Pub Date : 2025-07-13DOI: 10.1177/00223433251342434
Marika Miner
Since 2016, governments in 77 countries have implemented 1,118 internet shutdowns, revealing a growing trend in the use of ‘digital repression’. Governments often justify these shutdowns as necessary for public safety and applied impartially in response to security threats. Focusing on India, the country that has enacted the most shutdowns globally, this article explores whether shutdowns instead follow a logic of targeting political opponents, and how they compare with traditional forms of physical repression. The results align with a theory of strategic political targeting as shutdowns are predominantly executed in areas with lower ruling party support, following opposition violence, and prior to escalations in military violence. This pattern differs significantly from that of physical repression, revealing that internet shutdowns are a unique and politically motivated tool used by those in power to suppress opposition and facilitate state-sanctioned violence.
{"title":"Strategic disruptions: The subnational targeting of internet shutdowns in India","authors":"Marika Miner","doi":"10.1177/00223433251342434","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00223433251342434","url":null,"abstract":"Since 2016, governments in 77 countries have implemented 1,118 internet shutdowns, revealing a growing trend in the use of ‘digital repression’. Governments often justify these shutdowns as necessary for public safety and applied impartially in response to security threats. Focusing on India, the country that has enacted the most shutdowns globally, this article explores whether shutdowns instead follow a logic of targeting political opponents, and how they compare with traditional forms of physical repression. The results align with a theory of strategic political targeting as shutdowns are predominantly executed in areas with lower ruling party support, following opposition violence, and prior to escalations in military violence. This pattern differs significantly from that of physical repression, revealing that internet shutdowns are a unique and politically motivated tool used by those in power to suppress opposition and facilitate state-sanctioned violence.","PeriodicalId":48324,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Peace Research","volume":"13 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.6,"publicationDate":"2025-07-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144612870","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-06-25DOI: 10.1177/00223433251322287
Barış Arı, Theodora-Ismene Gizelis, Wakako Maekawa
Agreeing to elections is generally seen as a key way to settle armed conflict and prevent recurrent violence. However, the transition from violent conflict to nonviolent electoral competition can be fraught with many challenges. Stable electoral competition requires trust in institutions, but trust often takes a long time to develop and is often lacking in post-conflict elections. We argue that UN peacebuilding operations can play an indispensable role in the development of stable electoral institutions through three interrelated ways: reducing political and electoral violence, supporting democratic attitudes and norms of peaceful coexistence, and reinforcing institutional capacity and the rule of law. Using a new measure of the expected quality of elections in post-conflict countries between 1946 and 2012, we show that UN peace missions are associated with better elections and a greater likelihood of successful transitions to electoral competition compared to post-conflict countries without UN involvement. We also find larger differences when the UN is involved in establishing electoral institutions, especially when there is no or limited prior electoral competition, indicating that the UN is effective at assisting the democratization processes in difficult contexts.
