Benjamin Miller
Biographic Data
| ID | 3629205 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Benjamin Miller |
| GIVEN NAMES | Benjamin |
| FAMILY NAME | Miller |
| SIGNATURE | MILLER B |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Haifa |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-4003-1587 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 58 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 153 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 58 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1942 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
Experienced stigma related to common mental illness and alcohol use disorder in rural Uganda
Background: Stigma remains a major barrier to mental health care in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), yet little is known about how stigma operates for common mental illnesses (CMIs) and alcohol use disorder (AUD) in rural Uganda. Methods: We conducted 80 in-depth interviews (IDIs) with individuals and family members affected by CMIs (n=34) or AUD (n=46) in Buyende District, Uganda. Interviews were analyzed inductively using the framework…
Unipolarity and the Transition to Post-Unipolarity
Under unipolarity, the hegemonic power enjoys high levels of freedom of action, particularly with regard to the resort to the use of force because of the absence of a countervailing coalition. I share this key point about unipolarity with the path-breaking work of Nuno Monteiro on polarity. I also agree with Monteiro that such freedom of action might produce some of the conditions for war, making unipolarity not necessarily peaceful. However, thi…
Relaying quality
Incorporating experiential quality improvement (QI) into graduate medical education remains challenging despite its recognised importance and requirement by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME).One in four surgical residents reported not participating in QI on the most recent Clinical Learning Environment (CLER) Report. 1 Previously, our residency attempted experiential QI through small-group, resident-led QI initiativ…
Nationalism and Conflict
This article advances a novel theoretical framework for explaining the emergence of international and domestic conflicts, especially in the twenty-first century. I argue that nationalism plays a major role in the rise of these conflicts. Yet, nationalism is not monolithic. I distinguish among five types of nationalism (satisfied; stateless; consolidating; irredentist; populist). The variations in the type of nationalism explain variations in peac…
Attitudes and experiences regarding preventive strategies for the deaf population in Western New York
People for whom English is a second language, such as the deaf population, often have unequal access to health information and low health literacy. In the context of a wider study on risk of tick-borne illness in deaf communities, we explored barriers, opportunities, and nuances to accessible health information and communication among deaf people. Semi-structured qualitative individual and group interviews were conducted with 40 deaf people in up…
A. B. Original's “Dumb Things”
In 2016, Aboriginal hip-hop duo A. B. Original joined Paul Kelly live on radio to cover his iconic song “Dumb Things” (1987). Kelly's original version presented a critique of nationalist rhetoric in the lead up to the Australian bicentenary celebrations. Kelly's development of an itinerant counter-dreamer as a voice against nationalism, however, fashioned a brand of innocent, postcolonial whiteness and, thereby, remained complicit with colonial d…
Atmospheric oil and natural gas hydrocarbon trends in the Northern Colorado Front Range are notably smaller than inventory emissions reductions
From 2008 to mid-2016, there was more than a 7-fold increase in oil production and nearly a tripling of natural gas production in the Colorado Denver–Julesburg Basin (DJB). This study utilized air samples collected at the Boulder Atmospheric Observatory (BAO) tower in southwestern Weld County in the DJB to investigate atmospheric mole fraction trends of methane and volatile organic compounds (VOCs). Elevated methane and propane mole fractions and…
Fragments in the Archive
In the mid-19th century, the Aboriginal dandy Charles Never achieved modest notoriety as the subject of a portrait by travelling artist William Strutt and as a character in the memoirs of Lucy Anna Edgar. More recently, historians have incorporated narratives of his life into wider social histories, a politician has quoted him (or, rather, quoted Edgar’s depiction of him), and an artist has portrayed him as a heroic figure of Indigenous protest i…
How ‘making the world in its own liberal image’ made the West less liberal
How did the attempt to make the world more liberal end up making the West less liberal? Following the end of the Cold War the US tried to promote liberalism in various parts of the world. This promotion took place under the liberal belief in its universality. A few of these attempts succeeded, most notably the integration of China into the global economy. Many other liberalizing endeavours failed, notably democracy-promotion in China, Russia and …
Virtue, Knowledge, and Political Instability in Aristotle’s Politics
I argue that we cannot fully understand Aristotle’s position on political stability and state preservation in the Politics with paying close attention to his Eudemian Ethics. We learn from considering the Politics and the Eudemian Ethics in concert that even ‘correct’ regimes are unstable when citizens do not possess full virtue. Aristotle introduces his formal account of the knowledge requirements for virtue in Eudemian Ethics 8.3, and he applie…
Grand Strategy from Truman to Trump
Measuring Power, Power Cycles, and the Risk of Great-Power War in the 21st Century
Growing concern that U.S. power has been declining renews long-standing questions about how we should measure national power, which nations have the most, which states are gaining and losing power, and when such shifts might portend conflict. The authors illustrate a quantitative, scenario-based approach for policymakers, assess the impact of shocks on the balance of power, and identify periods when shifts in the balance could portend conflict.
