Since 2001, the United Nations Security Council has increasingly authorized interventions in support of a government. However, the potential impact of this trend on civil war processes is underexamined. I argue that biased peacekeeping interventions can undermine social order when replacing rebel territorial control. Interventions become associated with weak and predatory client governments, fail to

How does war affect social preferences toward people with conflict-related outgroup identities? While the literature often reports prosocial treatment of ingroups, such benevolence is rarely seen toward potential outgroups. We consider the case of Ukraine, where many people with Russian identity markers reside. We ask whether people in Ukraine who identify as Russian by ethnicity or language have become

Economic sanctions could cause substantial harm to target states, forcing them to undertake tough guns-versus-butter trade-offs. Although existing research has argued that sanctioned countries reduce their military spending in absolute terms, it is unclear whether they do trade more guns for butter in relative terms. We argue that in the short run, sanctioned states have an incentive to channel proportionally

Why do armed rebel movements perpetrate intragroup reproductive violence? While extant research predominantly focuses on wartime sexual violence against civilians, the targeting of rebel women with reproductive violence remains underexplored. My research contributes new insights on how women’s idealized roles within armed rebellions shape the likelihood of these groups engaging in various forms of

Conflict researchers face an unresolved dilemma: the underlying data are often unreliable. When it comes to covert relationships, killings, and illicit markets that organized violence entails, there are simply more incentives to alter information than to tell it straight. How confident can scholars be that on-the-ground events, rather than strategic or omitted information, drive research findings?

Rebel leaders can prolong civil wars. Although past research has examined how rebel groups have shaped civil wars, little attention has been paid to rebel leaders. I argue that civil wars last longer and are less likely to be terminated in government-favorable outcomes when rebel leaders with training in a nonstate armed group are in charge, in contrast to leaders with no training or state military

The formal end of a political conflict does not always create lasting peace, as interpersonal violence can persist for years or decades after large-scale hostility ends. A key question for policymakers and peace builders, then, is how interventions into situations of low social capital might resolve persistent interpersonal conflicts sustained through complex networks of interaction. Existing approaches

We explore, both theoretically and through a laboratory experiment, the impact of different forms of higher-order punishment on third-party behavior and cooperation levels within a public goods game. This investigation may shed light on how norms influence national governments, as monitored by international organizations or disciplined by electoral competition, and how these norms are subsequently

s This research note introduces a new dataset—the Governmental Incompatibilities Data Project (GIDP) 2.0—which identifies the presence of incompatibilities over governments for all countries in the world from 1960 to 2020. Incompatibilities over government involve organizations making maximalist claims related to the legitimacy of elections, the composition of the national government, or regime change

Why do people join domestic violent extremist organizations? This paper examines an understudied reason: organizational outreach. I study how the inflow of new members to the Oath Keepers, until recently America’s largest paramilitary organization, changes when the group’s leadership employs three tactics: showcasing their ideological zeal through armed standoffs with the government, membership discounts

This article examines why some states emerging through decolonization are more actively contributing to international organizations (IOs) than others, focusing on their voluntary financial contributions to the United Nations System (UN). I argue that the birth legacies of states, particularly modes of decolonization, significantly influence their subsequent financial contributions to the UN. A regression

Governmental and nongovernmental organizations have increasingly relied on early-warning systems of conflict to support their decisionmaking. Predictions of war intensity as probability distributions prove closer to what policymakers need than point estimates, as they encompass useful representations of both the most likely outcome and the lower-probability risk that conflicts escalate catastrophically

Extant scholarship on embedded liberalism (EL) emphasizes whether governments keep their promises to protect the risk-bearers of economic liberalization but overlooks its liberalization effect. In particular, scholars rarely explore how EL solves the time-inconsistency problem plaguing economic liberalization, i.e., governments may ex post renege on their policy promises made prior to the liberalization

s US foreign policy observers have noted a decline in the frequency of expert witnesses appearing before congressional committees, while congressional scholars have documented changes in committee practices that have led to fewer and shorter hearings. These trends interact in systematic ways, although their relationship has never been tested empirically. Using original data and micro-level measures