{"title":"How United Nations peace operations can help overcome perils to post-conflict elections","authors":"Barış Arı, Theodora-Ismene Gizelis, Wakako Maekawa","doi":"10.1177/00223433251322287","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00223433251322287","url":null,"abstract":"Agreeing to elections is generally seen as a key way to settle armed conflict and prevent recurrent violence. However, the transition from violent conflict to nonviolent electoral competition can be fraught with many challenges. Stable electoral competition requires trust in institutions, but trust often takes a long time to develop and is often lacking in post-conflict elections. We argue that UN peacebuilding operations can play an indispensable role in the development of stable electoral institutions through three interrelated ways: reducing political and electoral violence, supporting democratic attitudes and norms of peaceful coexistence, and reinforcing institutional capacity and the rule of law. Using a new measure of the expected quality of elections in post-conflict countries between 1946 and 2012, we show that UN peace missions are associated with better elections and a greater likelihood of successful transitions to electoral competition compared to post-conflict countries without UN involvement. We also find larger differences when the UN is involved in establishing electoral institutions, especially when there is no or limited prior electoral competition, indicating that the UN is effective at assisting the democratization processes in difficult contexts.","PeriodicalId":48324,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Peace Research","volume":"656 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.6,"publicationDate":"2025-06-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144513358","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-06-20DOI: 10.1177/00223433251334919
Matthew Cebul, Jonathan Pinckney
How do nonviolent alternatives affect international support for violent rebel groups? Armed rebellions are often sustained by outside sympathy and support, which conditions global coordination to end intrastate conflict. Studies on reducing such support largely neglect how the emergence of alternative, nonviolent resistance groups impacts international support for violent resistance. Nonviolent alternatives could plausibly increase support for armed rebellion by legitimizing the cause of resistance or reduce support by delegitimizing the means of violent rebellion relative to nonviolent alternatives. To examine this puzzle, we conducted two online survey experiments across more than 30 countries using a pre-post design to capture changes in attitudes toward a hypothetical violent rebel group before and after the emergence of an alternative resistance group. We randomly vary both the presence and features of the alternative group, including explicitly nonviolent rhetoric, government repression and concessions, and short descriptors meant to signal the alternative group’s capacity to fill psychological needs for agency, justice, and belonging. We find that alternative resistance options consistently reduce support for armed rebellion, including among those originally most supportive of it, and that respondents strongly prefer explicitly nonviolent alternatives, yet neither the material efficacy nor the emotional resonance of those alternatives have a substantial additional effect.
{"title":"Nonviolent alternatives reduce external support for rebel groups: Evidence from two cross-national survey experiments","authors":"Matthew Cebul, Jonathan Pinckney","doi":"10.1177/00223433251334919","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00223433251334919","url":null,"abstract":"How do nonviolent alternatives affect international support for violent rebel groups? Armed rebellions are often sustained by outside sympathy and support, which conditions global coordination to end intrastate conflict. Studies on reducing such support largely neglect how the emergence of alternative, nonviolent resistance groups impacts international support for violent resistance. Nonviolent alternatives could plausibly increase support for armed rebellion by <jats:italic>legitimizing the cause</jats:italic> of resistance or reduce support by <jats:italic>delegitimizing the means</jats:italic> of violent rebellion relative to nonviolent alternatives. To examine this puzzle, we conducted two online survey experiments across more than 30 countries using a pre-post design to capture changes in attitudes toward a hypothetical violent rebel group before and after the emergence of an alternative resistance group. We randomly vary both the presence and features of the alternative group, including explicitly nonviolent rhetoric, government repression and concessions, and short descriptors meant to signal the alternative group’s capacity to fill psychological needs for agency, justice, and belonging. We find that alternative resistance options consistently reduce support for armed rebellion, including among those originally most supportive of it, and that respondents strongly prefer explicitly nonviolent alternatives, yet neither the material efficacy nor the emotional resonance of those alternatives have a substantial additional effect.","PeriodicalId":48324,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Peace Research","volume":"3 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.6,"publicationDate":"2025-06-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144328811","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-06-20DOI: 10.1177/00223433241267866
Kathleen Gallagher Cunningham, Ted Ellsworth, Harriet Goers, Michael Cowan, Oja Pathak, Ellin Chung
This article presents an update on the Strategies of Resistance Data Project. It extends the original coding of organizations seeking greater self-determination, including demands made by organizations, use of violent and nonviolent tactics and accommodations made to movements with a temporal range of 1960–2020. We elaborate on the update procedures, highlight trends in the data, and provide an application of the data to a number of hypotheses about organizational survival. The article explores tactics and organizational survival in a diverse set of contexts using data on both violent and nonviolent tactics. We find that employing a diversity of large-scale nonviolent tactics is associated with greater organizational survival, while accommodation by the state decreases the chance of survival.
