German Institute of Global and Area Studies

Who are the leaders who end civil wars through peace agreements? I theorize that the prior combat experience of a state leader is an important life experience with direct relevance for how leaders evaluate conflict outcomes. Combat experience increases sensitivity to human losses and gives the state leader a hawkish reputation, increasing internal support, boosting their risk-tolerance, and convincing the rebel leader to take the leader seriously. Using a nested research design, I show that civil wars are more likely to terminate in peace agreements when the leader in charge knows the battlefield. I supplement the quantitative analysis of all state leaders in civil conflicts from 1989 to 2015 with a qualitative pathway case of Indonesia’s President Yudhoyono. These findings expand upon insights on leaders’ attributes indicating that prior combat experience has different effects on potential conflict outcomes in intrastate than in international wars.

The Indo-Pacific is a laboratory of foreign policy signaling. It has seen a plethora of novel diplomatic phrasings and formats emerging in the recent past – from the adoption of the Indo-Pacific terminology itself, to a series of strategy papers from regional as well as extra-regional governments to varying multilateral naval exercises. Playing host to the rivalry between the US and China that is set to define 21st century world politics, it is not surprising that both major Asian and external powers have intensified their foreign policy signaling towards and within the Indo-Pacific region. What is more puzzling is the simultaneity of often very public signals and their vagueness. In fact, a multipolar Asia replete with interdependencies from safe sea lanes to infrastructure investments and arms supplies is one that is full of ambiguous signaling – raising questions about the reasons for this as well as its consequences and effectiveness. The introduction of this special issue highlights this central feature of signalling in the Indo-Pacific. Moreover, with reference to the rich signalling literature it suggests an understanding of foreign policy signalling outside immediate crises as communication that is costly, public, and intentional for the contributing authors to work with.

Preferences to interact with similar others are a barrier to positive intergroup contact and, thus, peaceful intergroup relations. A growing literature investigated what shapes contact preferences but more research on changeable factors that can be targeted by interventions is needed. In this article, we focused on preferences for interacting with religiously similar others. To create an interface between practice and research, our hypotheses on changeable determinants of preferences are informed by qualitative interviews on everyday practices of peaceful coexistence in Togo and Sierra Leone. We expected inclusive religious ideas, adaptive coping and emotion regulation skills, and knowledge of outgroup religious practices to be related to weaker preferences for similar others. Further, we argued these associations may vary depending on neighborhood levels of interreligious peace. We tested our hypotheses using survey data ( N = 1828) collected among Muslims and Christians in 50 neighborhoods of Lomé (Togo) and Freetown (Sierra Leone). We found that inclusive ideas and knowledge of outgroup practices were associated with weaker, and exclusive ideas with stronger, preferences for similar others. These findings mostly held across groups and countries. Coping and emotion regulation skills did not matter systematically and our hypotheses about the role of neighborhood‐level peace was refuted.

This special issue explores the complex dynamics between authoritarian states and their new generation(s) diasporas. It examines the strategies employed by non-democratic regimes to engage with and control their diaspora populations, particularly focusing on the youth and subsequent generations who have grown up outside their ancestral homelands. The contributions highlight the various approaches of a wide range of cases, including China, North Korea, Rwanda, Burundi, Eritrea, Egypt, Turkey and Bosnia and Hercegovina. This introduction situates the special issue in the broader literature on state-diaspora relations, elaborates on key concepts and presents a summary of the main conclusions from the special issue as a whole. It notes the variation between states that explicitly and relatively successfully engage their new generation(s) diaspora and those that encounter difficulties doing so, and draws attention to the agency of diaspora youth in shaping their relationships with authoritarian or less-democratic homeland states.

