Bio

Harvey Starr’s broad research interests include theories and methods in the study of international relations, war and international conflict, geopolitics and diffusion analyses, and domestic influences on foreign policy, including the democratic peace. His primary research focus has been on the study of conflict processes—including the causes of conflict, the consequences of conflict, the spread of conflict, and the relationships between conflict within states and between states, and between the governments of states and internal opposition groups to state governments– including civil war, and “protracted social conflict” among ethnic groups, and between such groups and governments. Also related is his more recent research on the causes and consequences of failed states, as well as his most recent work related to the importance of language and linguistic factors in ongoing ethnic conflicts, and the synergies between political science and linguistics in studying the role of language in conflict processes at all levels. His overall theoretical framework of “opportunity and willingness” has led him to study decision making and psychological approaches, as well as the contexts within which the decision-making process takes place, especially geo-spatial and geopolitical studies. His work has included a range of methods and research designs-- the use of statistical methods, game theory and formal models, computer simulation, GIS (geographic information systems) analyses, as well as several forms of case studies. He has been concerned with the logic of inquiry, and the relationships among theory, logic and research design, including the complexities in distinguishing necessary and sufficient modes of causation. His teaching has reflected these theoretical and substantive interests as well. During his time at the University of South Carolina he regularly taught the following graduate seminar courses: International Relations Theory; Seminar in Advanced International Relations Theory; International Conflict; and Theories of Political Inquiry. He also successfully chaired 22 Ph.D. dissertation committees at South Carolina.

He joined the faculty at the University of South Carolina in 1989 as the Dag Hammarskjold Professor in International Affairs. While formally retired in June 2014, he remains an Emeritus Scholar in the Jewish Studies Program, and Faculty Associate of the Walker Institute of International and Area Studies. Professor Starr served as Political Science Department Chair from August 1998 until June 2006. He previously taught at Indiana University for 17 years, serving as Chairman of the Department of Political Science from 1984-1989. He has also been a Visiting Fellow in Politics at the University of Aberdeen, Scotland (1971-72, 1978-79), as well as Visiting Lecturer (1985) and Visiting Researcher (1990) at the Centre for Defence Studies at the University of Aberdeen. In 1996 he was a Visiting Fellow in the Department of International Relations, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, The Australian National University.

He has served as President of the Conflict Processes Section of the American Political Science Association (1992-95), as Vice President of the American Political Science Association (1995-96), and as President of the Peace Science Society (International) (2000-01). He has also served as Vice President of the International Studies Association (2011-12), becoming President-Elect for 2012-13, and President in 2013-14. He has been Program Co-Chair for the Midwest Political Science Association annual meeting. From 1991-2000 he served as Editor of International Interactions, and as Associate Editor of the Journal of Politics from 2001-03. He served on the NSF Advisory Panel for Political Science (1992-93) and has reviewed NSF grant proposals for six other Programs in addition to Political Science, including Decision Science, Economics, Geography and Spatial Sciences, and Methodology, Measurement and Statistics; he has been the recipient of three NSF grants.

He was the 1998 recipient of the University of South Carolina's Russell Award for Research in Humanities and Social Sciences in recognition of outstanding research and scholarship. He also received the first Distinguished Alumnus Award from the Department of Political Science, University at Buffalo in 2009 (from which he received his B.A.  in 1967, graduating Summa Cum Laude with Highest Distinction in Political Science). In 2015 he received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Conflict Processes Section of the American Political Science Association, "in recognition of scholarly contributions that have fundamentally improved the study of conflict processes." He was also named the International Studies Association Section on Political Demography and Geography's 2016-17 Distinguished Scholar, along with the "Distinguished Scholar Roundtable-- Harvey Starr" at the 2017 ISA Annual Meeting.

He is author or co-author of 19 books and monographs, and over130  journal articles, book chapters, reviews and notes. His most recent books are World Politics: The Menu for Choice, 10th edition (Cengage, 2013) co-authored with Bruce Russett and David Kinsella); the edited volume Dealing with Failed States (Routledge, 2009); On Geopolitics (Paradigm, 2013); editor, Bruce Russett: Pioneer in the Scientific and Normative Study of War, Peace and Policy (Springer International Publishing, 2015); Harvey Starr and Stanley Dubinsky, editors, The Israeli Conflict System: Analytic Approaches (Routledge, 2016); Zaryab Iqbal and Harvey Starr, State Failure in the Modern World (Stanford University Press 2016); and, Harvey Starr: Pioneer in the Study of Conflict Processes and International Relations Theory (Springer Nature Switzerland AG, 2021).  A contract for a 20th book has been signed with Cambridge University Press for the volume:  Handbook of Language and Political Conflict, Stanley Dubinsky, Michael Gavin, and Harvey Starr, editors.

Starr’s research agenda returns again and again to the opportunity and willingness theoretical construct-- reflecting the importance of context, process, and linking levels of analysis through two-level games, and decision-making/perception/action. While the lattermost point was best reflected by his content analytic study of Henry Kissinger (especially the 1984 book), the broad impact of opportunity and willingness is best reflected by two important books: the influential undergraduate textbook World Politics: The Menu for Choice  (with Bruce Russett, and later with the addition of David  Kinsella), and the even more impactful book at the graduate level, Inquiry, Logic, and International Politics with Ben Most (originally published in 1989 and reissued by Starr in 2015 with a new Preface). The first edition of World Politics not only introduced opportunity & willingness, and the “menu” analogy to undergrads, it was one of the first textbooks to link theory, methods, and research design in an undergrad text, interweaving levels of analysis with opportunity (contexts) and willingness (individual idiosyncrasies, psychology, and organizational role). It also contained one of the first undergraduate presentations of interdependence, collective goods, ecological/environmental issues regarding “limits to growth’’, the “tragedy of the commons” and related game theoretic analyses.  Starr’s scholarly work has also stressed interdisciplinarity (see section on webpage), with publications, grants, conference papers and presentations, and refereeing for journals, relating to the following disciplines: Geography, Economics, Linguistics, Psychology, and History.

Beginning in 2018 he  also serves as Co-Principal of ConflictAnalytiX LLC, a consultancy devoted to "Dynamic Political & Ethnolinguistic Analysis of Global Conflict Systems and Particular Conflict Cases" (https://www.conflictanalytix.com/).

My Google Scholar page can be found at: 

http://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=EZHyWd4AAAAJ&view_op=list_works&cstart=20&pagesize=20