MétaCan
Menu
Back to cohort
Record W1977505210 · doi:10.1163/15718069-12341304

Talking with al Qaeda: Is There a Role for Track Two?

2015· article· en· W1977505210 on OpenAlexaff
Peter Jones

Bibliographic record

VenueInternational Negotiation · 2015
Typearticle
Languageen
FieldSocial Sciences
TopicTerrorism, Counterterrorism, and Political Violence
Canadian institutionsUniversity of Ottawa
Fundersnot available
KeywordsAl qaedaDiplomacyElement (criminal law)NegotiationTrack (disk drive)Core (optical fiber)International relationsPolitical scienceHard coreSociologyTerrorismLawSocial psychologyPublic relationsMedia studiesPsychologyComputer sciencePolitics

Abstract

fetched live from OpenAlex

Despite saying that they will never “talk to terrorists,” many countries have done so. Often these dialogues have included a component of so-called “Track Two Diplomacy.” This article examines whether such a dialogue could be held with al Qaeda and other such groups. Research demonstrates that dialogues have been useful in ending terror campaigns in certain circumstances, but that they were never the decisive element. Where they have been useful, dialogues have helped to distinguish those members of terror organizations who are willing to talk from the hardliners, in helping to develop ‘acceptable’ players on the other side, and in allowing the two sides to better understand each other. The article finds that a dialogue with the hard core of al Qaeda is likely impossible, but that some elements may be willing to talk. Such dialogues will be localized and will be about specific concerns and, like in other cases, will be about seeing if there are elements of the movement that can be detached from the hard-core base. Track Two may have a role to play in these dialogues, but expectations should be kept modest.

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.

How this classification was reachedexpand

Full frame machine prediction

Teacher imitation

Not calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.

metaresearch head score (Codex)0.008
metaresearch head score (Gemma)0.009
Version: metacan-v3-hybrid-931329e0061cValidation status: machine_predicted_unvalidated
Candidate categoriesnone
Consensus categoriesnone
DomainCandidate signal: none · Consensus signal: none
Study designCandidate signal: Theoretical or conceptual · Consensus signal: none
GenreCandidate signal: Empirical · Consensus signal: Empirical
Teacher disagreement score0.014
Threshold uncertainty score0.044

Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.0080.009
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0000.000
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0000.000
Bibliometrics0.0010.001
Science and technology studies0.0140.008
Scholarly communication0.0090.008
Open science0.0010.004
Research integrity0.0040.005
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0120.001

Machine scores (provisional)

The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.

Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.

Opus teacher head0.033
GPT teacher head0.350
Teacher spread0.317 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
Validation statusscore_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it

Classification

machine, unvalidated

Machine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.

The models applied no category: nothing in the taxonomy fit this work.
Study designTheoretical or conceptual
Domainnot available
GenreEmpirical

How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".

Quick stats

Citations8
Published2015
Admission routes1
Has abstractyes

Explore more

Same venueInternational NegotiationSame topicTerrorism, Counterterrorism, and Political ViolenceFrench-language works237,207