva has a discussion of how Iron Maiden material can be used to teach political science. This is perhaps a good example of what I was talking about above, so perhaps this is not a total aside, but what we have here is essentially "applied awesomeness."

NSF Funding Amendment, Part II

Erik Voeten at the Monkey Cage with an update on the amendment that cuts NSF funding for political science programs. A version of the amendment passed the House with a vote of 218-208. You can see the breakdown of the votes here (thanks for Erik for so conveniently providing the link to the votes). Erik also notes a couple of important points: 1) This is not the end of the issue, and 2) No other discipline was singled out in the same way as political science. 

Other interesting facts:

1. Jeff Flake has a BA in International Relations (see his official House bio page).
2. Jeff Flake has an MA in Political Science (see his official House bio page).
3. As described above, political science appears to have been singled out. In 2011 political science programs were awarded approximately $21 million dollars. Keep in mind these are awarded amounts, and do not reflect the actual amount spent in a given year. The Duck of Minerva makes reference to actual annual expenditures being something closer to $9 million. 
4. Economics programs were awarded $55 million in 2011. If we assume a similar pattern applies, that means econ programs are getting somewhere around $23 million per year in actual appropriations.
5. Sociology programs were awarded approximately $15.5 million, working out to be about $6.7million per year.

Political science awards do not even come close to what economics programs are awarded each year. Consequently, I'm not entirely sure what the fiscal justification for this cut can be. To single out only political science in this way would seem to indicate the gripe is more substantive than fiscal. If not, then why not make a flat cut of 10%-20% across all BSES programs? Spread the cuts evenly? You could cut the annual econ awards by half and that would be the equivalent of cutting all of the annual political science awards AND some of the sociology program. So, what gives?

There is probably a better/more efficient source for summary information than what I used, but you can search NSF records of programs and awards here. My estimates of yearly expenditures are extremely rough. Again, it's important to note that these are awarded amounts, not what is actually spent each year. There is going to be overlap from one year to the next as programs are often funded over the course of a couple of years. There is also some degree of overlap between programs as well. Accordingly, the figures provided should be taken as rough guidelines/comparisons, as well as with a healthy grain of salt. If anyone has a link to actual annual expenditure statistics by program, as opposed to awards, please share. I did a quick search this morning but didn't find anything more helpful than this particular source. 

Hunger Games: Civil Wars, Victory, and Repression

The movie version of the book The Hunger Games (Paperback, Kindle) is being released this week; the movie is expected to draw a large crowd and is already drawing superb ratings from critics. As such, given that there are both political and economic themes that run in the book that are ripe for political scientists and economists, I figured I would touch upon at least one of those interesting threads related to the study of international relations.  

Now, what I am drawing upon is purely from the first chapter of the book and can be easily gleaned from the trailer of the film.  As such, this discussion should not be spoiling anything.  However, if you are attempting to see this movie without any background whatsoever, consider this your spoiler warning for the post.

The book takes place in a future dystopian world set in North America. During this time period, political organization is non-democratic and highly centralized.  North America is divded into 13 districts excluding the Capitol.  As Katniss, the protagonist (the novel is told through first person narration), explains in the first chapter (p. 18):

The result was Panem, a shining Capitol ringed by thirteen districts, which brought peace and prosperity to its citizens. Then came the Dark Days, the uprising of the districts against the Capitol. Twelve were defeated, the thirteenth obliterated. The Treaty of Treason gave us the new laws to guarantee peace and, as our yearly reminder that the Dark Days must never be repeated, it gave us the Hunger Games.

The rules of the Hunger Games are simple. In punishment for the uprising, each of the twelve districts must provide one girl and one boy, called tributes, to participate. The twenty-four tributes will be imprisoned in a vast outdoor arena that could hold anything from a burning desert to a frozen wasteland. Over a period of several weeks, the competitors must fight to the death. The last tribute standing wins.