Investigating large methane enhancements in the U.S. San Juan Basin
In 2014, a satellite-based map of regional anomalies of atmospheric methane (CH4) column retrievals singled out the fossil fuel rich San Juan Basin (SJB) as the biggest CH4 regional anomaly (“hot spot”) in the United States. Over a 3-week period in April 2015, we conducted ground and airborne atmospheric measurements to investigate daily wind regimes and CH4 emissions in this region of SW Colorado and NW New Mexico. The SJB, similar to other topo…
In search of a US grand strategy
Grand Strategy from Truman to Trump
Methane source attribution in a U.S. dry gas basin using spatial patterns of ground and airborne ethane and methane measurements
An intensive coordinated airborne and ground-based measurement study was conducted in the Fayetteville Shale in northwestern Arkansas during September and October 2015 to compare and explain potential discrepancies between top-down and bottom-up estimates of regional natural gas (NG) methane (CH4) emissions. In situ mobile downwind measurements are used to document the ethane to methane enhancement ratios (ERs) in emission plumes from NG operatio…
The Importance of Demopolis for Today’s Political Science
The Problem of Peaceful Change Revisited
In this paper, we examine the perennial problem of peaceful change (how to bring about a change in the status quo by means other than war?) by reflecting on the post-Cold War order from 1991 to 2017. We examine the problem at three different levels of analysis: systemic (great power interactions), interactive (peaceful territorial change), and domestic (democratization efforts). At the interactive level, we assess the record of successes and fail…
Renewing America’s Infrastructure
Federal infrastructure investment is receiving a great deal of attention, largely about money: how to finance capital investment, operations, and maintenance. Less discussed but very important is modernizing federal policy to support the mature and urban-centered economy of the United States—rather than the economy it had when most of the terms of federal engagement were set. This article summarizes a RAND Corporation report which addresses recen…
Israel–Palestine
The recent collapse of the US-brokered peace negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians and the eruption of violence between Israel and the Hamas show the enormous difficulties for reaching a two-state solution. Given the background of quite a few earlier failures, which sometimes led to bloody confrontations, the current impasse might lead to despair of the possibility of reaching a partition of the Land of Israel/Palestine between the two p…
Beyond the three ‘isms’
Media and neoliberal hegemony
This article presents findings from a media analysis of mainstream newspaper coverage of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP). We conducted a broad search of articles published from January 2010 through to June 2014 in the major English-language Canadian daily newspapers, analyzing a total of 404 articles. We found limited substantive discussions about this comprehensive trade and investment treaty, and explain this lack of attention to …
Does AID Effectiveness Mean Repairing the World
As development aid muddles along, policy-makers, academics, journalists, and citizens debate what effective aid means. The Paris Declaration on aid effectiveness, signed in 2005, was supposed to of
Stateness, National Self-determination and War and Peace in the Twenty-first Century
How could the variations in the level of peace, order, institutionalization and cooperation in the various regions in the twenty-first century be explained? The author argues that the combined effect of two factors—state capacity and national congruence—is the most important, although an additional factor can mitigate or aggravate their effects—great power intervention. The two key factors are state capacity—the effectiveness of the functioning o…
Come be off with you”
Scholars of early Australian drama have over-emphasized the stylistic relationship between Aboriginal characters in early Australian drama and blackface characters in early American drama. Focusing on stylistic connections between early US and Australian theatre potentially overlooks the complex ideological similarities in representations of race on the American and Australian stage. This article provides a close reading of two of Australia’s fir…
When and How Regions Become Peaceful
The objective of this essay is to address the following two puzzles. First, what best accounts for the transition from war to peace in different regions at different times? Second, what is the best explanation for variations in the level of regional peace that exists in different regions in a particular time period? Consider the differences that exist today in the Middle Eastern, South American, and Western European regions. A theoretical framewo…
The Great Powers and Regional Conflicts
The objective of this article is to provide an analytical framework for addressing the sources of great power regional involvement and its effects on regional conflicts. The thesis of the article is that variations in the degree of intensity of conflicts and the likelihood of successful conflict resolution in different regions are affected by the character of great power involvement in these regions. Our argument is that although great power invo…
Explaining Changes in U.S. Grand Strategy
This paper proposes a model for explaining shifts and variations in U.S. grand strategy. The model is based on a distinction between four ideal-type grand strategies or ideational approaches to security according to the objectives and means of security policy: defensive and offensive realism, and defensive and offensive liberalism. While the four approaches are continually present in the U.S. policy community, it is the combination of two systemi…
