Ori Swed
Biographic Data
| ID | 254113 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Ori Swed |
| GIVEN NAMES | Ori |
| FAMILY NAME | Swed |
| SIGNATURE | SWED O |
| AFFILIATIONS | Texas Tech University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-9555-0985 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 31 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 62 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 31 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2015 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Religious Affiliation and Military Service in the United States
Those who serve in the armed forces are shaped not only by incentives and opportunity structures but also by institutions that cultivate norms of duty, authority, and collective obligation. This study argues that religious institutions function as such socializing agents and play a measurable role in military enlistment in the United States. Complementing existing research that focuses on denomination or belief as key indicators, we introduce an …
War by numbers
This paper advances the sociology of quantification by introducing the concept of war counting, a sociologically informed framework for understanding how numbers are produced, utilized, interpreted, and contested within the context of armed conflict. While sociologists have explored the pervasive role of quantification in governance, markets, and everyday life, limited attention has been paid to how numerical practices unfold during war. Drawing …
Conflict, Corruption, and White-Collar Crime
When the Market for Force Comes Home
Do mercenaries perform better than states? Evaluating the Wagner group's impact on Central African Republic
Do mercenaries perform better than democratic state armies? This study examines the efficacy of mercenary groups compared to state military interventions, using the Wagner Group’s operations in the Central African Republic as a case study. By comparing the French Operation Sangaris (2013–2016) with Wagner’s involvement (2021–2023), the research evaluates their relative effectiveness across counterinsurgency measures, military success, and popular…
Terrorism on Trial
Keeping it authentic
The Ideology That Binds Us
What brings different terrorist groups, organizations that are regularly secretive and competitive, to collaborate with one another? We build on scholarship that identifies ideology as a determining feature of terrorists' behavior and draw on network studies that emphasize the role of homophily in creating collaboration. We suggest that the groups' homophily in ideology plays a significant part in terrorists' collaboration. Using network analysis…
The Empirical Determinants of Violent Nonstate Actor Drone Adoption
Commercial drone advancements have enabled terrorists with crude airpower, challenging states’ aerial dominance. Today, many groups skillfully use drones for propaganda generation, surveillance and reconnaissance, command and control, and attacks. Despite their obvious value, there is wide variation in adoption begging questions about who is using drones and why. Prominent in practitioner and security provider circles, academics are just skimming…
Motivated to Fight
Why fight for someone else’s war? This study explores the motivations of foreign fighters joining the Ukrainian Foreign Legion during the 2022 to 2023 phase of the Russia–Ukraine War. Unlike previous research centered on foreign nationals’ involvement in terrorist organizations and jihadist groups, particularly in the Middle East, this case captures a different trend characterized by institutionalized recruitment processes and tacit international…
Conflict contagion via weapons proliferation out of collapsed states
The Weberian definition of the state as the legitimate monopoly on the means of violence links arms to national power. In practice, the monopoly entails exchanging capital for arms to equip security forces with weapons of war. We examine what happens to these arms when a state collapses. Focusing on Libya, we explore the regional diffusion of small arms and light weapons ejecting out of the power vacuum in the wake of its breakdown. Before the 20…
Dividing the Nation
Disentangling the US military's climate change paradox
Studies estimate that the US military it is a bigger polluter than 140 individual countries, having emitted hundreds of millions of tons of greenhouse gases in the twenty‐first century. Despite this, the military is also one of the organizations most affected by climate change, given its global infrastructural reach, and one that is positioning itself to grapple with the social and political upheavals resulting from the climate crisis. Thus, para…
Emulating underdogs
Early studies on state drone proliferation argued that it would be temperate, constrained by high financial, technical, and infrastructural requisites and fielded according to the logic of scarce, exquisite airpower. While this rationale has held for limited conflicts, the high attrition and massive demand of a total war compelled strong standing armies to follow a different model of adoption: emulating weaker violent nonstate actors leveraging l…
The Afghanistan War's Legacy
The two decades of war in Afghanistan left a mark on the American armed forces and redefined the American ways of war-making. One of this war's legacies is the reimagining of the role of private military and security contractors in contemporary warfare. Due to the massive involvement of the private sector in the American war machine, this industry transformed from a marginal participant into a central partner. The privatization of military and se…
Where the bombs fell
No Accounting for Bad Contracting
The Critical Masses
Contractors in Iraq