{"title":"Tactics of survival: Strategies of Resistance Data Project update","authors":"Kathleen Gallagher Cunningham, Ted Ellsworth, Harriet Goers, Michael Cowan, Oja Pathak, Ellin Chung","doi":"10.1177/00223433241267866","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00223433241267866","url":null,"abstract":"This article presents an update on the Strategies of Resistance Data Project. It extends the original coding of organizations seeking greater self-determination, including demands made by organizations, use of violent and nonviolent tactics and accommodations made to movements with a temporal range of 1960–2020. We elaborate on the update procedures, highlight trends in the data, and provide an application of the data to a number of hypotheses about organizational survival. The article explores tactics and organizational survival in a diverse set of contexts using data on both violent and nonviolent tactics. We find that employing a diversity of large-scale nonviolent tactics is associated with greater organizational survival, while accommodation by the state decreases the chance of survival.","PeriodicalId":48324,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Peace Research","volume":"31 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.6,"publicationDate":"2025-06-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144328812","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-06-15DOI: 10.1177/00223433251317102
Chong Chen, Kyle Beardsley, Nils B Weidmann
Existing research has shown that horizontal inequalities arising from comparisons between ethnic groups can promote ethno-nationalist conflict. However, these studies have largely focused on comparison between groups within the same country. In this article, we extend this perspective and study comparisons with kin groups abroad and how they affect the risk of ethnic civil war. In particular, we address the fact that many groups have several kin groups abroad, all of which could serve as reference points for comparison. Drawing on insights from social psychology, we argue that the comparisons made with different groups involve distinct motivations, which can yield varying degrees of stimulus related to the outbreak of ethno-nationalist conflict. Our results suggest that comparisons with kin groups abroad – especially the best (most well-off) groups, as well as the nearest or median groups – are salient in increasing the propensity for conflict incidence. Moreover, groups that are relatively well-off and thus prone to downward comparisons, especially when the group is wealthier than all of its transnational kin groups, are much less likely to fight. A novel finding emerges: relative poverty in comparison with transnational kin does not appear to exacerbate the potential for conflict, but relative wealth does appear to attenuate it.
{"title":"The grass is always greener on the other side: Transnational ethnic inequality and ethno-nationalist conflict","authors":"Chong Chen, Kyle Beardsley, Nils B Weidmann","doi":"10.1177/00223433251317102","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00223433251317102","url":null,"abstract":"Existing research has shown that horizontal inequalities arising from comparisons between ethnic groups can promote ethno-nationalist conflict. However, these studies have largely focused on comparison between groups within the same country. In this article, we extend this perspective and study comparisons with kin groups abroad and how they affect the risk of ethnic civil war. In particular, we address the fact that many groups have several kin groups abroad, all of which could serve as reference points for comparison. Drawing on insights from social psychology, we argue that the comparisons made with different groups involve distinct motivations, which can yield varying degrees of stimulus related to the outbreak of ethno-nationalist conflict. Our results suggest that comparisons with kin groups abroad – especially the best (most well-off) groups, as well as the nearest or median groups – are salient in increasing the propensity for conflict incidence. Moreover, groups that are relatively well-off and thus prone to downward comparisons, especially when the group is wealthier than all of its transnational kin groups, are much less likely to fight. A novel finding emerges: relative poverty in comparison with transnational kin does not appear to exacerbate the potential for conflict, but relative wealth does appear to attenuate it.","PeriodicalId":48324,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Peace Research","volume":"12 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.6,"publicationDate":"2025-06-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144290148","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-06-11DOI: 10.1177/00223433251345636
Shawn Davies, Therése Pettersson, Margareta Sollenberg, Magnus Öberg
This article examines global trends in organized violence based on new data from the Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP). In 2024, the number of state-based armed conflicts rose from 59 to 61, marking the second consecutive year in which the UCDP recorded a historically high number of conflicts. The number of wars increased from nine to 11, the highest count since 2016. The UCDP recorded marginal declines in both state-based fatalities and organized violence as a whole. In contrast, one-sided violence saw a sharp increase, driven primarily by escalating attacks by Islamic State in Africa and widespread killings by non-state actors in Haiti. Non-state conflict declined, both in the number of active conflicts and in total fatalities. In total, the UCDP recorded almost 160,000 deaths in organized violence in 2024. The article also addresses challenges in the classification of casualties, highlighting how limitations in data quality and information access contribute to uncertainty around the civilian-to-combatant fatality ratio. These challenges are particularly acute in cases of organized crime violence, in which the distinction between civilians and combatants is often blurred, and in which indiscriminate types of warfare, such as artillery and aerial bombardment, are used in urban settings.