Kurzfassung Der iranische Informationskrieg ist in den zurückliegenden Jahrzehnten allgegenwärtiger und komplexer geworden. Er besteht aus einer Kombination von Strategien, die die Kontrolle des digitalen Raums, der Medien und der Diaspora umfassen. Ziel ist es, Einflussoperationen zur Manipulation des globalen Narrativs und zur Begrenzung des Informationsflusses durchzuführen. Die iranische Regierung hat sowohl im In- als auch im Ausland massiv in ausgeklügelte Methoden und Instrumente zur Durchführung des Informationskriegs investiert. Inspiriert durch die politische Ideologie des Staates, insbesondere dem Konzept des „Sieges durch Angst“, setzt die Regierung menschliche Emotionen institutionell als Strategie der Abschreckung in ihrem Informationskrieg gegen die politischen Dissidenten innerhalb und außerhalb des Landes ein. Dieser Beitrag analysiert vielschichtige Strategien dieser Form der iranischen Kriegführung, die im internationalen Umfeld verfolgt werden.

Socio-political factors in Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs), and their scenario narratives often lack transparency for policymakers and interdisciplinary scholars. As these tools increasingly support sustainable development goals, their assumptions and methodologies require scrutiny, particularly from social scientists. We address critiques of climate isolationism, overemphasis on technological transitions, and insufficient inter- and transdisciplinarity, advocating for robust interdisciplinary integration and clearer methodological transparency. Our recommendations stem from expert interviews and over 200 stakeholders across 30 countries from 2019 to 2024, emphasizing the need for cohesive theory and comprehensive social science engagement to refine these critical tools. Our main case study uses a new scenario set, the Sustainable Development Pathways (SDPs), that made substantial efforts to address social sciences critiques. The SDPs consist of both narratives and IAM-quantified target-seeking scenarios that are supported by social science concepts and theories to ensure not only theoretical coherence, but also their credibility among policymakers. As such tools are increasingly used to facilitate policies and actions for sustainability transformation, questions are raised about how they can effectively represent the complexities behind the current polycrisis that is marked by the climate crisis, biodiversity loss, economic inequality and social injustice. The paper concludes by reflecting on the remaining challenges and open questions related to the role of exogenous sociopolitical factors, the potential for scenarios to transcend political ideologies, and the need for ongoing adaptation of SDPs to reflect the dynamic global context. It calls for continued engagement and exploration of these issues to ensure the scientific representation of sustainable and equitable futures.

Sustainability standards, such as the Roundtable for Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), can potentially mitigate the trade-offs between economic benefits and environmental harm of oil palm expansion. Using unique primary household and farm level panel data collected from Jambi Province, Indonesia, we first document the differences in agricultural inputs and outputs between certified and non-certified smallholder farmers. Second, we illustrate the potential implications and mechanisms of certification. In this study, therefore, we aim to first document agricultural input and output differences between certified and non-certified smallholder farmers, second to illustrate potential effects of certification with observational data and third to provide guidance for future rigorous causal analyses. We find generally positive correlations between RSPO certification, land productivity, profits, and fertilizer use, and a negative correlation with toxic herbicide use. However, we do not find price premiums for RSPO-certified farmers. Overall, the results of this study are indicative of potentially modest effects of RSPO-certification that may operate through higher productivity due to improved management practices that remain agrochemical intensive but avoid some particularly harmful chemicals. Our findings are relevant to better understand the strong sustainability claims of RSPO marketing and to provide guidance for rigorous causal experimental and quasi-experimental studies.

This study provides a comprehensive systematic review of recent randomized controlled trials (RCTs) to evaluate the employment effects of skills training programs in sub-Saharan Africa. The review focuses on studies conducted between 2019 and 2024, a period marked by a significant increase in the number of RCTs of training interventions in this region, and we thus fill a gap left by earlier reviews that did not reflect this recent surge in experimental studies. We employ the standard SPIDER approach for defining search terms and the PRISMA procedure for search and selection to systematically analyze the impact of these training programs on employment outcomes. The findings reveal a shift towards a more optimistic assessment compared to previous analyses, suggesting that many recent skills training programs do contribute to improving employment-related outcomes.