Corporate privatization of security has generated a neoliberal iteration of an old profession: the private military contractor. This development has revolutionized security policies across the globe while reviving old patterns of inequality. Following neoliberal logic, outsourcing fosters two types of employment: the exploitative and the exclusive. The first refers to low-status individuals hired en masse to perform menial labor; the second refer…
Implausible sovereigns and their organizational logic
The havoc and disarray among governments and societies caused by the COVID-19 outbreak also invited opportunities for violent non-state actors to exploit for their advantage governments’ failure to provide an adequate public health response or their denigration of security apparatuses due to the outbreak. Focusing on the early months of the outbreak, this study examines three courses of actions taken by those actors and the potential explanation …
Learning the Lessons of Modern War
Breaking the Order
Countersurveillance has been acknowledged as an empowering act of civil society that can keep the government in check. With its increasing popularity in academic and popular circles comes a need to better understand when countersurveillance brings a positive outcome and when it backfires. This question is particularly important when countersurveillance is used to bring about a change in policy implementation. Using data from interviews, peace org…
The proliferation of drones to violent nonstate actors
Scholarship on the proliferation of unmanned aerial vehicles (or drones) mainly focuses on states’ use, sidestepping the consequential proliferation of drone technology to violent nonstate actors (VNSAs). Meanwhile, an increasing corpus of media, military, and policy publications underscores the latter’s importance. The source of the gap is that existing proliferation models overlook civilian drone technologies. Applying supply- and demand-side p…
The Corporate War Dead
From an obscure sector synonymous with mercenaryism, the private military and security industry has grown to become a significant complementing instrument in military operations. This rise has brought with it a considerable attention. Researchers have examined the role of private military and security companies in international relations as well as the history of these companies, and, above all, the legal implications of their use in the place of…
The Digital Divide and Veterans' Health
The digital divide's implications on health inequality among American Military veterans has been discussed extensively in research; however, it remains unclear what is the association between Internet usage and health specifically among Veterans. We examine this question by addressing the growing digital gaps in the veteran population, looking at the association of Internet use and self-reported health. Using the National Survey of Veterans we fi…
Military Capital in the Israeli Hi-tech Industry
The unique relations between the Israeli-armed forces and the local hi-tech industry have been identified as a strong explanatory variable for the Israeli hi-tech boom. This article highlights the role of the military as a socialization institution in those relations. We identify how the accumulation of 'military capital' during military in service contributes to soldiers as veterans and employees in the hi-tech sector. Military service brings wi…
The Corporate War Dead
From an obscure sector synonymous with mercenaryism, the private military and security industry has grown to become a significant complementing instrument in military operations. This rise has brought with it a considerable attention. Researchers have examined the role of private military and security companies in international relations as well as the history of these companies, and, above all, the legal implications of their use in the place of…
Policy Change Inch by Inch
Facing barriers to change, policy entrepreneurs often shift their activities to a more favourable venue. In the new venue they either pressure the system from the outside, leading to policy punctuation, or make incremental changes within the existing system which over time will accumulate to a significant change in the status quo. This article aims to expand our understanding of policy entrepreneurs' role in the policy process by examining the st…
Private security and military contractors
Though private military and security companies (PMSCs) have been addressed extensively in the literature, little research has been done on the contractors themselves, leaving us in the dark as to who these individuals are. In this article, we focus on the critical case of the United States armed services and argue that two broad developments have been converging that both point to the need for new, microlevel sociological research on the people w…
The proliferation of drones to violent nonstate actors
Scholarship on the proliferation of unmanned aerial vehicles (or drones) mainly focuses on states’ use, sidestepping the consequential proliferation of drone technology to violent nonstate actors (VNSAs). Meanwhile, an increasing corpus of media, military, and policy publications underscores the latter’s importance. The source of the gap is that existing proliferation models overlook civilian drone technologies. Applying supply- and demand-side p…
Do mercenaries perform better than states? Evaluating the Wagner group's impact on Central African Republic
Do mercenaries perform better than democratic state armies? This study examines the efficacy of mercenary groups compared to state military interventions, using the Wagner Group’s operations in the Central African Republic as a case study. By comparing the French Operation Sangaris (2013–2016) with Wagner’s involvement (2021–2023), the research evaluates their relative effectiveness across counterinsurgency measures, military success, and popular…
Contractors in Iraq