The risks of child recruitment by non-state armed groups are geographically, temporally and contextually situated. There are multilayered, multivariate arrays of risk factors associated with non-state armed groups, with conflicts, and with contexts. Using Bayesian network modelling with a global dataset of non-state armed group child recruitment practices between 2010 and 2022, we demonstrate the theoretical

Does nuclear superiority improve national security? The Theory of the Nuclear Revolution (TNR) argues that it does not, but only after assuming that the nuclear balance is irrelevant militarily. Critics argue that it does, pointing at U.S. efforts to achieve nuclear superiority in the Cold War, when the nuclear stalemate was less stable than previously thought. Yet Washington could have been misguided

This introduction to the Special Issue reviews the existing literature on the domestic politics of international organizations (IOs), presenting them within a unified theoretical framework. We emphasize the central role of domestic forces in the study of IOs: how individual preferences are channeled through domestic political institutions, and ultimately inform a government’s foreign policy decisions

s Using a dyadic approach to explore voting behavior of European Union (EU) member states in the Council of the EU, we investigate the similarity in voting behavior of governments on three policy dimensions: left-right, authoritarian-libertarian, and pro-/anti EU. These policy dimensions are of interest also in other contexts, such as decision-making in international or regional organizations other

Technological breakthroughs carry great promise but often escalate economic competition and heighten public anxiety, creating new challenges for governments. We argue that breakthroughs trigger two distinct mechanisms that reshape regulatory politics: (1) accelerated incentives for regulatory arbitrage and (2) the potential for controversies to spark international public backlash. First, technological

Gender mainstreaming—the incorporation of a gender equality perspective into the design, implementation, and evaluation of all aid projects—has become a signature policy tool among Western donors. However, advancing gender equality can be politically contentious and lead to backlash, particularly in autocratic regimes where women’s socioeconomic status is low. We argue that donors’ desire for recipient

Is the state monopoly on the use of legitimate violence a modern invention that refers exclusively to a particular provincial sociohistorical phenomenon that emerged in seventeenth-century Europe? The answer this paper presents is no. Instead, I argue that the canonical Eurocentric epistemic communities have sought to displace other systems of governance and administration and replace them with European

Visual politics is a thriving subfield of international relations (IR) that traces its origin to the “visual turn” at the turn of the century. However, visual politics hardly engages with the central visuality of modernity: race. This article argues that visual politics has a longer history than the current disciplinary history suggests, and it deploys a sociographical analysis to explore the central

This article explores the affirmative dimension of necropolitics by looking at the articulation of the dead as an aesthetic and political subject in the work of the art-activist collective “the party of the dead.” Since 2017, their performances have exposed and challenged an aesthetic order based on the erasure of mortality in Russia. I draw on Rancière’s distinction between “politics” and “the police”

This article presents an expansion of the Peace Accords Matrix Implementation Dataset, incorporating data on partial agreements and newly established Comprehensive Peace Agreements. The new Peace Accords Matrix Implementation Dataset now includes coding for 51 provisions across 42 Comprehensive Peace Agreements and 236 partial peace agreements (with 78% of these negotiated prior to the Comprehensive

Conflict scholars commonly employ public opinion surveys to understand the causes and consequences of violence. However, surveying in wartime presents a distinctive set of challenges. We examine two challenges facing polling in countries at war: under-coverage of national samples and response bias. Although these issues are acknowledged in the literature on surveying methods, they become significantly

This study makes three key contributions to the literature on the effect of conflict-induced violence on wartime migration. First, while conflict-induced violence is often treated as a monolithic factor, we consider conflict-induced violence as multidimensional, varying in intensity, type and proximity. Second, by including both movers and stayers, we address the mobility bias prevalent in the literature

Critical security studies and emotion research in international relations have highlighted that the emotion of fear is a pivotal driver of material and psychological securitization processes and that political actors may attempt to instrumentalize fear to obtain their political objectives. This article suggests that complementing this focus on fear with closer attention to the emotion of hate provides

