Johannes Vüllers

• University of Duisburg-Essen

Populism is often assumed to undermine the liberal world order, but this claim has never been tested systematically. In this study, we do so for the first time. Based on an understanding of populism as a “thin-centered ideology” entailing anti-elitism and people-centrism, we expect populist governments to have foreign policy preferences opposed to...

Western Europe has recently experienced increasing protest mobilisation by right-wing populist movements. Although these movements are receiving increasing scholarly attention, systematic data on protest activities is limited. In this research note, original data is used to describe the protest activity of Germany’s Pegida movement across space and...

Weltweit ist eine Zunahme des Konfliktgeschehens zu verzeichnen, das aktuell auch vom russischen Angriffskrieg auf die Ukraine geprägt ist. Einen großen Anteil an der hohen Anzahl der Konflikte haben internationalisierte und dschihadistische Konflikte. In beiden Fällen bedarf es neuer diplomatischer Ansätze, um die Gewalt zu stoppen und Friedensver...

Homicide engenders broad moral concerns in society, and its aftermath can be understood as a barometer for criminal justice policy. Of all homicides committed, however, only some lead to arrest, to prosecution and ultimately to conviction in court. So far, no study has assessed the entire flow of homicide cases through the criminal justice system b...

Die Corona-Pandemie bedroht die menschliche Sicherheit und ist eine große Herausforderung für die Umsetzung der Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Es bedarf funktionsfähiger Institutionen auf allen staatlichen Ebenen in den Bereichen Gesundheit, Soziales und Wirtschaft, um dieser Gefahr zu begegnen. Die internationale Gemeinschaft sollte neben d...

Right‐wing populist (RWP) movements have been on the rise in Western democracies. Outside of party politics, such movements regularly organize demonstrations against political elites and minority groups. At the same time, civil society coalitions have mobilized against these movements. Yet we know little about the effect of counter‐demonstrations o...

Over the last decade, a renewed interest in the empirical analysis of contentious politics has led to significant improvements in the quality and quantity of data. The related wave of research has thus turned to analysis of the dynamics of contentious politics from a comparative perspective. Unfortunately, these studies use country level datasets f...

Under what conditions do protests occur in civil wars? Evidence from case studies suggests that protests can indeed play an important role in contexts of civil wars, with civilians using respective tactics both against the state and rebels. We argue that localities experiencing armed clashes are likely to see protest events in the same month. Civil...

Correction to: Z Friedens und Konflforsch 2019 10.1007/s42597-019-00018-9 The original version of this article unfortunately contains a mistake. The first sentence in section “3 Overview of the special issue” fifth paragraph should read:“The paper by Krauser et al. focuses on … “The paper by Krauser et al. focuses on …

This article introduces the special issue on the micro-level dynamics of civil wars. Until recently, most empirical work on these conflicts and their consequences has focused on the level of the sovereign state. In contrast, a micro-level approach is categorized by three distinct—albeit intertwined—features: a disaggregation by actors, time and spa...

Under what conditions do religious groups engage in peace activism? Religious groups engage in peace activism if the associated costs are low and they compete with either conflict party over the interpretation of their religious content concerning war and peace. Peace activism is a promising action as peace activists maintain their positive self-ev...

Under what conditions do civilians mobilize after power-sharing agreements? Research on post-conflict power-sharing has neglected the possible consequences of power-sharing agreements on micro level dynamics, i. e. civilian activism. We argue that (i) power-sharing practices increase the probability of civilian activism, (ii) political and territor...

Organizations often announce their protest activities prior to their implementation to mobilize awareness, recruit supporters, and receive media attention. We are interested in the effectiveness of protest announcements—that is, under what conditions governments make concessions to avoid having an announced protest take place. Governments assess th...

Since Ted Gurr’s Why Men Rebel it has become conventional wisdom that (relative) deprivation creates grievances and that these grievances in turn lead to intergroup violence. Recently, studies have yielded evidence that the exclusion of ethnic groups is a substantial conflict risk. From a theoretical angle, the relationship is straightforward and i...

Despite ample anecdotal evidence, previous research on violent conflict has found little evidence that religion is an important factor in organized violence. Quantitative work in this area has been largely confined to the interreligious character of conflict and measures of religious diversity, and has strongly neglected the peace aspect of religio...

Die wachsende Bedeutung gewaltfreier Widerstandsbewegungen – man denke anden Arabischen Frühling und an die zunächst gewaltfreien Proteste in der Ukraine– spiegelt sich vermehrt auch in der Forschung wider. Der Literaturbericht fasstdie Ergebnisse eines wachsenden englischsprachigen Literaturstrangs zusammen,der sich an der Schnittstelle zwischen d...

Despite the frequent failure of mediation efforts, the potential negative impact of this outcome on conflict dynamics in civil wars has not been systematically studied. Starting from the assumption that the failure of mediation may cause the conflict parties to conclude that non-violent strategies are ineffective, we develop a rationalist model to...

Given its religious demography, sub-Saharan Africa seems particularly prone to the outbreak of violent clashes between Christians and Muslims. This article compares three sub-Saharan countries—Nigeria, Côte d’Ivoire, and Tanzania—that display different levels of inter-religious violence despite each having in common similar population ratios of Chr...

While mediation efforts in violent conflicts often fail, the academic literature on mediation has long ignored both this phenomenon and its consequences. This paper aims to fill this significant knowledge gap by examining the conditions under which the failure of mediation leads to an escalation of civil war. Based on the literature on bargaining,...

This paper analyzes the role of religion with regard to the violence experienced during the past 20 years in Côte d’Ivoire. It seeks to explain the differences in the level of violence over time by focusing on religion as an identity marker and as a social force that is mobilizable by religious and political actors. Religious identities were part o...

Theoretically, the ‘‘mobilization hypothesis’’ establishes a link between religion and conflict by arguing that particular religious structures are prone to mobilization; once politicized, escalation to violent conflict becomes more likely. Yet, despite the religious diversity in sub-Saharan Africa and the religious overtones in a number of African...

Theoretically, the “mobilization hypothesis” establishes a link between religion and conflict by arguing that religious structures such as overlapping ethnic and religious identities are prone to mobilization; once politicized, escalation to violent conflict becomes likelier. Yet, despite the religious diversity in sub‐Saharan Africa and the religi...

Despite the religious diversity in sub‐Saharan Africa and the religious overtones in a number of African conflicts, social science research has inadequately addressed the question of how and to what extent religion matters for conflict in Africa. This paper presents an innovative data inventory on religion and violent conflict in all sub‐Saharan co...

Religious elites are active for peace in many violent conflicts. Normative explanations often do not suffice to explain their engagement. In this paper we draw on the findings of social‐movement research to identify the factors that induce rationally acting religious elites to be active for peace. It is their relationships to the government, other...

Despite the religious diversity in sub-Saharan Africa and the religious overtones in a number of African armed conflicts, little systematic research has been done on the religion–conflict nexus in sub-Saharan Africa. Quantitative studies mostly limit analysis to demographic variables, and systematic studies on Africa are completely absent. Case stu...