Using cross-country data for 167 countries with broad post–World War II coverage and historical extensions to earlier periods, we quantify how deficits, taxes, and civilian spending respond to increases and decreases in military spending. On average, deficit financing dominates: a 1 percentage point (pp) increase in military spending (as share of GDP) is associated with 62% deficit financing, 20% higher taxation, and 18% reductions in civilian spending. The composition shifts with intensity, as larger armaments are accompanied by deeper civilian cuts. Fiscal space systematically moderates these patterns: low-debt countries rely primarily on borrowing—funding a 1 pp increase by 75% deficits, 11% taxation, and 14% cuts—whereas high-debt countries adjust more through taxation (33%) and civilian spending cuts (26%). Armaments and disarmaments are asymmetric. Disarmaments only partially reverse prior fiscal expansions, sustaining elevated civilian spending as a peace dividend: a 10 pp decline in the military share raises the civilian share by 5 pp, whereas a symmetric increase reduces it by less than 2 pp. By quantifying these adjustment patterns jointly across fiscal instruments, countries, and episodes of armament and disarmament, we provide an integrated global perspective that connects insights from the literatures on war finance, fiscal space, and ratchet effects. We conclude by discussing implications for the current wave of rearmament.

We study how inflation expectations can be anchored through different forms of communication and whether such anchoring survives political change. Using a two-wave panel RCT around the 2025 German federal election, we show that providing the ECB’s target and projections lowers expectations by about 100 basis points. We then introduce a teaching-style intervention explaining the ECB’s institutional role using simple language and an intuitive metaphor, which proves equally effective. Treatment effects persist through the election, and partisan polarization remains modest. Our results suggest that well-designed communication– combining quantitative information with clear explanations of institutional responsibility–can durably anchor beliefs even in changing political environments.

Der Gesprächsartikel analysiert die aktuellen Kontroversen um die deutsche Berichterstattung über den Krieg in Gaza vor dem Hintergrund politischer Polarisierung, sinkenden Medi-envertrauens und verschobener öffentlicher Sagbarkeitsgrenzen. Im Zentrum stehen Auseinandersetzungen um journalistische Standards, die Auswahl und Bewertung von Quellen, die Sichtbarkeit unterschiedlicher Leidensperspektiven sowie die Frage, wem im deutschen Kontext öffentliche Legitimität zugesprochen wird. Dabei zeigt sich, dass mediale Debatten nicht nur die Einordnung von Gewalt in Israel und Palästina betreffen, sondern auch eng mit Aushandlungen über Protest, Solidarität und Zugehörigkeit in Deutschland verknüpft sind. Der Beitrag knüpft an eine Podiumsdiskussion im Rahmen der Reihe INTERACT Conversations an der Freien Universität Berlin an und versammelt Perspektiven aus Aktivismus, Kommunikationswissenschaft und Politikwissenschaft. Diskutiert werden die Bedingungen journalistischer Arbeit in hochpolarisierten Konflikten, die Rolle von Sprache und Deutungsrahmen sowie die Auswirkungen medialer Praktiken auf gesellschaftliche Polarisierung. Zugleich fragt der Artikel nach Möglichkeiten differenzierter Berichterstattung und nach der Verantwortung von Journalismus, Wissenschaft, Politik und Zivilgesellschaft.

Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997, this paper exploits withinsibling differences in vocational coursework credits taken during high school to estimate their effects on educational and labor market outcomes. I find that additional vocational coursework reduces four-year college attendance without affecting college graduation among those who enroll, and is associated with higher annual earnings that persist into the mid-thirties. This evidence suggests that vocational education helps students realize their comparative advantage and sort into different educational paths, which benefit their labor market outcomes. The findings point to high school vocational education providing sustained economic benefits without compromising overall educational attainment, and benefiting students with diverse educational trajectories.

