Brian Urlacher
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Associate Dean / Professor, Political Science & Public Adm
- International Relations, Conflict Resolution and Negotiation, Political Science, Civil War and Intrastate Conflicts, Intelligence Studies
Contact Info
- Email: brian.urlacher@UND.edu
- Office: 701.777.3541
- Dept: 701.777.3831
Office Address
Nistler Hall Room 324L
3125 University Avenue, Stop 8379
Grand Forks, ND 58202-8379
Curriculum Vitae
Websites
Biography
Brian Urlacher received his Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Connecticut in 2007. He also earned a M.P.A. from the University of South Dakota and worked with the NGO Transparency International. He came to the University of North Dakota in 2007 teaching courses in International Relations. His research focuses on cooperation under difficult circumstances. He has published on topics as diverse as conflict resolution in civil wars, negotiation analysis, and public goods provision.
Urlacher has held a number of administrative appointments at the University of North Dakota including Director of International Programs for the Nistler College, Chair of the Department of Political Science and Public Administration, and most recently as Associate Dean in the Nistler College of Business and Public Administration.
Civil Wars and Conflict Resolution
General Focus
Over the last fifteen years, my research focus has moved from negotiation and cooperation to conflict resolution, particularly in the area of civil wars. I focus on civil war intervention, the committment problem, and the impact of domestic level factors in explaining the intractability of civil wars. In recent years I have worked with Miriam Anderson (Toronto Metropolitian University) on women's participation in peace negotiations.
Publications and Current Projects
Anderson, M. J., Urlacher, B. R., and Swiss, L. (2025). Institutionalized but Under Implemented: Factors Affecting Women’s Inclusion in Peace Negotiations Between 1975 and 2020. Journal of Conflict Resolution
Urlacher, B. R. (2024). Broken Promises: Revisiting the commitment problem and the Treaties of Fort Laramie. Ethnopolitics.
Urlacher, B. R. (2023). State Building and Peace Agreement Implementation. Defence and Peace Economics 34(1): 112-127
Urlacher, B. R. (2021). Introducing Native American Conflict History (NACH) Data. Journal of Peace Research, 58(5): 1117-1125.
Urlacher, Brian R. (2019) "Negotiating with Two Hands Tied: Fragmented Decision Processes and Concessions in Civil Wars." International Negotiation, 24(3): 464-492.
Urlacher, Brian R. (2017). "Ripeness Theory and Conflict Resolution." Fathali Moghaddam ed. The Sage Encyclopedia of Political Behavior, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Urlacher, Brian R. (2016) "Peace and Justice? Re-Thinking the Trade off through Decision Analysis." St Antony's International Review, Special Issue: Negotiation in Contemporary Global Politics. 11(2): 69-94.
Urlacher, Brian R. (2014) "Game Theory: Explaining Ethnic Violence" in Making Sense of IR Theory: Iraq. Jennifer Sterling-Folker ed. Boulder, CO: Lynne Reinner
Urlacher, Brian R. (2013) "Negotiating with Insurgents: Changing Perceptions or Changing Politics?" International Negotiation. 18(2): 177-194.
Urlacher, Brian R. (2011) "Political Constraints and Civil War Conflict Resolution." Civil Wars, 13(2): 81-98.
Urlacher, Brian R. (2009) The "Wolfowitz Conjecture: a research note on civil wars and news coverage." International Studies Perspective,10(2): 186-197.
Urlacher, Brian R. (2008) "A Bottom-up Approach to Peacebuilding." International Studies Review, 10(3): 619-621.
International Cooperation
General Focus
I have worked on a number of projects related to international cooperation both in general and in relation to the provision of public goods. This strain of research was sparked in 2006 by a collaborative project undertaken with Joseph K. Young, at American University, to develop a simulation of the prisoner's dilemma to study how group decision making structure affects the ability of groups to cooperate in a two-group prisoner's dilemma. The most recent version of the simulation is written in visual basic and is available for replication purposes.