Can international law protect abortion rights? Drawing from past work on domestic mechanisms that give international law teeth, we argue that a strong civil society composed of women's groups and groups concerned with women's rights leads the government to comply with its international human rights commitments to women, specifically their right to abortion. Unlike that past work, though, we draw attention

A growing number of Western states are positioning feminism as the path to a more peaceful and prosperous world. In this article, we examine Canada's feminist foreign policy agenda as an instance of governance feminism, whereby the normative commitment to gender equality is pursued by governing women's agency. We conduct a qualitative discursive analysis of eleven key policy documents spanning development

Why do some intelligence warning processes succeed in anticipating surprise while others fail? This article challenges the binary perspective on warning success and warning failure prevalent in extant analyses, which it contends ignores the complexity of warning processes and their outcomes. Its main thesis is that warning success rather exists on a spectrum of outcomes from full success to complete

s How has central bank independence (CBI) changed over time and across countries? This paper introduces the most comprehensive dataset on de jure CBI, including country-year observations covering 192 countries between 1970 and 2023. The dataset identifies statutory reforms affecting CBI, their direction, and codes four dimensions of CBI (personnel independence, central bank's objectives, policy formulation

Many international phenomena, from complex, interconnected processes to specific catastrophes, have been deemed “inevitable” by elites, policymakers, and scholars. Yet existing scholarship treats “inevitability” as an objective fact to be assessed retrospectively, rather than an expression of politics and contestation. To see the “politics of inevitability,” we argue, requires attention to the underlying

Can international sanctions prevent civil war? Despite the increased scholarly and policy focus on conflict prevention, we lack an understanding of the impact of a commonly used tool of the international community – economic sanctions. We examine the impact of sanctions targeted against states with self-determination (SD) disputes. We argue that the threat of sanctions leads states to decrease repression

How does diaspora sponsorship of rebel organizations impact civilian victimization? This article argues that diasporas have an affinity for their kin and therefore, an interest in civilian protection. By applying a principal–agent framework to understand diaspora sponsorship to rebel organizations, it highlights how a diaspora, acting as a principal, can reduce violence against civilians perpetrated

This article focuses on researcher distress and well-being. It presents a survey carried out with scholars engaged in conflict-related sexual violence research from various disciplines. Respondents were asked about how they reacted to the research they engaged in and how their respective academic institutions supported them. Academia’s understanding of and preparedness for research-related distress

Scholars and pundits focusing on the changing international order and its possible fragmentation often pay little attention to the manifold relationships between international organizations (IOs). Neglecting inter-organizational relationships, we argue, biases discussions towards doomsday predictions and reinforces the perception of global fragmentation. In this Forum, we address these biases by bringing

International law reparations follow the principle of restitutio in integrum — to make the victim whole. But how do human rights judges apply this principle in practice when the victims are not states, but people whose lives may have been irreparably damaged? We examine this question in the context of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, where judges have frequently dealt with cases of forced

s How do international institutions respond to unilateral challenges by its member states, such as non-compliance, blocking of reforms, renegotiation requests, or withdrawal? This paper argues that this response depends on a trade-off between the risks of not accommodating the challenge, which could disrupt cooperation gains, and the risks of accommodating, which may embolden future challengers. International

This research note presents a dataset on budgeted civilian personnel posts in UN peacekeeping operations by mission, unit, rank, and staff category in the 1991–2020 period: the UNCIPPO (UN Civilian Posts in Peacekeeping Operations) Dataset. Civilian staff in UN peacekeeping operations include specialists in political affairs, human rights, gender, child protection, electoral support, security sector

Does commemoration of violence enhance or undermine everyday security? Whilst memorialization has become a staple of peacebuilding processes, the everyday security dimensions of memory remain understudied. Drawing on three case studies of recent transitional justice memory initiatives in Eastern and Central Africa—Rwanda, Burundi, and Kenya– and on qualitative fieldwork in all three countries, the

Whereas United Nations Special Political Missions are established following UN Peacekeeping Operations or as substitute measures to enhance peace and security, studies have paid little attention to what United Nations Special Political Missions do and whether they are effective. The UN Special Political Mission Mandated Tasks Dataset provides new data on United Nations Special Political Mission-mandated

