Ian Lustick
University of Pennsylvania, Political Science, Faculty Member
The one-state reality has dramatically changed the discursive landscape of the movement of Israeli settlers and their supporters who have waged a half century campaign to prevent territorial compromise as a basis for Israeli-Palestinian... more
The one-state reality has dramatically changed the discursive landscape of the movement of Israeli settlers and their supporters who have waged a half century campaign to prevent territorial compromise as a basis for Israeli-Palestinian peace. Analysis of the discourse of the Sovereignty movement, as reflected in the pages of its journal, Ribonut, traces these changes and highlights the new challenges posed to the annexationist project by the prospect of the attainability of its goals and the necessity to confront the “Arab problem.”
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Social scientists who use history as a laboratory for theory development use the work of historians to construct background narratives which can then be coded according to theoretically relevant categories. Yet, virtually no attention has... more
Social scientists who use history as a laboratory for theory development use the work of historians to construct background narratives which can then be coded according to theoretically relevant categories. Yet, virtually no attention has been paid to how these historical monographs are to be chosen. On most periods and themes of interest available accounts differ, not only substantively but also with respect to the implicit theories and conceptual frameworks used to establish salience or produce commonsensical explanations. Unself-conscious use of historical monographs thus easily results in selection bias. Social scientists are bound to be more attracted to and convinced by accounts that accord with the expectations about events contained in the concepts they deploy and the theories they seek to test. Consideration of recent developments in historiographical theory supports the argument that responsible techniques for using historical sources are available, but they require unders...
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A prime focus for social scientists, and in particular political scientists, is on institutions. Institutions are stabilized sets of expectations that establish frameworks for social action that affect behavior because they affect... more
A prime focus for social scientists, and in particular political scientists, is on institutions. Institutions are stabilized sets of expectations that establish frameworks for social action that affect behavior because they affect calculations and inspire attachments. Institutions do change, but they change slower than life changes. This creates a paradoxical reality. On the one hand, the relative stability of institutions-the rules and procedures they establish for interaction and decision-compared to the fluctuations of circumstances and preferences is what makes it possible for human groups to take effective action. On the other hand, their very stability means that the decisions they enable are almost inevitably suboptimal. Accordingly, although most political scientists are committed to a general view that the interests and beliefs of human beings and human groups are the primary drivers of political behavior and political change, a good deal of attention by 'institutionali...
Holland (2000) highlights how the study of board games can yield profound but underexploited insights into complex social phenomena. We build on this insight, treating games as small complex adaptive systems, with emergent properties... more
Holland (2000) highlights how the study of board games can yield profound but underexploited insights into complex social phenomena. We build on this insight, treating games as small complex adaptive systems, with emergent properties susceptible to the kinds of analysis appropriate for much larger, highly complex arenas of interaction. Building on this foundation, we use Agent-Based Model (ABM) simulations as “virtual board games” featuring thousands of agents treatable as either players or game elements. Here we do so to study how insurgents use Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) and other available modes of attack and evaluate how a player’s counter-strategies can minimize the impact of IEDs. To develop this complex game, we use our Virtual Strategic Analysis and Forecasting Tool (V-SAFT). V-SAFT is a pioneering ABM simulation platform for building theoretically grounded, realistic models that simulate politics and conflict in real-world countries (Reichert, et al., 2014). This p...
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Propelled by the oil boom of the mid-1970s the Middle East emerged as the world's fastest growing region. Hopes and expectations were high for Arab political consolidation, economic advancement, and cultural efflorescence. With... more
Propelled by the oil boom of the mid-1970s the Middle East emerged as the world's fastest growing region. Hopes and expectations were high for Arab political consolidation, economic advancement, and cultural efflorescence. With falling oil prices and a devastating war between Iran and Iraq, these hopes had dimmed somewhat by the early 1980s. In 1985, however, the spectacular image of an Arab great power was still tantalizing. A Pan-Arab state, wrote two experts on the region, would include a total area of 13.7 million square kilometers,second only to the Soviet Union and considerably larger than Europe, Canada, China, or the United States. … By 2000 it would have more people than either of the two superpowers. This state would contain almost two-thirds of the world's proven oil reserves. It would also have enough capital to finance its own economic and social development. Conceivably, it could feed itself.… Access to a huge market could stimulate rapid industrial growth. Pre...
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Ending Protracted Conflicts: The Oslo Peace Process Between Political Partnership and Legality Ian S. Lustick* Introduction If the Oslo peace process is considered within the category of other extended processes of negotiation and... more
Ending Protracted Conflicts: The Oslo Peace Process Between Political Partnership and Legality Ian S. Lustick* Introduction If the Oslo peace process is considered within the category of other extended processes of negotiation and attempted reconciliation, such as those underway ...
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Institutional frameworks powerfully determine the goals, violence, and trajectories of identitarian movements—including secessionist movements. However, both small-Nand large-Nresearchers disagree on the question of whether... more
Institutional frameworks powerfully determine the goals, violence, and trajectories of identitarian movements—including secessionist movements. However, both small-Nand large-Nresearchers disagree on the question of whether “power-sharing” arrangements, instead of repression, are more or less likely to mitigate threats of secessionist mobilizations by disaffected, regionally concentrated minority groups. The PS-I modeling platform was used to create a virtual country “Beita,” containing within it a disaffected, partially controlled, regionally concentrated minority. Drawing on constructivist identity theory to determine behaviors by individual agents in Beita, the most popular theoretical positions on this issue were tested. Data were drawn from batches of hundreds of Beita histories produced under rigorous experimental conditions. The results lend support to sophisticated interpretations of the effects of repression vs. responsive or representative types of power-sharing. Although ...
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In five works spanning a decade, Philip E. Tetlock's interest in counterfactuals has changed. He began with an optimistic desire to make social science more rigorous by identifying best practices in the absence of non-imagined controls... more
In five works spanning a decade, Philip E. Tetlock's interest in counterfactuals has changed. He began with an optimistic desire to make social science more rigorous by identifying best practices in the absence of non-imagined controls for experimentation. Soon, however, he adopted a more pessimistic analysis of the cognitive and psychological barriers facing experts. This shift was brought on by an awareness that experts are not rational Bayesians who continually update their theories to keep up with new information; but instead are affected by political, cognitive, and psychological heuristics, including hindsight bias, cognitive conservatism, and the fundamental attribution error. But techniques of computational simulation-involving the rigorous production of large numbers of counterfactual worlds-make it possible to mitigate both problems that Tetlock identifies: that history, produced only once, is a lousy teacher; and that humans, with their collection of non-Bayesian heuristics, are lousy pupils. Tetlock was wrong to reject this approach as theoretically promising but rhetorically and practically impractical.