Michael Stohl - Research Interests
In the 1970s I became interested in the problem of responses to human rights
violations and creating a data source that was accessible, reliable and trusted
that could be used to evaluate current conditions within nations. The data was
then used to evaluate the implementation of the human rights standards for
United States development assistance decisions. It has been used quite widely
by scholars exploring the implementation of human rights policies around the
world. Information on the scale may be found at:
Political
Terror Scale
(Click
here to download a PDF version)
You can view a creative visual use of the scales at: http://www.goalsforamericans.org/publications/pioom/atf_world_conf_map.pdf
My most recent research using the scale is United States Foreign Policy and Foreign Assistance
The first of the published articles using the scale was Human
Rights and U.S. Foreign Assistance Policy from Nixon to Carter
Most recently I have collaborated with Cynthia Stohl to explore the development
of the human rights regime in Human
Rights, Nation States, and NGOs: Structural Holes and the Emergence of Global
Regimes. Communication Monographs, 72, 442-467.
Currently we are combining our interest in human rights with an exploration of
corporate social responsibility. The first publication in this area is Stohl, M., Stohl C. and Townsley, N. 2007. “A New
Generation of Global Corporate Social Responsibility,” in S. May, G. Cheney,
and J. Roper (Eds.). The Debates Over Corporate Social Responsibility, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 30-44. Forthcoming is Stohl,M. and Stohl,C., “Human Rights and
Corporate Social Responsibility: Parallel processes and global opportunities
for States, Corporations and NGO’s,” Corporate Governance. 2008.
Terrorism is communicatively constituted violence. I have been studying terrorism for the
past thirty years and my research on terrorism has explored many facets of the
problem including media representations and their implications, organizational
networks, counterterrorism and its implications, cyber terror, approaches to
the study of terrorism, and state terrorism.
My recent publications on terrorism include:
Danis, M. and Stohl, M., 2008 forthcoming. “From 7/7 to 8/10: Media framing of terrorist incidents in the United States and United Kingdom,” in David Canter (Ed.) The Faces of Terrorism: Cross-Disciplinary Explorations. Wiley-Blackwell.
Stohl, M., 2008 “Networks, terrorists and criminals: the implications for community policing,” Crime Law and Social Change
Stohl, M., Myers, P. and Danis, M., 2008 forthcoming. "The Dark Side of WEB 2.0: Criminals, terrorists, the state and cyber security." Harvard Asia Pacific Review.
Stohl, M., 2008. “Old Myths, New Fantasies and the Enduring Realities of Terrorism,” Critical Studies in Terrorism, 1, 1, 5-16.
Stohl, M., 2007. “Swamps, Hot Spots, Dick Cheney and the Internationalization of Terrorist Campaigns,” Conflict Management and Peace Science, 24:1-18.
Stohl, M. 2007, “Cyber Terrorism: A Clear and Present Danger,
The Sum of All Fears, Breaking Point or Patriot Games,” Crime, Law and
Social Change 46:223-238 “Knowledge Claims
and the Study of Terrorism,” in J. Victoroff, Ed.). Tangled Roots: Social and
Psychological factors in the Genesis of Terrorism. Amsterdam: IOS Press, 2006.
“Counterterrorism and Repression,” in L. Richardson and P. Neumann (Eds.) The
Roots of Terrorism: London: Routledge, 2006 pp. 57-69.
“The State as Terrorist: Insights and Implications” Democracy and Security,
2:1-25, 2006
“National Interests and State Terrorism in International Affairs,” in R.H.T.
O’Kane (Ed.) Terrorism. London, Edgar Elgar, 2005: (Volume 1) pp. 208-233.
reprint of "National Interests and State Terrorism" Political
Science, Volume 36, No. 2, July 1984: pp. 37-52.
Cyber Terrorism (with Peter Grabosky) in Reform Issue 82, Autumn 2003 -National
and international security pages 8-13.