{"title":"Organized violence 1989–2024, and the challenges of identifying civilian victims","authors":"Shawn Davies, Therése Pettersson, Margareta Sollenberg, Magnus Öberg","doi":"10.1177/00223433251345636","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00223433251345636","url":null,"abstract":"This article examines global trends in organized violence based on new data from the Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP). In 2024, the number of state-based armed conflicts rose from 59 to 61, marking the second consecutive year in which the UCDP recorded a historically high number of conflicts. The number of wars increased from nine to 11, the highest count since 2016. The UCDP recorded marginal declines in both state-based fatalities and organized violence as a whole. In contrast, one-sided violence saw a sharp increase, driven primarily by escalating attacks by Islamic State in Africa and widespread killings by non-state actors in Haiti. Non-state conflict declined, both in the number of active conflicts and in total fatalities. In total, the UCDP recorded almost 160,000 deaths in organized violence in 2024. The article also addresses challenges in the classification of casualties, highlighting how limitations in data quality and information access contribute to uncertainty around the civilian-to-combatant fatality ratio. These challenges are particularly acute in cases of organized crime violence, in which the distinction between civilians and combatants is often blurred, and in which indiscriminate types of warfare, such as artillery and aerial bombardment, are used in urban settings.","PeriodicalId":48324,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Peace Research","volume":"137 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.6,"publicationDate":"2025-06-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144269398","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-06-06DOI: 10.1177/00223433251332523
Elizabeth L Brannon
Does the legacy of women’s participation in non-state armed groups impact women’s post-war political representation? Existing research suggests that women’s inclusion in rebel groups is typically a short-term strategy, creating logistical and tactical advantages without commitment to long-term gendered change. Relatedly, after wars, patriarchal backlash can close the space for women, limiting their newfound political access. This paper argues that despite the incentives to leave women behind, the political parties evolving out of rebel groups (‘rebel parties’) continue practices of women’s inclusion to capture the continued benefits of their representation after war. I argue that the legacies of women’s roles will have symbolic effects on the rebel party’s recruitment of women, women’s candidate emergence, and voter support for women. I present novel data on women’s representation in rebel parties from 1970 to 2020 and find that rebel parties run and elect more women post-conflict when rebels had women wartime participants. I show that these results are consistent across the types of roles that women held during conflict and over time. These findings underscore the wartime legacies of rebel parties and show how women’s wartime contributions affect their post-war political standing.
