• Lead Author: Laura Huber

• Co-Authors: Lindsey Pruett and Sabrina Karim

Security force personnel routinely engage in violence and misconduct, harming civilians and undermining state legitimacy. Yet, the propensity of security personnel to condone misconduct varies across individuals and contexts. We posit that exposure to both hyper-masculine primes and emasculation primes trigger higher tolerance of misconduct. We test this argument using two survey experiments in what is, to our knowledge, the largest survey of security force personnel globally (N=4,429). We show that priming hyper-masculinity and emasculation leads personnel to view misconduct as less serious and reduces their willingness to report misconduct, while preferences on punishment vary based on the type of masculinity prime. The results imply that exposure to common-place, gendered primes shifts personnel's views towards violence and misconduct in their everyday actions.

• Lead Author: Sara Fox

• Co-Authors: Laura Huber, Roya Izadi, Cameron Mailhot, Mike Kriner, Lindsey Pruett, Sabrina Karim

All over the world, individual police officers and military personnel engage in violence as a part of their mandate to maintain security. Yet, often times this violence is illegitimate and other times the violence is legitimate but unnecessarily escalates a situation. Starting from the premise that prior beliefs about violence shape the actions of individual security personnel, we explore the gendered conditions that shapes individual security force personnel's beliefs about violence. We posit that while women are less likely to escalate when the violence is legitimate, they are no more likely than men to find illegitimate violence (misconduct) inappropriate. Instead, beliefs about gender equality are better predictors of reduced tolerance for misconduct. We test our hypotheses using original survey data from 10 security forces worldwide, with an N=4,449, and find support for our hypotheses. The results demonstrate the importance of a gendered analysis of security force violence.

• Lead Authors: Mike Kriner and Cameron Mailhot

• Co-authors: Priscilla Torres, Roya Izadi, Sara Fox, Laura Huber, Sabrina Karim

Returning United Nations peacekeepers are sometimes perceived as threats to security in their home countries.  We provide an alternative narrative, suggesting that individual peacekeepers adopt and bring back international norms and values they are exposed to during their deployment.  Using two established norms within the UN---zero tolerance for sexual exploitation and abuse, and civilian protections---we develop a theory for how static versus dynamic norms within the UN context shape the degree to which uniformed personnel adopt beliefs about each norm.   We test our hypotheses using an original, novel dataset of surveys with troop and police contributing security force personnel from nine different countries (N= 4,430). We find that those who have participated in UN peace operations are less likely to condone misconduct but have more ambiguous beliefs about civilian protection. This study demonstrates the importance of understanding how peacekeeping missions can shape the attitudes of individual personnel even after they have deployed.

• Authors: Zinab Attai (Department of Government, Cornell University), Emily Brooke Jackson (Department of Government, Cornell University), Angie Torres-Beltran (Department of Political Science, Michigan State University), Taylor Vincent (Department of Government and Politics, University of Maryland), Sabrina Karim (Department of Government, Cornell University)

This research note examines how climate change influences peacekeepers’ experiences and their ability to protect civilians. While peacekeeping missions have proven effective in reducing violence against civilians, we argue that climate change could limit peacekeepers’ ability to provide such protection. Drawing on over 200 interviews and 5,256 survey responses from UN mission personnel across ten troop and police contributing countries (TPCCs), we find that peacekeepers are already experiencing significant operational challenges due to extreme weather conditions such as rising temperatures, severe droughts, and water shortages. Peacekeepers note the detrimental effects on logistical operations, morale, and health, which ultimately hinder their ability to engage in protection activities. A quantitative replication of (Hultman et al., 2013) further reveals that deviations in temperature and rainfall may mediate the effectiveness of troop numbers in reducing one-sided violence against civilians. Our findings suggest that as climate change intensifies, it could challenge the effectiveness of peacekeeping operations to provide protection to vulnerable populations in conflict zones. 

• Authors: Angie Torres-Beltran and Cameron Mailhot

Published: July 2nd, 2024, International Studies Quarterly

What effect does sexual exploitation and abuse (SEA) reporting by the United Nations (UN) have on the actions of peacekeeping missions’ troop and police contributing countries (TPCCs)? While past scholarship has studied the effect of naming and shaming for states’ human rights records, we examine the relationship between the UN’s reporting on human rights abuses committed by its Member States’ personnel and their policy and personnel responses. Focusing on SEA reporting within peacekeeping missions, we theorize the ways in which the UN’s reporting of SEA may lead to two distinct responses: TPCCs may issue legal frameworks to demonstrate compliance and address SEA, or they may withdraw from peacekeeping missions by reducing their personnel commitments. Using an original, cross-national dataset of UN reporting on SEA allegations and the patterns of framework issuance and personnel commitments among TPCCs (2010–2020), we find that TPCCs with SEA reports are more likely to issue legal frameworks and to reduce personnel contributions than their nonreported counterparts, and that this relationship is particularly strong following the first instance of reporting. With targeted TPCCs demonstrating both greater policy compliance and personnel withdrawal, our findings highlight the dynamic impact that UN reporting for SEA can have on the actions of TPCCs.

• Lead Authors: Sumin Lee and Andrey Tomashevskiy

Published: April 12th, 2023, International Interaction

How does government oversight of the military affect the occurrence of wartime sexual violence? This paper highlights the role of civil-military relations and state capacity in the occurrence of sexual violence. Building on research that examines wartime sexual violence in the principal-agent framework, we propose a game-theoretic model in which the military deploys wartime sexual violence based on its expectation of government oversight. We describe an equilibrium where monitoring is an informative signal of the government’s capacity to carry out the punishment. The government monitors strategically and may choose to remain “strategically ignorant” of the military’s conduct. Since government oversight is an informative signal of punishment, the military abstains from wartime sexual violence when oversight is high. We examine the empirical implications of the model using data on sexual violence, military oversight, and state capacity and find support for the hypotheses generated by the model.

• Lead Authors: Elizabeth Brannon and Sumin Lee

Forthcoming at Security Studies

Why do some post-conflict governments adopt accountability for wartime sexual violence while others do not? In this paper, we focus on the incentives of rebel parties to adopt post-war accountability, focusing on how their wartime governance practices influence their post-war behavior. We argue that when in power, rebel parties are more likely than non-rebel parties to support post-war accountability for wartime sexual violence as it helps them restore their reputation and rebrand the party. This tendency will be more salient in rebel parties that had exercised wartime justice measures as rebel groups. However, we expect that culpability in wartime sexual violence will make them reluctant to prosecute for fear of highlighting their own crimes. Using datasets on rebel governance and sexual violence prosecutions in post-conflict African countries from 1998 to 2018, we find support for our theoretical expectations. Our findings speak to the myriad avenues through which rebel party governance and culpability influence post-conflict politics and transitional justice.