Publications and Current Projects
Urlacher, Brian R. (2015) International Relations as Negotiation. Routledge Press.
Urlacher, Brian R. (2014) "Groups, Decision Rules, and Negotiation Outcomes: Simulating the Negotiator's Dilemma." Negotiation Journal, 30(1): 5-22.
Urlacher, Brian. R. (2011) "Pubic Goods and International Relations." Compendium Project published on behalf of the International Studies Association
Urlacher, Brian R. (2008) "Walking out of Two-Level Social Traps (With a Little Help From my Friends)" Simulation and Gaming, 39(4): 453-464.
Young, Joseph K. and Brian R. Urlacher. (2007) "Cantankerous Cooperation: Democracies, Authoritarian Regimes, and the Prisoner's Dilemma." International Interactions, 33(1): 51-73.
Research Methods
General Focus
I have developed a number of projects around the problem of managing complex causal patterns in social science research. I am always looking to develop new tools or new strategies to help make it easier to work with the complexity of social science.
Publications and Current Projects
Urlacher, B. R. (2022). Gender Identification and Survey Weighting: A Shifting Landscape. PS: Political Science & Politics, 1-5.
Urlacher, Brian R. (2019) "Complexity, Causality, and Control in Statistical Modeling" American Behavioral Scientist, 64(1): 55-73.
Urlacher, Brian R. (2018) Opportunities and Obstacles in Distributed or Crowdsourced Coding. Qualitative and Multi-Method Research, 15(15-21): 715
Prescott, Timothy and Brian R. Urlacher. (2018) "Case Selection and the Comparative Method: Introducing the case selector." European Political Science, 17(3): 422-
436.
GlobalEd at the University of Connecticut
About Global Ed:
GlobalEd is a research project started at the University of Connecticut by Mark A. Boyer and Scott W. Brown. The GlobalEd project conducts on-line simulations of international negotiations using middle and high school students. The simulations are coded for negotiation styles. The project seeks to understand the gender and the socialization process as it relates to negotiation behavior. The project has produced dozens of conference presentations and a number of scholarly publications.
Publications:
Anat Niv-Solomon, Laura Janik, Mark A. Boyer, Natalie Florea-Hudson, Brian R. Urlacher and Scott D. Brown (2009) "Evolving Beyond Self-Interest? Some Experimental Findings from Simulated International Negotiations" Simulation & Gaming, 42(6): 711-732.
Boyer, Mark A., Brian R. Urlacher, Anat Niv-Solomon, Natalie Florea Hudson, Laura Janik, Scott W. Brown, Clarisse O. Lima, and Andri Ioannou. (2009) "Gender and Negotiation: Some Experimental Findings from an International Negotiation Simulation." International Studies Quarterly, 53(1): 23-47.
Boyer, Mark A. , Scott W. Brown, Michael J. Butler, Anat Niv-Solomon, Brian Urlacher, Natalie F. Hudson, Paula Johnson and Clarisse O. Lima. (2007) "Experimenting with Global Governance: Understanding the Potential for Generational Change." Globalization, Societies, and Education, 5(2): 153-180.
The Case Selector is a web-based tool for identifying pairs of cases for comparative method research designs. The Case Selector is a collaboration between Brian Urlacher and Tim Prescott, an Associate Professor of Mathematics at the University of North Dakota.
The Native American Conflict History (NACH) dataset currently covers 148 conflicts between Native nations and colonial/settler states occurring between 1500 and 1900. The dataset is freely available to use and build on with appropriate citation. The NACH Codebook provides documentation of the dataset, core variables, actors, and citations.
Please cite the data and codebook as follows:
Urlacher, B. R. (2021). Introducing Native American Conflict History (NACH) Data. Journal of Peace Research, 58(5): 1117-1125.
Urlacher, Brian (2020). Native American Conflict History: Coding Notes. (v. 1.0)