The talk looks at the complex relationship between the U.S. and Mexico and the “war on drugs” from 1940 to 1980. During this period, the U.S., in particular their drug agencies, deployed a series of pressuring mechanisms, which shaped drug policy in Mexico, where the state developed a policy remarkable for its strong prohibitionist and punitive dimension.

Abstract: Do ethnic riots affect pro-social behavior? A common view among scholars of ethnic violence is that riots increase cooperation within the warring groups, while cooperation across groups is reduced. We revisit this hypothesis by studying the aftermath of the 2010 Osh riot in Kyrgyzstan, which saw Kyrgyz from outside the city kill over 400 Uzbeks. We implement a representative survey, which includes unobtrusive experimental measures of pro-social behavior.

“The Peace Accords signed in November 2016 between the Colombian government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) are being implemented along the national territory. Since then, the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, and a team of engaged peace builders, have had the responsibility of monitoring and supporting technically the verification of the implementation.

In a civil conflict, how does one actor's choice to victimize civilians affect the chance that other actors do the same? In this paper, we first derive implications about the strategic interdependence of victimization choices from the most prominent existing theories of violence against civilians in civil war. We show that these theories lead to distinct conclusions about whether one group's choice to victimize civilians has a positive, negative, or zero effect on whether other groups do so.

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.