{"title":"Labored legacies: The post-conflict implications of women’s wartime participation","authors":"Elizabeth L Brannon","doi":"10.1177/00223433251332523","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00223433251332523","url":null,"abstract":"Does the legacy of women’s participation in non-state armed groups impact women’s post-war political representation? Existing research suggests that women’s inclusion in rebel groups is typically a short-term strategy, creating logistical and tactical advantages without commitment to long-term gendered change. Relatedly, after wars, patriarchal backlash can close the space for women, limiting their newfound political access. This paper argues that despite the incentives to leave women behind, the political parties evolving out of rebel groups (‘rebel parties’) continue practices of women’s inclusion to capture the continued benefits of their representation after war. I argue that the legacies of women’s roles will have symbolic effects on the rebel party’s recruitment of women, women’s candidate emergence, and voter support for women. I present novel data on women’s representation in rebel parties from 1970 to 2020 and find that rebel parties run and elect more women post-conflict when rebels had women wartime participants. I show that these results are consistent across the types of roles that women held during conflict and over time. These findings underscore the wartime legacies of rebel parties and show how women’s wartime contributions affect their post-war political standing.","PeriodicalId":48324,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Peace Research","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.6,"publicationDate":"2025-06-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144236919","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-05-22DOI: 10.1177/00223433251330790
Thomas Schincariol, Hannah Frank, Thomas Chadefaux
Existing models for predicting conflict fatalities frequently produce conservative forecasts that gravitate towards the mean. While these approaches have a low average prediction error, they offer limited insights into temporal variations in conflict-related fatalities. Yet, accounting for variability is particularly relevant for policymakers, providing an indication on when to intervene. In this article, we introduce a novel risk-taking methodology, the ‘Shape finder’, designed to capture variability in fatality data, or rather the sudden surges and declines in the number of deaths over time. The method involves isolating historically analogous sequences of fatalities to create a reference repository. Comparing the shape of the input sequence to the historical references, the most similar historical cases are selected. Predictions are then generated using the average future outcomes of the selected matches. The Shape finder is derived from the theoretical understanding that strategic and adaptive interactions between the government and a non-state armed group produce recurring temporal patterns in fatality data, which are indicative of broader developments. In this article, we demonstrate that our approach maintains high accuracy while significantly enhancing the ability to predict shifts, surges, and declines in conflict fatalities over time. We show that combining the Shape finder with existing approaches, the Violence Early-Warning System ensemble, achieves a lower mean squared error and better accounts for variability in fatality data. The Shape finder methodology performs particularly well for high intensity cases, or rather country-months with substantial armed violence.
{"title":"Accounting for variability in conflict dynamics: A pattern-based predictive model","authors":"Thomas Schincariol, Hannah Frank, Thomas Chadefaux","doi":"10.1177/00223433251330790","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00223433251330790","url":null,"abstract":"Existing models for predicting conflict fatalities frequently produce conservative forecasts that gravitate towards the mean. While these approaches have a low average prediction error, they offer limited insights into temporal variations in conflict-related fatalities. Yet, accounting for variability is particularly relevant for policymakers, providing an indication on when to intervene. In this article, we introduce a novel risk-taking methodology, the ‘Shape finder’, designed to capture variability in fatality data, or rather the sudden surges and declines in the number of deaths over time. The method involves isolating historically analogous sequences of fatalities to create a reference repository. Comparing the shape of the input sequence to the historical references, the most similar historical cases are selected. Predictions are then generated using the average future outcomes of the selected matches. The Shape finder is derived from the theoretical understanding that strategic and adaptive interactions between the government and a non-state armed group produce recurring temporal patterns in fatality data, which are indicative of broader developments. In this article, we demonstrate that our approach maintains high accuracy while significantly enhancing the ability to predict shifts, surges, and declines in conflict fatalities over time. We show that combining the Shape finder with existing approaches, the Violence Early-Warning System ensemble, achieves a lower mean squared error and better accounts for variability in fatality data. The Shape finder methodology performs particularly well for high intensity cases, or rather country-months with substantial armed violence.","PeriodicalId":48324,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Peace Research","volume":"80 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.6,"publicationDate":"2025-05-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144133735","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-05-22DOI: 10.1177/00223433241312069
Elke Evrard, Gretel Mejía Bonifazi
Literature on survivor mobilization in transitional justice contexts has largely overlooked the relevance and dynamics of solidarity-based support by non-victimized groups. This article studies the relation between contentious processes of discursive ‘memory-making’ and public support for reparations in post-conflict Guatemala. Using a nationwide survey-embedded experiment with 300 respondents, we measure how contrasting representations of the temporality of harm and prospects for peace – drawn from elite versus survivor narratives – influence political solidarity with Indigenous survivors and support for their reparation demands. Findings show that while perceptions of survivors’ continued suffering and reparations’ peace-building potential are key predictors of solidarity and support, the contrasting narrative primes did not significantly influence these perceptions or resulting attitudes. The survey’s open-ended responses suggest that, in engaging with prevalent public discourses, respondents have developed relatively stable yet highly diverse interpretations of the necessity and ability of reparations to address social, psychological, and economic harms, and to promote beneficial outcomes for society at large. Mapping these responses onto the quantitative scores indicates that solidary support is more likely to emerge when non-victimized groups situate conflict-related harms within an ongoing history of structural violence and position reparations as building blocks for recognition, development and social integration – signalling the importance of discursive and expressive dynamics in public engagement with reparation processes.