When Opponents Cooperate
The bipolar structure of the Cold War allowed a certain stability in world politics that, with the demise of the Soviet Union, is now missing. Does this mean that we can expect greater instability because of this structural transition from bipolarity to multipolarity? Or should we feel reassured that changes on the state level such as democratization and the transition to market economies that are occurring in Latin America, Eastern Europe, and t…
Explaining Great Power Cooperation in Conflict Management
This essay presents a theoretical model for explaining great power cooperation in conflict management. The model refines recent cooperation theory by distinguishing between types and degrees of international cooperation. It also challenges the dominance of decisionmaking analysis in the crisis literature and supplements it with structural factors. In brief, the model suggests that whereas crisis cooperation (crisis management) is conditioned by s…
A “new world order”
This paper will consider the suitability of three theoretical perspectives on the international order (balance of power, hegemonic stability, and international society) to the “new world order” emerging in the aftermath of the Cold War and the Gulf War. This will be done by deriving five conflict‐management mechanisms from the logic of the three perspectives and then examining their application to the postwar and the post‐Cold War eras. My argume…
Democracy Promotion
The objective of this article is to develop a novel distinction among four IR approaches and especially to highlight the approach which will be called here ‘offensive liberalism’. This four fold division is based not only on a distinction between realism and liberalism, but also on an internal division inside each camp between offensive and defensive approaches. Indeed, besides the distinction between offensive and defensive realism, there is als…
Does Democratization Pacify the State? The Cases of Germany and Iraq1
Does democratization pacify states—and thus their respective regions—or does it make them more war-prone? This is both a theoretical issue within the literature on democracy and peace, and an empirical issue, as in some regions democratization led to peace and in others it resulted in violence. To answer the posed question, this study probes the “state-to-nation balance” model as it makes the preliminary argument that democratization is not the u…
Explaining Variations in Regional Peace
The objective of this study is to examine the utility of three major mechanisms for regional conflict resolution. Two of the mechanisms are regional: enhancing regional legitimacy and liberalization. The third strategy is international: a concert of great powers or a stabilizing hegemon. The three strategies are deduced from the international-regional debate on the sources of regional war and peace, and also from the regional debate on democratiz…
The Problem of Peaceful Change Revisited
In this paper, we examine the perennial problem of peaceful change (how to bring about a change in the status quo by means other than war?) by reflecting on the post-Cold War order from 1991 to 2017. We examine the problem at three different levels of analysis: systemic (great power interactions), interactive (peaceful territorial change), and domestic (democratization efforts). At the interactive level, we assess the record of successes and fail…
The logic of US military interventions in the post‐cold war era
(1998). The logic of US military interventions in the post‐cold war era. Contemporary Security Policy: Vol. 19, No. 3, pp. 72-109
Competing realist perspectives on great power crisis behavior
(1996). Competing realist perspectives on great power crisis behavior. Security Studies: Vol. 5, Realism: Restatements and Renewal, pp. 309-357
Explaining the emergence of great power concerts
The purpose of this article is to provide a theoretical analysis of the conditions affecting the emergence of a great power concert, in order to gain a better understanding of this phenomenon. In contrast to some recent important theoretical works which underline the role of various systemic factors in the formation of a concert, I will argue that it is unit-level factors that make the difference with regard to great power concerts. The article w…
The Concept of Security
This essay addresses the debate on the expansion of the concept of security, which emerged especially after the end of the Cold War. My argument is based on a distinction between the phenomenon to be explained and the explanations, which include all the relevant competing causal factors affecting the explained phenomenon. The subject matter, that the security field addresses, is the threat of organized inter-group violence, and the ways to manage…
The Global Sources of Regional Transitions from War to Peace
This article examines the global sources of regional transitions from war to peace in two types of region: unstable (war-prone) and stable (not war-prone). I argue that the sources of regional hot wars are regional and domestic rather than global. Similarly, the possibility of reaching a high-level `warm peace' (i.e. conflict resolution) depends on regional and domestic forces. Accordingly, there is only limited influence of competing great power…
International systems and regional security
(1995). International systems and regional security: From competition to cooperation, dominance or disengagement? Journal of Strategic Studies: Vol. 18, No. 2, pp. 52-100
How ‘making the world in its own liberal image’ made the West less liberal
How did the attempt to make the world more liberal end up making the West less liberal? Following the end of the Cold War the US tried to promote liberalism in various parts of the world. This promotion took place under the liberal belief in its universality. A few of these attempts succeeded, most notably the integration of China into the global economy. Many other liberalizing endeavours failed, notably democracy-promotion in China, Russia and …