Exploring understanding terrorism after September 11 in “Mystery of the New
Terrorism” in The New Global Terrorism: The Characteristics, Causes, Controls
Charles W. Kegley (ed) , Prentice Hall, 2003, pp 84-91.
and a longer book chapter on “Myths
and Realities of Cyber terrorism.” in Countering Terrorism Through
International Cooperation, Alex P. Schmid (ed.), ISPAC
(International Scientific and Professional Advisory Council of the United
Nations Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice Program), Vienna, 2001,pp:
70-105.
In addition, in June 2004, I participated in an International Experts meeting
on the “root causes of terrorism” under the sponsorship of the Norwegian
Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Oslo. The meeting was the precursor for a one
day meeting on September 22, 2003 in New York featuring about twenty heads of
state on the eve of the opening of the United Nations General Assembly.
Information on the meeting may be found at
http://www.end-terror.org/background/
My contribution to the meeting was on Expected Utility and State Terrorism and is now published in Root Causes of Terrorism (T. Bjorgo, Ed.) New York and London: Routledge, 2005 pp 198-214.
In March 2005 I participated in the International Summit on Democracy,
Terrorism and Security in Madrid sponsored by the Club de Madrid to honor the
victims of the attacks of March 11, 2004.
http://english.safe-democracy.org/
Cynthia Stohl and I participated in the ANU Terrorism Workshop 31 March-1
April 2005. Here are the two presentations we made to the workshop.
The
Madrid Agenda
Networks
and The War on Terror
Currently, I have two projects on terrorism that I am pursuing. I continue to work with graduate student Mary Danis on media representations of terrorism and we have just recently completed a web based experiment which looks at the framing of the terrorist threat and its implications for attitudes towards Muslims, restrictions on civil liberties and counterterrorism policy. We intend to continue exploring the implications in additional experiments.
I am working with Peter Grabosky of the Australian National University on an Australian Research Council Center of Excellence Grant on Illicit Organisations.
This project uses a network analytic approach of three types of illicit organisations that generate a wide range of serious crime problems: youth gangs, conventional criminal organisations (drug suppliers), and terrorist groups. The project aims to explain the characteristics, rise and decline of criminal organisations, and the recruitment and desistance of their members.
For more details see:
http://www.ceps.edu.au/node/67
The project will result in a book tentatively titled Crime and Terrorism to be published by SAGE.
"Failed States" are defined by the patterns of governmental
collapse within a nation which often bring demands (because of the refugees
they foster, the human rights they abridge and their inability to forestall
starvation and disease) which threaten the security of their surrounding states
and region. The failed state is considered "utterly incapable of sustaining
itself as a member of the international community" (Helman and Ratner,
Foreign Policy, 1992) and depends on steady streams of foreign assistance. The
list of failed states is growing as they impinge on what Chase, Hill and
Kennedy (Foreign Affairs, 1996) referred to as "pivotal states" and
their importance as a threat to that region and global security. Consequently,
the growth and potential growth, of failed states is of primary importance to
the international community in its effort to enhance international peace and
security.
For the last decade I have
coordinated a study group on failed states and have convened the study group
annually.
Click below for more info and my papers as well as the other contributions from
our meetings:
1998 Failed States and International Security: Causes, Prospects and Consequences
2000 Failed States III: Globalization and the Failed State
2001 Failed States IV: Structures, Cases and Policies
2002 Failed States V: Workshop on Failed States
In 2004 Rachel Stohl and I published a further failed states article
The
Failed and Failing State and the Bush Administration
More recently we updated our analysis of the Bush Administration in Stohl, R. and Stohl, M., 2008 Failing the Failed: The Bush Administration and Failed States
Harvard International Review, 29, 4 http://www.harvardir.org/articles/1709/.
In 2005 Lothar Brock (the University of Frankfurt) , Hans-Henrik Holm (The Danish School of Journalism) , Georg Sorensen (Arhus University) and I presented “Why Weak States Persist: Empirical and Juridical Statehood in the New Millennium,” at the World International Studies Conference (WISC) First Global International Studies Conference, Bilgi University, Istanbul, Turkey, 24 – 27 August. We are currently at work on a book length manuscript on the Persistence of Failed States: Global Implications for Peace and Security Beyond the Failed.