In the above account, the districts mobilized to overthrow the central government (perhaps as revolutionaries or as separatists, it is not clear in thie passage) and the Capitol is able to persevere over all 13 districts.  1 district is obliterated and the 12 remaining districts are put in a worse position than they were prior to the conflict as the Capitol ramps up the repression of the districts by extracting tribute in the form of humans (the Capitol is quite repressive in other economic and political venues as well). Two children from each district are randomly selected to fight in the Hunger Games each year. The above passage is leading up to the point where we find out which children serve as tribute for the 74th annual Hunger Games. 

Since the government of the Capitol gets to play the obvious villain in this post-civil war story, we should be interested in the likelihood of some situation akin to this happening in reality.  That is, after a failed civil war attempt, are there times when the government uses its new position to further repress instead of adopting some form of accommodation to stave off a future rebellion.  While we are unlikely to see the specific scenario of the Hunger Games played out, increasing repression after a civil war is something that seems feasible.  We can think of civil war as a bargaining failure between two actors (rebels and the government) and, once a victor has been determined through the random number generator that is war, we are left with one party to reap the spoils.  It would make since that the a newly consolidated government would ramp up its extraction of resources beyond what it could achieve pre-war.

To understand increased repression after a conflict, I employed the Cingranelli-Richards data set (CIRI) and used their Physical Integrity Rights Index (henceforth refered to as either PI Rights or PIR) to look at their 9-point index as a proxy for government repression.  The index is composed of four 0-2 indicators of government respect or use of torture, disappearances, extra-judicial killing, and political imprisonment.  A score of 0 would be interpreted as little to no respect for physical integrity rights while a score of 8 is high respect for those rights.  The index runs from 1981-2010, so that helped to establish the sample of possible civil wars I could look at.  For civil wars, I used the Correlates of War intra-state war data (v 4.1) and employed the 19 conflicts that had system members as governments, started in 1982 or later, had ended by 2007 (a COW limitation), had over 1,000 battle deaths combined from each side, and the government had won the conflict (thus, excluding compromises, stalemates, and rebel victory).

To get a feel of the data and government use of repression, the first item I looked at was the PIR value one year before the conflict started and one year after the conflict had ended.  This produces the following scatter plot:

The line represents no change in the level of respect for PIRs while points below the line represent a decline and points above the line represent improvement.  So, in this instance, we have some cases in which the government represses more after a civil war.  Since there are only 13 dots for 19 cases, there must be some overlap.  As such, we can examine this as a change histogram as well:

The slim majority of cases are worse off with a few very large decreases in PIR values.  There are several states that show improvements as well.  However, a one year change may not be enough time for the government to adopt a new strategy for winning a civil war and the PIR value may be a hold-over from conducting the fighting in the civil wars.  Looking at 5 years ahead, the 18 cases (losing one observation due to temporal limitations) produces the following distribution:

Five years after the conclusion of the civil war looks generally better for those societies.  There still remains 28% of the sample that have a worse off situation, but 50% show an improvement.  Naturally, this is a small sample of intra-state wars and the possibility of a Panem type situation is certainly possible.  The 3 cases that show a change below -1 are Myanmar in 1982, Indonesia in 1992, and Ethiopia in 2000.  The Panem situation, if I understand the story correctly, has been ongoing for 74 years by the time of the first novel, no such analogue is available in the data given the limitations of the CIRI dataset.  Also, the amount of state capacity demonstrated by the Capitol in enforcing laws seems far superior to any of the examples above.  The strength of the state in the book is something that should decrease the probability of conflict by rational revolutionaries.

As an aside, one of the other side tidbits I have noticed is that all the characters that are in the Capitol have Roman names such as Cinna, Octvia, Caesar, and Plutarch (among others).  I am not sure if this has relevance beyond harkening to a city-dominated empire, is veiled allusion to the idea that the United states is becoming a new Rome, or some other significance I am not familiar with yet.  I do not know the full story of the Hunger Games, but I will likely be catching the first movie this weekend.