Renewing America’s Infrastructure
Federal infrastructure investment is receiving a great deal of attention, largely about money: how to finance capital investment, operations, and maintenance. Less discussed but very important is modernizing federal policy to support the mature and urban-centered economy of the United States—rather than the economy it had when most of the terms of federal engagement were set. This article summarizes a RAND Corporation report which addresses recen…
Why Great Powers Expand in Their Own Neighborhood
This article attempts to identify the causes of intraregional great power expansion. Using the state-to-nation balance theory we argue that, in many cases, such great power expansion can be explained as being the result of the incongruence within a given region between the nationalist aspirations and identities of the various peoples inhabiting it and the region's division into territorial states. The existence of the external type of such incong…
Between the revisionist and the frontier state
This article explains variations in state war-propensity. I introduce a new typology of state war-proneness based on four major types of states: revisionist, failed, frontier, and status quo . The major novel contribution of this essay is the argument that the combined effect of variations in the extent of success in state-building (strong or weak states) and nation-building (nationally congruent or incongruent) shapes the level and the type of s…
Balance of Power or the State-to-Nation Balance
The Middle East is one of the most war-prone regions in the international system. What is the most powerful explanation of the war-propensity of this region? I argue that neither realism nor liberalism are able to account for variations in regional war-proneness. Instead, I advance an alternative explanation based on the concept of the state-to-nation balance in the region. This balance refers to the degree of congruence between the division of t…
Polarity, Nuclear Weapons, and Major War
The author would like to acknowledge the financial assistance of the Israel Foundations Trustees, the United States Institute of Peace, the Davis Institute for International Relations at the Hebrew University, and the Truman Institute for the Advancement of Peace at the Hebrew University. The author would also like to acknowledge the advice and comments on earlier drafts of Arie Kacowicz, Uri Bar-Joseph, Uri Bialer, Jacob Berkovitz, Raymond Cohen…
In search of a US grand strategy
Israel–Palestine
The recent collapse of the US-brokered peace negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians and the eruption of violence between Israel and the Hamas show the enormous difficulties for reaching a two-state solution. Given the background of quite a few earlier failures, which sometimes led to bloody confrontations, the current impasse might lead to despair of the possibility of reaching a partition of the Land of Israel/Palestine between the two p…
Beyond the three ‘isms’
Mythological Naturalism
An Empirical Concept of the Religious Life
Masculinity and Femininity
A “new world order”
This paper will consider the suitability of three theoretical perspectives on the international order (balance of power, hegemonic stability, and international society) to the “new world order” emerging in the aftermath of the Cold War and the Gulf War. This will be done by deriving five conflict‐management mechanisms from the logic of the three perspectives and then examining their application to the postwar and the post‐Cold War eras. My argume…
Explaining Great Power Cooperation in Conflict Management
This essay presents a theoretical model for explaining great power cooperation in conflict management. The model refines recent cooperation theory by distinguishing between types and degrees of international cooperation. It also challenges the dominance of decisionmaking analysis in the crisis literature and supplements it with structural factors. In brief, the model suggests that whereas crisis cooperation (crisis management) is conditioned by s…
Explaining the emergence of great power concerts
The purpose of this article is to provide a theoretical analysis of the conditions affecting the emergence of a great power concert, in order to gain a better understanding of this phenomenon. In contrast to some recent important theoretical works which underline the role of various systemic factors in the formation of a concert, I will argue that it is unit-level factors that make the difference with regard to great power concerts. The article w…
Polarity, Nuclear Weapons, and Major War
The author would like to acknowledge the financial assistance of the Israel Foundations Trustees, the United States Institute of Peace, the Davis Institute for International Relations at the Hebrew University, and the Truman Institute for the Advancement of Peace at the Hebrew University. The author would also like to acknowledge the advice and comments on earlier drafts of Arie Kacowicz, Uri Bar-Joseph, Uri Bialer, Jacob Berkovitz, Raymond Cohen…
International systems and regional security
(1995). International systems and regional security: From competition to cooperation, dominance or disengagement? Journal of Strategic Studies: Vol. 18, No. 2, pp. 52-100
Competing realist perspectives on great power crisis behavior
(1996). Competing realist perspectives on great power crisis behavior. Security Studies: Vol. 5, Realism: Restatements and Renewal, pp. 309-357
Great powers and regional peacemaking
The Great Powers and Regional Conflicts