This paper estimates the causal effect of renewable water conditions and water use on violent conflict in rural agrifood systems. We implement a fixed-effects instrumental variables strategy that uses plausibly exogenous temperature and precipitation shocks to instrument multiple water outcomes. Annual specifications are imprecise, but five-year aggregations yield sharper inference and show that higher renewable freshwater availability significantly reduces conflict risk. Water use margins are central: freshwater withdrawals are associated with lower conflict, whereas higher aggregate water-use efficiency is associated with increased conflict risk. Overall, the results indicate that climate-driven water shocks operate through distinct channels— stocks, withdrawals, and efficiency—and that empirical conclusions depend critically on time aggregation and the definition of water being instrumented. The findings imply that climate adaptation and water policy should be paired with conflictsensitive governance and improved measurement of local water use and access.

The weaponization of agricultural trade has once again emerged as critical in the study of modern geopolitics due to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Although Russia has used its wheat exports as a means of enhancing its geopolitical influence over countries in the Global South, evidence on the impact of such a policy is scarce. This paper assesses the impact of reliance on Russian and Ukrainian wheat imports on food security and political development in sub-Saharan African countries. The panel data for the analysis come from 35 African countries between 2005 and 2024. The Bartik-style shift-share instrumental variables (IV) model utilizes exogenous variables derived from the historical shares of wheat that African countries imported from Russia and Ukraine multiplied by the export contractions caused by geopolitical conflicts in 2014 (Crimea annexation) and 2022 (full-scale invasion of Ukraine). The dependence on Russian wheat has had a uniquely adverse impact upon the development of sub-Saharan Africa, whereas this has not been the case for the dependence on Ukrainian wheat. Prior to 2022, the dependence on Russian wheat had no significant impact upon the reduction of undernourishment in Africa, but had a significant impact on the rise of political instability. After 2022, though, the Russian wheat played a crucial role in the food insecurity within the region. While democratic indices remained unaffected by Russian wheat, other geopolitical factors such as U.S. development aid and Chinese development finance were not able to counter the negative effects of Russian wheat exports. Our findings identify an independent vector of autocratic influence enabled through Russian agricultural exports. For sustainable political development within sub-Saharan Africa, the diversification of staple food suppliers is urgently required.

In my introductory archaeology course this semester, we started with a discussion of the 25 Grand Challenges for Archaeology, identified by Keith Kintigh and colleagues in 2014. My students expressed surprise that war and conflict was, in their view, so underemphasized in comparison to other questions about leadership, hierarchy, and human-environmental interaction. To them, it seemed obvious that violence should be one of the most robust areas of inquiry for archaeology. It’s hard to blame them. At the same moment they were asking the question, their phones were flashing in their backpacks with news alerts about protestors being tear gassed and murdered in the United States and in Iran, immigrants and activists being detained and disappeared, updates on the kidnapping of Maduro, rumblings of a Greenland invasion and potential subsequent world war, and reminders of ongoing violence against Palestinians by the Israeli state. In this context, I have to imagine it is difficult to understand how our discipline could be concerned with anything in the human past besides the history of war and violence.

Eighty years after the Second World War and thirty-four years after the end of the Cold War, we stand, once again, on the precipice of global conflict. This is not coincidental. Major conflicts recur with troubling regularity, often when the lived experience of previous wars has passed away. And while I am sceptical of ‘generational’ theories that attempt to identify cyclical patterns in national histories (Strauss and Howe 1992), it seems to me that reflec-tions on perceived past failures or national humiliations often congeal and combine at critical junctures to create new conflicts. Many current conflicts have been initiated by powerful septuagenarians with no personal experience of war and a highly idealized, chauvinistic view of the past. The cycle of vengeful destruction continues, as every new generation of old men attempts to re-fight their father’s war.