{"title":"Supporting reparations after armed conflict: How discursive ‘memory battles’ affect political solidarity with Guatemalan Indigenous survivors","authors":"Elke Evrard, Gretel Mejía Bonifazi","doi":"10.1177/00223433241312069","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00223433241312069","url":null,"abstract":"Literature on survivor mobilization in transitional justice contexts has largely overlooked the relevance and dynamics of solidarity-based support by non-victimized groups. This article studies the relation between contentious processes of discursive ‘memory-making’ and public support for reparations in post-conflict Guatemala. Using a nationwide survey-embedded experiment with 300 respondents, we measure how contrasting representations of the temporality of harm and prospects for peace – drawn from elite versus survivor narratives – influence political solidarity with Indigenous survivors and support for their reparation demands. Findings show that while perceptions of survivors’ continued suffering and reparations’ peace-building potential are key predictors of solidarity and support, the contrasting narrative primes did not significantly influence these perceptions or resulting attitudes. The survey’s open-ended responses suggest that, in engaging with prevalent public discourses, respondents have developed relatively stable yet highly diverse interpretations of the necessity and ability of reparations to address social, psychological, and economic harms, and to promote beneficial outcomes for society at large. Mapping these responses onto the quantitative scores indicates that solidary support is more likely to emerge when non-victimized groups situate conflict-related harms within an ongoing history of structural violence and position reparations as building blocks for recognition, development and social integration – signalling the importance of discursive and expressive dynamics in public engagement with reparation processes.","PeriodicalId":48324,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Peace Research","volume":"4 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.6,"publicationDate":"2025-05-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144133736","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-05-16DOI: 10.1177/00223433251322668
Jason Hartwig
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 build trust within communities, and create power vacuums. In the absence of a perceived impartial arbiter, mobilized groups turn to violence over disputes previously solved by the rebels. I test this theory by examining the impact of offensive operations by the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM). Using novel data and a mixed-methods approach, I demonstrate AMISOM operations displacing rebel rule produced a significant increase in intercommunal conflict. These findings highlight the potential unintended consequences of multilateral interventions explicitly supporting one side. They further suggest biased interventions should focus on first improving governance before extending government control or prioritize shaping conditions for negotiated settlements.
{"title":"The end of rebel rule: Biased peacekeeping interventions and social order","authors":"Jason Hartwig","doi":"10.1177/00223433251322668","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00223433251322668","url":null,"abstract":"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 build trust within communities, and create power vacuums. In the absence of a perceived impartial arbiter, mobilized groups turn to violence over disputes previously solved by the rebels. I test this theory by examining the impact of offensive operations by the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM). Using novel data and a mixed-methods approach, I demonstrate AMISOM operations displacing rebel rule produced a significant increase in intercommunal conflict. These findings highlight the potential unintended consequences of multilateral interventions explicitly supporting one side. They further suggest biased interventions should focus on first improving governance before extending government control or prioritize shaping conditions for negotiated settlements.","PeriodicalId":48324,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Peace Research","volume":"14 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.6,"publicationDate":"2025-05-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144067101","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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