Sovereign default should theoretically lead to creditor punishment through higher borrowing costs or market exclusion. However, empirical evidence shows that punishment is inconsistent across defaulters. We argue that this disconnect can be explained by examining the role of geopolitical relationships, particularly with the United States. US support conditions expectations of both borrowers and creditors

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has recently expanded its policy scope to include a broader set of policies to promote green, inclusive, and resilient growth. How does this expansion affect the support for the IMF and its loans among the populations of borrowing countries? We conducted a pre-registered survey experiment with 2,694 respondents from three borrower countries—Argentina, Kenya, and

While United Nations Security Council (UNSC) resolutions are widely studied, there is only limited information about their authors. Previous studies have argued that the states that draft resolutions exert sizeable influence over their content, but the lack of comprehensive data has hindered any systematic investigations into their agency, role and motivation when authoring resolutions. This article

This study examines how the public views the use of artificial intelligence (AI) on the battlefield. We conduct three survey experiments on a representative sample of the US public to examine how variation in the level of human-machine autonomy affects the public’s support for the use of military force, the public’s trust in such systems (both in their reliability and interpersonal trust), and the

We examine whether harvest-time transitory shifts in employment and income lead to changes in political violence and social unrest in rice-producing croplands of Southeast Asia. Using monthly data from 2010 to 2023 on over 86,000 incidents covering 376 one-degree cells across eight Southeast Asian countries, we estimate a general increase in political violence and a decrease in social unrest in croplands

Sexual violence (SV) in secessionist conflicts reflects distinct political intentions behind rebels’ pursuit of statehood and incumbents’ commitment to territorial integrity. I argue that, compared with their counterparts in non-secessionist conflicts, (1) secessionist rebels are more motivated to eschew SV to garner domestic support and international recognition, while (2) central governments are

In this article, we examine the three Unfairy Tales advertising videos as part of the United Nations Children’s Fund’s (UNICEF) Act of Humanity campaign, which depicts the stories of Syrian refugee children fleeing armed conflict. Shared on UNICEF’s digital platforms, these videos sensibilize the audience to the challenges these children have faced in their migrations and stimulate the adult public

Global warming and nuclear war are frequently described as the world's greatest threats. Both challenges could be understood as expressions of modern science and technology, and both present tough collective action problems. They are also mutually entangled. Yet students of security have still to systematically unpack the relationship between climate change and the politics of nuclear weapons. In this

Why do states sign international agreements with varying commitment lengths? Growing literature examines when states exit international institutions. However, international agreements differ in how long a state must commit before it is legally free after a withdrawal decision. Notably, bilateral investment treaties (BITs) exhibit significant variation in commitment periods even in the same issue area

Do international adjudicators align with the foreign policy interests of their home country? This article contributes new evidence that judges on the International Court of Justice (ICJ) diverge along similar lines as their home states in the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA). Ideal points for judges and countries are estimated from nonunanimous judicial votes up to January 2023 using Item Response

The article examines the performance of crisis in the UK Government’s push toward the Illegal Migration Act 2023. It considers political operations underpinning this campaign as “crisis work,” drawing attention to the staging of dangerous, harmful, and tragic subjects in a panoramic space of spectacular visibility. I develop this perspective based on a review of programmatic speeches, parliamentary

One of the most shocking aspects of civil war is the prevalence of sexual violence committed by armed groups. Recent research identifies many of the factors driving this horrific phenomenon. What is generally lacking, however, is an understanding of the factors that can prevent conflict-related sexual violence. We argue that women’s economic rights are key. Women’s economic rights provide women with

What drives host community preferences towards the reintegration of former Islamist militants? While recognizing the importance of host communities in the reintegration process, empirical evidence on the factors influencing community support for reintegrating former Islamist militants remains limited. We hypothesized that community preferences are shaped along the perceived threat level influenced

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

To what extent does minority distinctiveness from the majority mitigate or exacerbate discrimination? Similarities between majority and minority groups may reduce societal and political discrimination. Yet shared identities along one cleavage coupled with distinctive characteristics along another may also render commonalities salient for inter-group competition and conflict. We examine how cross-cuttingness