Gewalt gegenüber war ich noch nie besonders aufgeschlossen. Bis jetzt habe ich noch keinen Menschen körperlich attackiert und sofern ich es verbal tat, habe ich es sofort bereut und mich meist umgehend entschuldigt, selbst in Situationen der Selbstverteidigung. Bedingt durch gängige Narrative bezüglich Männlichkeit entsprachen meine Handlungen niemals etwas Heldenhaftem. Tatsächlich habe ich mich selbst auch immer schwach dabei gefühlt. Verschiedene dieser körperlichen und verbalen Konfliktsituationen ließen in mir die Frage aufkommen, ob Menschen diese schon in der Vergangenheit eher gewaltvoll gelöst haben und falls nicht, ob die dann genutzten friedlicheren Handlungsweisen der Vergangenheit in die Gegenwart übernommen werden können. Die Er-gründung dieser Fragen zum menschlichen Verhalten entwickelten sich später zu einem Hauptantrieb, mich dem Studium der Prähistorischen Archäologie zu widmen.

When I initially received the call for contributions to Orienting Archaeology towards Peace, I was unsure how I could contribute to the challenging question of how archaeology and the heritage sector might promote peace and justice. Almost immediately, the persistent question of archaeology’s contemporary relevance in a world characterized by ongoing crises, violence, and injustice came to mind. While I was conducting my PhD research, I observed the overthrow of an authoritarian regime, the subsequent hijacking of a revolution – first by conservative Islamic politi- cians and then by the military – and the rapid transformation of a once hopeful country into an even harsher yet stable dictatorship, all from the distant and strangely insulated microcosm of an excavation house in the Egyptian Nile Delta.

According to the National Monument Audit (Monument Lab 2025), the United States is home to at least 15,758 war memorials. In contrast, only 1,221 sites are associated with peace. War memorials are sponsored by federal, state, and local agencies, as well as privately-funded ones in cemeteries, city parks, and traffic circles from organi-zations as diverse as the Daughters of the Confederacy, the National Park Service, the Alpha Delta Phi fraternity and the Vietnam Veterans of Oregon. Many of the peace memorials, which represent a little over 2% of the total recorded in the audit, could have just as easily ended up in the war column. They often do double duty – memorial-izing dead soldiers or victims of Hiroshima, Nagasaki, or the Holocaust in order to make a negative plea for peace.

The recent waves of violence engulfing major regions of the world did not start with the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Sudanese civil war, Hamas’ attack on Israel, or the Israeli bombardments of Gaza, Lebanon, or, more recently, Iran. But there is no question that these acts of aggression as well as the responses they have elicited have brought the planet ever closer to another world war. Attacks on civilians and non-military infrastructure, such as hospitals, schools, and water supplies, abound. Massive bombardments, including strikes on oil facilities and nuclear plants, add dramatically to environmental damage, global warming, and to the potential for a nuclear catastrophe. We at Forum Kritische Archäologie are convinced that as archaeologists we cannot simply sit on the sidelines at times like these. With this set of contributions, we hope to initiate a discussion that reaches out widely into the community of archaeologists and cultural heritage specialists and does so without geographic limitations. We pose the question: how can archaeology and cultural heritage contribute to peace? We do so from the perspective that archaeology and cultural heritage have frequently been mobilized in ways that exacerbate conflict. Can we position these fields and the ways we work so as to promote peace and justice, bridging national, regional, ethnic, religious, and other borders? And if so, how?

Was bedeutet die verteidigungspolitische Wende Deutschlands für seine öffentlichen Finanzen? Dieser Beitrag offeriert einfache Formeln, mit denen zentrale finanzpolitische Implikationen quantifiziert werden können. Es zeigt sich, dass eine reine Kreditfinanzierung bereits nach wenigen Jahren eine kräftige Schuldenspirale auslösen würde. Die optimale Steuerung der Staatsverschuldung sieht vielmehr so aus, dass die Schuldenstandsquote bis Anfang 2030 fallen soll und danach konstant bleiben soll. Die erforderliche Erhöhung der Steuerquote ist beträchtlich. Die verteidigungspolitische Wende geht mit einer permanenten Erhöhung der Steuerquote um rund drei Prozentpunkte einher. Hinzu kommt die von der Bevölkerungsalterung bedingte Erhöhung der Steuerquote.