Recent scholarship has started to find more and more evidence that refugees in their plight also contribute to the spread of conflict across borders. Relatively little is known, however, about whether internally displaced persons (IDPs) lead through similar mechanisms to the spread of conflict...

In various studies, voting behavior in international organizations (most notably the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA)) is used to infer the similarity of foreign policy preferences of member states. Most such measures ignore, however, that particular co-voting patterns may appear simply...

An increasing number of studies comparing legislatures relies on analyses of roll call votes. These analyses are used to infer characteristics of the way in which the legislature works and how their members vote. These inferences are problematic, however, if not all votes in parliament are...

In the literature on civil conflicts federalism is often touted as a useful institution to address regional demands. Diversity in the groups present in a country is associated, however, also with a higher tendency for conflicts. In this paper we examine how the geographic distribution of groups...

The increased use of models with limited-dependent variables has allowed researchers to test important relationships in political science. Often, however, researchers employing such models fail to acknowledge that the violation of some basic assumptions has in part difference consequences in...

Non-state actors (NSAs) play an important role in violent conflicts, but unlike state actors they cannot (be forced to) sign international conventions tying their hands. The nongovernmental organization Geneva Call has stepped into this void and solicits NSAs to sign and allow monitoring of...

Bicameralism introduces additional complexities into the analysis of sophisticated voting by members of parliament (MPs). The paper proposes a general game-theoretical model to assess the conditions under which MPs may engage in strategic behavior. The implications suggest that these conditions...

After four years in operation the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) is subject to criticism, and various scholars and practitioners alike present and discuss reform proposals. In the present paper we study systematically the controversial decisions in the UNHRC. We find that...