Sara Mitchell

My research and teaching interests include international relations, international conflict, conflict management, and political methodology. My recent research focuses on the strength of the democratic community and the use and effectiveness of third party conflict management. Emilia Powell and I are also seeking to understand why certain countries accept the jurisdiction of international courts, and whether this influences how they bargain over contentious issues out of court. We focus on two international courts: the World Court and the International Criminal Court. My research hypotheses on bargaining and conflict management are tested with data from the Issue Correlates of War (ICOW) project, a data set that Paul Hensel (FSU) and I have been collecting over the past few years. Our data set includes information on conflicts over territorial boundaries, maritime zones, and cross-border rivers in all regions of the world.