Research 

The research programs of the Sié Center touch on three broad thematic issue areas: Security Governance; Terrorism and Insurgency; and Fragile States. These programs are led by Center-Director Deborah Avant, Professor Erica Chenoweth, and Professor Tim Sisk.

Program on Security Governance

• Private Security Monitor. The Private Security Monitor is a research project that promotes access to information concerning the world-wide use and regulation of private military and security services. The Private Security Monitor web portal draws together all publicly-available regulations, reports, publications, and data on this industry, thus allowing researchers, regulators, and consumers of private security services to be informed and demand better governance, oversight, and behavior of private security forces operating worldwide. This project is part of an ongoing collaboration between the Sié Center and the Center for the Democratic Control of the Armed Forces (DCAF) in Geneva.

• Networks, Governance, and Global Security. This project examines how various associations of state and non-state actors addressing security issues might be thought of as networks or governance systems. Participants are an international group of scholars focused on a wide range of contemporary security issues, and each participant is responsible for a paper addressing the interaction between networks, governance and power. The final papers will be published as a special issue of a journal or as an edited volume at a top-tier university press. 

Program on Terrorism and Insurgency Research

• GATE Data Project. The Government Actions in Terror Environments (GATE) data project is a multi-institutional effort to collect and code data on state action toward terrorist organizations or their constituencies in select countries. To date, the GATE database is the most comprehensive source of information on how governments respond on a day-to-day basis to terrorist violence. This data can be used to identify how different types of government actions affect terrorist violence, why governments undertake certain actions, and a variety of other questions.

• Civil Resistance Project. The Nonviolent and Violent Conflict Outcomes (NAVCO) data project collects data on major nonviolent mass campaigns from 1900-2011 so that researchers can better understand the origins, dynamics, and outcomes of civilian-based resistance movements. The project involves a systematic effort to look inside both nonviolent and violent campaigns, notably at the type, sequence, and outcomes of different tactics employed by armed insurgents and unarmed civilians during their campaigns.

• Terrorism Network Project. This project is a multi-institutional effort to understand how terrorist networks emerge, and with whom terrorist groups ally. Data on terrorist group alliance patterns will be collected and analyzed, ultimately yielding a publicly available data set, several scholarly publications, and a host of case study narratives that can be used by policymakers to reduce the capacities of these groups to inflict harm. 

Program on Fragile States

• Religion and Social Cohesion in Conflict-Affected Countries. This research project explores the relationships and linkages between development assistance and religious actors and organizations in order to build a more rigorously derived knowledge base on how “informal” group participation in national dialogues, development policy-making, and project implementation affects social cohesion and peace and development outcomes. 

• Scarcity, Conflict, and Governance in Fragile States. Building Infrastructures for Peace. This research, education, and policy-dialogue program evaluates how the United Nations Peace and Development Advisor mechanism can assist conflict-mitigation and development performance in countries where extreme deprivation and rapid climatic change induces risks of local, regional and transboundary conflict. 

Affiliated faculty of the Sié Center also produce a variety of publications on topics in security, diplomacy and governance.