When and how do politicians manipulate the allocation of public resources? We argue that politicians’ choices are influenced by the type of networks that bring them to power. Politicians from parties closely linked to strong social networks (embedded parties) face pressures to allocate resources to members of that network even when this is electorally inefficient. Politicians from parties without such ties (non-embedded parties) are less constrained.

From Baghdad to Brexit: how the Iraq war and Arab Spring led to ISIS and Syrian civil war, which created refugee crisis in Europe, and contributed to the rise of populism in the West.

Cybercrime now operates like a business. Its goods and services may be illicit, but it is highly organized, complex, driven by profit, and globally interconnected. Jonathan Lusthaus will discuss his recent book, which examines the underground economy and how it works. In particular, it seeks to make sense of the strategies cybercriminals use to build a thriving industry in a low-trust environment characterized by a precarious combination of anonymity and teamwork.

The shift by the Trump administration from counterinsurgency to near-peer threats has been clear with the publication of the 2018 National Defense Strategy and the Department of Defense’s focus on Russia and China.  COL Rose Keravuori provides insight regarding this current shift, focusing on global defense planning and operational preparation through deployability and expeditionary training.