The Sahel and the Sahara are faced with exceptional political instability involving a combination of rebellions, jihadist insurgencies, coups d’état, protest movements and illegal trafficking. The backdrop to this accumulated violence is a globalised security environment, which blurs the...

A multi-stage model on the course of war is presented: Individual battles are modeled as private value all-pay auctions with asymmetric combatants of two opposing teams. These auctions are placed within a multi-stage framework with a tug-of-war structure. Such framing provides a microfounded...

We examine a conflictual setting in which adversaries cannot contract on an enforcement variable (arms) and where the future strategic positions of adversaries are very different when there is open conflict than when there is settlement. We show that, as the future becomes more important in this...

We study a model of conflicts and wars in which the outcome is uncertain not because of luck on the battlefield as in standard models, but because countries lack information about their opponent. In this model expected resource levels and production and military technologies are common...

After a rocky start to the volunteer military in the late 1970s, since 1980 the United States military services have met or exceeded their recruiting and retention goals in most years and have done so at reasonable cost. The ongoing conflict in Iraq is the U.S. military's first protracted...

A multi-stage model on the course of war is presented: Individual battles are modeled as private value all-pay auctions with asymmetric combatants of two opposing teams. These auctions are placed within a multi-stage framework with a tug-of-war structure. Such framing provides a microfounded...

This paper examines how violence influences the political preferences of an aggrieved constituency that is purportedly represented by militant factions. Using public opinion poll micro data of the Palestinian population linked to data on fatalities from the Second Intifada, we find that although...

The type of the mainstay of the military forces of a state decides the decree of economies of scope that exist among the military, the internal security establishment and, the fiscal apparatus which taxes and provides public goods. Economies of scope reduce the cost of military pursuit and other...

In early 2012 the Armed Forces (AF) were overshadowed by the accident with the fleet ballistic missile submarine (FBMS) K-84 "Yekaterinburg" and its grave consequences. The fire occurred three days before the New Year, during welding works as part of unscheduled repairs of the FBMS and where, in...

This paper deals with a wide choice of issues related to Russia's military-industrial complex, defence policy and military procurements in 2009. The year of 2009 saw an unprecedented acceleration of the genuine military reform. This can be ascribed first to the fact that in the wake of the war...