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 paper reviews the results of the author's cross-cultural studies of war and aggression and their implications for prehistory.

This study examines the relationship between political participation and warfare, suggesting that checks on power, removal of leaders, extent of political participation, and absence of fission will be negatively associated with the frequency of warfare. This hypothesis was supported with empirical analysis.

This article tests various explainations for corporal punishment of children, including social complexity, a societal culture of violence, and whether help in child rearing is available. Analysis suggests that corporal punishment may be a parent's way to prepare children for societal power inequality.

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 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.

This paper explores societal-level mechanisms associated with women’s participation in and exclusion from political life. Analysis suggests there are two statistically independent types of female political participation: involvement in decision-making and the existence of positions controlled by or reserved for women. Multiple regression analysis identifies several social-structural, psychocultural, and behavioral correlates for both types of female political participation and explanatory theory is discussed.

This article builds on previous cross-country and cross-state research into Tightness-Looseness (TL) theory, which proposes relationships between the incidence of ecological threat and cultural tightness, as well as tightness’ downstream effects on belief in a moralizing high god, inter-group contact and authoritarian leadership. To evaluate the generalizability of TL theory beyond complex cultures, the authors test these relationships among 86 nonindustrial societies from the ethnographic record. A structural equation model is presented of the results for nonindustrial societies; it is generally in accord with previous findings from more complex societies. Because the nonindustrial sample is more variable, they also look at relationships between societal complexity and kinship heterogeneity, aspects that vary in nonindustrial societies.

This article suggests a general theory of conflict and violence that may help explain the conditions under which internal conflict co-occur or are differentiated.

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.