The present study investigates whether there is resilience variability following climate-related disasters in societies that are corporate-oriented, which promote participatory and inclusive structures, and exclusionary-oriented, which limit political authority and power. The findings offer modest support for social resilience theory that more flexible (i.e. more participatory) societies would be more resilient after a disaster than less flexible societies. Although only 5 of 14 correlations are significant, the direction is significant by a binomial sign test.

Using a new expert survey, the authors explore the democraticness of traditional political systems (TPS) in 159 ethnic groups in Africa. Their initial analysis finds that measures of public preference input and political process control are particularly strong contributors to the degree that a society may develop democracy in their TPS. They also find that societies with powerful elders are more likely to be democratic, while more hierarchically organized political systems and those with kings, chiefs, and segmentary lineages are less likely.

The present study attempts to replicate the Ember, Ember, and Russett (1992) worldwide finding that fighting rarely occurs between democracies in a sample of eastern African societies. Following the earlier study, the authors considered internal warfare to be an analog of international warfare and measures of political participation analogous to democracy. The researchers also explore if there is an association between political participation and committing atrocities. Contrary to past findings, internal warfare was not predicted by the same set of variables as the 1992 study, but there is an inverse relationship between committing atrocities and political participation. However, when additional variables were added, internal warfare was significantly predicted by less political participation.

This article uses pre-defined criteria to sample 22 archaeological climate-related disasters from 9 distinct regions from eHRAF Archaeology. It quantitatively tests four hypotheses regarding change in conflict following climate-related disasters using multiple regression analyses and backwards stepwise regression. Findings demonstrate association between political strategy/authority decision making and degree of post climate disaster conflict.

The present study aims to assess the reliability of Simmons' (1937) database of 109 variables coded for 71 societies. Simmons' data was evaluated against matching societies and variables from Murdock's (1967) Ethnographic Atlas. The ultimate purpose of Rudmin's analysis is to identify the features of societies that are correlated with the private ownership of property. To do so, Simmons' reliable variables are tested against four measures of property ownership, two from Simmons and two from Murdock. Rudmin discusses results and speculates why certain clusters of societal variables correlate with private property ownership.

This article employs cross-national and cross-cultural methods to investigate whether pathogen stress is a direct determinant of authoritarianism. The study controls on other factors such as famine, warfare, and malnutrition and evaluates alternative causal models.

This article examines how an increase in overall societal complexity affects local political offices. Findings suggest that a more complex society has a slight tendency to develop more political offices within the community, but there is greater support for an increased number of jurisdictional levels within the community.

Using empirical data and statistical methodology, Gouldner and Peterson aim to identify fundamental dimensions across societies, examine the relationships among these dimensions, and evaluate their importance. Data analysis is largely based on factor analysis, and the authors discuss how statistical methods fit into functional social theory.

This study investigates previous findings that indicate precolonial centralization was beneficial for development in Africa. Using new survey data from public primary schools, the author shows that the failure of leaders of centralized regions to comply with federal regimes was punished with underinvestment in public infrastructure services, hindering development and limiting access to these services in recent populations. The author proposes that the extent to which precolonial centralization was beneficial for development in Africa is mediated by compliance of the local governing bodies with federal regimes.

This article explores the factors that predict rituals of conflict. Hypotheses are derived from Gluckman's analysis of Southeast African rituals of rebellion and are tested against a cross-cultural sample.