Corporate privatization of security has generated a neoliberal iteration of an old profession: the private military contractor. This development has revolutionized security policies across the globe while reviving old patterns of inequality. Following neoliberal logic, outsourcing fosters two types of employment: the exploitative and the exclusive. The first refers to low-status individuals hired en masse to perform menial labor; the second refer…
Promoting human rights under fire
Disentangling the US military's climate change paradox
Studies estimate that the US military it is a bigger polluter than 140 individual countries, having emitted hundreds of millions of tons of greenhouse gases in the twenty‐first century. Despite this, the military is also one of the organizations most affected by climate change, given its global infrastructural reach, and one that is positioning itself to grapple with the social and political upheavals resulting from the climate crisis. Thus, para…
The Afghanistan War's Legacy
The two decades of war in Afghanistan left a mark on the American armed forces and redefined the American ways of war-making. One of this war's legacies is the reimagining of the role of private military and security contractors in contemporary warfare. Due to the massive involvement of the private sector in the American war machine, this industry transformed from a marginal participant into a central partner. The privatization of military and se…
Implausible sovereigns and their organizational logic
The havoc and disarray among governments and societies caused by the COVID-19 outbreak also invited opportunities for violent non-state actors to exploit for their advantage governments’ failure to provide an adequate public health response or their denigration of security apparatuses due to the outbreak. Focusing on the early months of the outbreak, this study examines three courses of actions taken by those actors and the potential explanation …
The Digital Divide and Veterans' Health
The digital divide's implications on health inequality among American Military veterans has been discussed extensively in research; however, it remains unclear what is the association between Internet usage and health specifically among Veterans. We examine this question by addressing the growing digital gaps in the veteran population, looking at the association of Internet use and self-reported health. Using the National Survey of Veterans we fi…
Emulating underdogs
Early studies on state drone proliferation argued that it would be temperate, constrained by high financial, technical, and infrastructural requisites and fielded according to the logic of scarce, exquisite airpower. While this rationale has held for limited conflicts, the high attrition and massive demand of a total war compelled strong standing armies to follow a different model of adoption: emulating weaker violent nonstate actors leveraging l…
No Accounting for Bad Contracting
The Critical Masses
Breaking the Order
Countersurveillance has been acknowledged as an empowering act of civil society that can keep the government in check. With its increasing popularity in academic and popular circles comes a need to better understand when countersurveillance brings a positive outcome and when it backfires. This question is particularly important when countersurveillance is used to bring about a change in policy implementation. Using data from interviews, peace org…
Military Capital in the Israeli Hi-tech Industry
The unique relations between the Israeli-armed forces and the local hi-tech industry have been identified as a strong explanatory variable for the Israeli hi-tech boom. This article highlights the role of the military as a socialization institution in those relations. We identify how the accumulation of 'military capital' during military in service contributes to soldiers as veterans and employees in the hi-tech sector. Military service brings wi…
Military westernization and state repression in the post-Cold War era
Policy Change Inch by Inch
Facing barriers to change, policy entrepreneurs often shift their activities to a more favourable venue. In the new venue they either pressure the system from the outside, leading to policy punctuation, or make incremental changes within the existing system which over time will accumulate to a significant change in the status quo. This article aims to expand our understanding of policy entrepreneurs' role in the policy process by examining the st…
Private security and military contractors
Though private military and security companies (PMSCs) have been addressed extensively in the literature, little research has been done on the contractors themselves, leaving us in the dark as to who these individuals are. In this article, we focus on the critical case of the United States armed services and argue that two broad developments have been converging that both point to the need for new, microlevel sociological research on the people w…
Promoting human rights under fire
Revolution without Revolutionaries
Breaking the Order
Countersurveillance has been acknowledged as an empowering act of civil society that can keep the government in check. With its increasing popularity in academic and popular circles comes a need to better understand when countersurveillance brings a positive outcome and when it backfires. This question is particularly important when countersurveillance is used to bring about a change in policy implementation. Using data from interviews, peace org…
The proliferation of drones to violent nonstate actors
Scholarship on the proliferation of unmanned aerial vehicles (or drones) mainly focuses on states’ use, sidestepping the consequential proliferation of drone technology to violent nonstate actors (VNSAs). Meanwhile, an increasing corpus of media, military, and policy publications underscores the latter’s importance. The source of the gap is that existing proliferation models overlook civilian drone technologies. Applying supply- and demand-side p…