The objective of this article is to provide an analytical framework for addressing the sources of great power regional involvement and its effects on regional conflicts. The thesis of the article is that variations in the degree of intensity of conflicts and the likelihood of successful conflict resolution in different regions are affected by the character of great power involvement in these regions. Our argument is that although great power invo…
When Opponents Cooperate
The bipolar structure of the Cold War allowed a certain stability in world politics that, with the demise of the Soviet Union, is now missing. Does this mean that we can expect greater instability because of this structural transition from bipolarity to multipolarity? Or should we feel reassured that changes on the state level such as democratization and the transition to market economies that are occurring in Latin America, Eastern Europe, and t…
The logic of US military interventions in the post‐cold war era
(1998). The logic of US military interventions in the post‐cold war era. Contemporary Security Policy: Vol. 19, No. 3, pp. 72-109
Explaining Variations in Regional Peace
The objective of this study is to examine the utility of three major mechanisms for regional conflict resolution. Two of the mechanisms are regional: enhancing regional legitimacy and liberalization. The third strategy is international: a concert of great powers or a stabilizing hegemon. The three strategies are deduced from the international-regional debate on the sources of regional war and peace, and also from the regional debate on democratiz…
Between War and Peace
(2001). Between War and Peace: Systemic Effects and Regional Transitions from the Cold War to the Post-Cold War. Security Studies: Vol. 11, No. 1, pp. 1-52
The Concept of Security
This essay addresses the debate on the expansion of the concept of security, which emerged especially after the end of the Cold War. My argument is based on a distinction between the phenomenon to be explained and the explanations, which include all the relevant competing causal factors affecting the explained phenomenon. The subject matter, that the security field addresses, is the threat of organized inter-group violence, and the ways to manage…
The Global Sources of Regional Transitions from War to Peace
This article examines the global sources of regional transitions from war to peace in two types of region: unstable (war-prone) and stable (not war-prone). I argue that the sources of regional hot wars are regional and domestic rather than global. Similarly, the possibility of reaching a high-level `warm peace' (i.e. conflict resolution) depends on regional and domestic forces. Accordingly, there is only limited influence of competing great power…
Conflict in the Balkans (1830–1913)
When and How Regions Become Peaceful
The objective of this essay is to address the following two puzzles. First, what best accounts for the transition from war to peace in different regions at different times? Second, what is the best explanation for variations in the level of regional peace that exists in different regions in a particular time period? Consider the differences that exist today in the Middle Eastern, South American, and Western European regions. A theoretical framewo…
Balance of Power or the State-to-Nation Balance
The Middle East is one of the most war-prone regions in the international system. What is the most powerful explanation of the war-propensity of this region? I argue that neither realism nor liberalism are able to account for variations in regional war-proneness. Instead, I advance an alternative explanation based on the concept of the state-to-nation balance in the region. This balance refers to the degree of congruence between the division of t…
States, Nations, and the Great Powers
Why are some regions prone to war while others remain at peace? What conditions cause regions to move from peace to war and vice versa? This book offers a novel theoretical explanation for the differences and transitions between war and peace. The author distinguishes between 'hot' and 'cold' outcomes, depending on intensity of the war or the peace, and then uses three key concepts (state, nation, and the international system) to argue that it is…
Australians in a vacuum
Rachel Perkins' film adaptation of Radiance was released in 1998. With very few exceptions, reviews and criticisms of the film have been polarized. These reviews and criticisms show that Aboriginality is often classified in one of two ways: as either de-politicized and thereby not Aboriginal (assimilationist), or politicized and thereby not ‘normal’ (segregationist). This paper addresses various criticisms of Radiance that categorize Aboriginalit…
States, Nations, and Regional War
States, Nations, and Regional War
I would like first to thank the three commentators for their thoughtful and constructive reviews of my article in this symposium. This article is based on some of the key theoretical components of my book, States, Nations and the Great Powers: The Sources of Regional War and Peace (Miller, 2007). All of the three commentators highlight important and instructive points and issues, which can be very useful for future studies on this subject and hop…
Between the revisionist and the frontier state
This article explains variations in state war-propensity. I introduce a new typology of state war-proneness based on four major types of states: revisionist, failed, frontier, and status quo . The major novel contribution of this essay is the argument that the combined effect of variations in the extent of success in state-building (strong or weak states) and nation-building (nationally congruent or incongruent) shapes the level and the type of s…
Political science (48 works) · Law (41 works) · Politics (38 works) · Sociology (37 works) · Law (33 works) · International Relations and Foreign Policy (31 works) · Political economy (28 works) · Economics (26 works) · Political Conflict and Governance (19 works) · Global Peace and Security Dynamics (18 works)