it absolutely made my morning to find an ungated copy* of kocher, pepinsky, and kalyvas' new article "aerial bombing and counterinsurgency in the vietnam war," which just appeared in the american journal of political science. they use just awesomely fine-grained data available from the hamlet evaluation system (HES), used by the US during vietnam, to assess the way indiscriminate violence in the form of aerial bombing affected insurgent control of the hamlets bombed (rather than occurrence of subsequent insurgent violence, which is more imprecise, but more commonly used out of necessity). they conclude that "A variety of estimation methods, including instrumental variables and genetic matching, show that bombing civilians systematically shifted control in favor of the Viet Cong insurgents."
on a personal note, i was lucky to have a lot of really great professors in college, but matt kocher was one of the best. he helped define what kind of teacher i hope to be, if i ever end up teaching...and i swear that has nothing to do with the slight crush on him that i may or may not have harbored.
anyway! if COIN and/or BALLER statistical analysis is your thing, definitely check it out. do people know if there's an equivalent data set for other conflicts? obviously, i'm thinking about the most immediately pertinent example of af-pak.
*thanks, dave!
on a personal note, i was lucky to have a lot of really great professors in college, but matt kocher was one of the best. he helped define what kind of teacher i hope to be, if i ever end up teaching...and i swear that has nothing to do with the slight crush on him that i may or may not have harbored.
anyway! if COIN and/or BALLER statistical analysis is your thing, definitely check it out. do people know if there's an equivalent data set for other conflicts? obviously, i'm thinking about the most immediately pertinent example of af-pak.
*thanks, dave!
No comments:
Post a Comment