The Corporate War Dead
From an obscure sector synonymous with mercenaryism, the private military and security industry has grown to become a significant complementing instrument in military operations. This rise has brought with it a considerable attention. Researchers have examined the role of private military and security companies in international relations as well as the history of these companies, and, above all, the legal implications of their use in the place of…
The Digital Divide and Veterans' Health
The digital divide's implications on health inequality among American Military veterans has been discussed extensively in research; however, it remains unclear what is the association between Internet usage and health specifically among Veterans. We examine this question by addressing the growing digital gaps in the veteran population, looking at the association of Internet use and self-reported health. Using the National Survey of Veterans we fi…
Implausible sovereigns and their organizational logic
The havoc and disarray among governments and societies caused by the COVID-19 outbreak also invited opportunities for violent non-state actors to exploit for their advantage governments’ failure to provide an adequate public health response or their denigration of security apparatuses due to the outbreak. Focusing on the early months of the outbreak, this study examines three courses of actions taken by those actors and the potential explanation …
Learning the Lessons of Modern War
No Accounting for Bad Contracting
The Critical Masses
Contractors in Iraq
Corporate privatization of security has generated a neoliberal iteration of an old profession: the private military contractor. This development has revolutionized security policies across the globe while reviving old patterns of inequality. Following neoliberal logic, outsourcing fosters two types of employment: the exploitative and the exclusive. The first refers to low-status individuals hired en masse to perform menial labor; the second refer…
Disentangling the US military's climate change paradox
Studies estimate that the US military it is a bigger polluter than 140 individual countries, having emitted hundreds of millions of tons of greenhouse gases in the twenty‐first century. Despite this, the military is also one of the organizations most affected by climate change, given its global infrastructural reach, and one that is positioning itself to grapple with the social and political upheavals resulting from the climate crisis. Thus, para…
Emulating underdogs
Early studies on state drone proliferation argued that it would be temperate, constrained by high financial, technical, and infrastructural requisites and fielded according to the logic of scarce, exquisite airpower. While this rationale has held for limited conflicts, the high attrition and massive demand of a total war compelled strong standing armies to follow a different model of adoption: emulating weaker violent nonstate actors leveraging l…
The Afghanistan War's Legacy
The two decades of war in Afghanistan left a mark on the American armed forces and redefined the American ways of war-making. One of this war's legacies is the reimagining of the role of private military and security contractors in contemporary warfare. Due to the massive involvement of the private sector in the American war machine, this industry transformed from a marginal participant into a central partner. The privatization of military and se…
Where the bombs fell
Keeping it authentic
The Ideology That Binds Us
What brings different terrorist groups, organizations that are regularly secretive and competitive, to collaborate with one another? We build on scholarship that identifies ideology as a determining feature of terrorists' behavior and draw on network studies that emphasize the role of homophily in creating collaboration. We suggest that the groups' homophily in ideology plays a significant part in terrorists' collaboration. Using network analysis…
The Empirical Determinants of Violent Nonstate Actor Drone Adoption
Commercial drone advancements have enabled terrorists with crude airpower, challenging states’ aerial dominance. Today, many groups skillfully use drones for propaganda generation, surveillance and reconnaissance, command and control, and attacks. Despite their obvious value, there is wide variation in adoption begging questions about who is using drones and why. Prominent in practitioner and security provider circles, academics are just skimming…
Motivated to Fight
Why fight for someone else’s war? This study explores the motivations of foreign fighters joining the Ukrainian Foreign Legion during the 2022 to 2023 phase of the Russia–Ukraine War. Unlike previous research centered on foreign nationals’ involvement in terrorist organizations and jihadist groups, particularly in the Middle East, this case captures a different trend characterized by institutionalized recruitment processes and tacit international…
Conflict contagion via weapons proliferation out of collapsed states
The Weberian definition of the state as the legitimate monopoly on the means of violence links arms to national power. In practice, the monopoly entails exchanging capital for arms to equip security forces with weapons of war. We examine what happens to these arms when a state collapses. Focusing on Libya, we explore the regional diffusion of small arms and light weapons ejecting out of the power vacuum in the wake of its breakdown. Before the 20…
Dividing the Nation
Political science (27 works) · Law (19 works) · Politics (12 works) · Economics (11 works) · Sociology (11 works) · Political economy (10 works) · Law (9 works) · Terrorism, Counterterrorism, and Political Violence (8 works) · Business (7 works) · Computer Science (7 works)