Keisuke Minai. (2026, April 12). Qatar's mediation diplomacy strength: An analysis of reactions to Israel's September 2025 attack. The SAIS Review of International Affairs. https://saisreview.sais.jhu.edu/qatars-mediation-diplomacy-strength-an-analysis-of-reactions-to-israels-september-2025-attack/

Keisuke Minai used the Formal Bilateral Influence Capacity (FBIC) Index and Global Power Index (GPI) from the Pardee's Institute's Diplometrics research program to explore Qatar's use of mediation diplomacy following an air strike in its capital in September 2025. According to Professor Minai, their advanced statistical analysis "confirms that Qatar’s mediation activities are positively associated with its international influence in the long term, while its national power plays a role in the short term."

Moyer, J., Meisel, C., Szymanski-Burgos, A., Scott, A., Casiraghi, M., Kurkul, A., Hughes, M., Kettlun, W., McKee, K., Matthews, A., (2025, March 17). When heads of government and state (HOGS) fly: Introducing the country and organizational leader travel (COLT) dataset measuring foreign travel by HOGS. International Studies Quarterly, Volume 69, Issue 2, June 2025, sqaf013, https://doi.org/10.1093/isq/sqaf013

Despite representing a crucial day-to-day diplomatic tool, travel by heads of government and state (HOGS) has remained an under-investigated topic in international relations, inhibiting our ability to better understand how these visits change foreign aid, interstate conflict, diplomatic affinities, and more. Here, we fill that gap by introducing the first global dataset on the foreign visits of state leaders, the Country and Organizational Leader Travel (COLT) dataset, which allows us to present descriptive analysis and assess the monadic and dyadic drivers of foreign travel by HOGS. We find evidence consistent with previous literature explaining the motives of leader travel: development, trade, conflict, institutional co-membership, and regime type. In addition, we show a potential further application of the dataset, presenting original results on the relation between diplomatic visits and international trade. Overall, these data represent a unique indicator of international interaction that cuts across levels of analysis.

Meisel, C., Moyer, J. D., Matthews, A. S., Kaplan, O., Byrnes, R., Benjumea, K., Cribb, P., & Van Son, C. (2024, August 20). Bearing witness: Introducing the Perceived Mass Atrocities Dataset (PMAD). Journal of Peace Research. https://doi.org/10.1177/00223433241249333

Led by Pardee's Associate Director of Geopolitical Analysis, Collin Meisel, and commissioned by the US State Department to support the Elie Weisel Act, this coding framework is a prime example of the Institute's goal to bridge the gap between academic work and policy-making communities. Congratulations to all of the hard-working Korbel students who contributed to this impressive research and all the co-authors on this outstanding accomplishment.

Abstract:

The risk factors and consequences of atrocities are deeply interconnected with questions of intra- and interstate stability and conflict, economic development, colonialism, and gender equality, as well as atrocity crime monitoring and prevention. However, there is no globally comparable measure of lethal and less-lethal atrocities. The Perceived Mass Atrocities Dataset (PMAD) is a country-year measure of atrocities with accompanying narratives. Built to support the US Congress’s Elie Wiesel Genocide and Atrocities Prevention Act of 2018, PMAD enables the systematic comparison of the occurrence and magnitude of seven atrocity types, in addition to group-perpetrated violence against women and LGBTQIA+ groups, with aggregate atrocities indices for 196 countries from 2018 to 2022. PMAD offers a foundation for quantitative studies of atrocities as well as more qualitative, process-focused research of lethal and less-lethal violence with its single, divisible framework. The PMAD data highlight several regions where analysis of atrocities using data on only lethal atrocities would be inadequate, especially Central and Eastern Asia. The data can also facilitate research into the relationships between mass atrocities and gender discrimination, neopatrimonialism, and political polarization.

2019. Matthews, Austin S., Jonathan D. Moyer, David K. Bohl, and Collin J. Meisel. “Intergovernmental Organizations: Forecasting Dyadic Membership.” American Political Science Association Conference.