Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution

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This collection contains ETD documents from the Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution

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Tranboundary Water Interaction- The Role of Weaker Riparian States
(2023) Sakhi, Farishta; Cobb, Sara Dr.
Abstract: Trans-boundary regional water conflict is complex in nature. As a multidimensional and multilayered problem, it involves multiple stakeholders with diverse sets of values and interests. Power asymmetry is the reason for the inequitable water distribution among riparian states. Asymmetric power is very evident in the outcomes of trans-boundary water dynamics and the adaptation process for trans-boundary water governance. Most of the scholarships on trans-boundary regional water interaction highlight the role of power in shaping interaction between stronger and weaker riparian states in a manner that safeguards the rights of stronger riparian states. Various kinds of structures and relations guide the water discourse through nation-states and institutions and in the context of asymmetric power relations, these structures are sometimes hegemonic entailing high-power asymmetries, making the cooperation processes extremely complex, time-consuming, and inequitable. This situation further consolidates the role of hydrohegemon to exploit the weaker riparian state in most of the regional water conflict resolution settings. Thus, resulting in long-term regional conflicts, poor water management, degradation of environmental resources, and possibility of water wars as many scholars would predict. However, I argue that hydro hegemony is multilayered, and it is not only the riparian states with more power that can influence the course of interaction but also the weaker riparian states can influence and challenge the status quo by using right strategies to safeguard their water rights. In this research, firstly I will explore the kinds of power involved in shaping the riparian relations and I envisage that weaker riparian adopts strategies and tools that ensure their leverage and will impact the outcomes of conflict resolution in their favor. Furthermore, I argue that weaker riparian utilizes tools that ensure their rights in both the negotiation phase, formulation of water negotiations and implementation mechanisms. I will investigate qualitatively cases of regional water conflict resolution among the riparian states with power asymmetry and the tools and practices adopted by weaker riparian states at different level of conflict resolution in which the weaker riparian has adopted tools, practices, and strategies to safeguard their water rights and not lose in the face of hydro hegemony. I will also explore the role of power in shaping water interaction when weaker riparian states lack major support for their water development project and how this inter dependency affects the riparian states relations. I will conduct interviews to understand how the role of actors in each case aided in laying out the playing ground for equitable water interaction. For this study power asymmetry will be analyzed quality in cases of Afghanistan and its riparian, India and Nepal and Tajikistan and Uzbekistan relations over the Rogun Dam The study will unveil some of the strategies adopted by the weaker riparian states to influence or challenge power asymmetry and safeguard its water rights. This dissertation reflects the status of information related to Trans boundary Water Affairs in Afghanistan until the year, 2021.
ROOT NARRATIVE FRAMEWORK AND ENGAGING NARRATIVES OF DEVELOPMENT IN NIGERIA IN NIGERIA: TOWARDS AN ALTERNATIVE INTERVENTION APPROACH
(2023) Dasylva, Oluwagbemiga T; Simmons, Solon
This dissertation delves into the concept of development economics in the Global South, focusing specifically on Nigeria. It highlights the necessity of aligning intervention strategies with the realities of the local recipient population and suggests the use of root narrative theory to decolonize peacebuilding and development narratives. The study explores the far-reaching implications of colonialism, the role of narratology in African oral tradition, and the challenges involved in intervening in post-conflict regions. The research argues that economic interventions in the Global South are not exclusively motivated by economic factors, but also by regional cultural peculiarities and ideological orientations that perpetuate neo-colonialism. These factors determine the perception of locals in the Global South. As a result, the study proposes the adoption of a framework that takes into account the root narrative orientation of the target area to develop interventions that are tailored to the specific environment.
Understanding the Promotion of Peace by NGOs through the Use of Documentaries: Case Studies of Three US Non-profit Organizations
(2023) Niraula, Kuldeep; Rubenstein, Richard
NGOs have been using documentary films for peace for the past few decades. However, negligible studies are present that explore the phenomena of peace promotion through documentaries. Therefore, this study is conducted to analyze how NGOs seek to promote peace at personal, interpersonal, and structural levels through the use of documentary films. It is based on the case study research methodology and multiple case study research design. Three United States-based NGOs, Just Vision, Working Films, and Peace Is Loud, are the cases for the research. The study discusses that these NGOs use documentaries for social justice by witnessing the injustice experienced by grassroots communities and presenting narratives of inspirational non-violent social action of the local people. Truthful documentary narratives developed through accountable, transparent, and equitable processes can facilitate personal transformation among its audience by depicting an honest portrayal of the lived experiences of people facing injustice, making them reflect on their role in perpetuating injustice and transforming them enough to take action for social justice. Moreover, ethical documentary filmmaking also develops in its participants the feeling of justice and freedom regarding their ability to share their stories freely. The NGOs seek interpersonal, structural, and cultural transformation through documentaries by placing them among the ongoing social justice movements at the grassroots, national, and global levels, hoping that the social movements’ participants will mobilize films to enhance the scope and efficacy of their actions for social justice. In addition, they place the documentary into the mainstream media to counter mainstream media discourses about peace and social justice. Some of these NGOs offer training and technical and financial support to the underrepresented filmmakers who identify themselves as people of color, women, LGBTQ+, and other gender-expansive filmmakers, and grassroots mobilizers so that they can better mobilize films for purposes of social justice. The NGOs are working to shift the culture of documentary filmmaking toward ethical and accountable culture to do no harm through films. The evaluation methodologies deployed by these NGOs assist them in adequately assessing the perceptional change experienced by the audience members upon watching the documentary films. Only limited anecdotal evidence is collected on behavioral, interpersonal, structural, and cultural change. Therefore, it is recommended that to evaluate better the large-scale structural and cultural change catalyzed through documentary films, it is worth it for these NGOs to seek assistance from third-party evaluation experts.
Developing A Narrative Assessment Framework To Enable Learning Within U.S. Department of Defense Wargaming
(2023) Stebbins, David; Cobb, Sara
U.S Department of Defense (DoD) wargaming effectiveness may depend on the quality of in-game individual and group learning experiences and an ability to demonstrate meaningful learning over time. The wargaming community does not have an assessment methodology that could systematically explore learning experiences during periods of in-game storytelling. Similarly, the wargaming community faces several obstacles in generating empirical evidence; that is, we have no empirical evidence that wargaming “works.” Marginalization of individual and group learning experiences – or worse – not collecting and reflecting upon unique moments of learning within the story-living environment contribute toward reification and (re)enactment of presented narratives throughout U.S. institutions. Wargaming may continue to incubate flawed inputs, outputs, and outcomes until the basis for its assessment is fundamentally transformed. Developing a novel narrative assessment tool could assist in deriving greater value from wargames to better inform U.S. policy options necessary to de-escalate, mitigate, or respond to conflict. This research provides a comprehensive mixed-methods approach that examines existing factors that both contribute to and inhibit meaningful learning within DoD wargaming over time.
“SEEING LIKE” A DEVELOPMENTAL STATE: THE POLITICS OF LAW IN RECONFIGURING CIVIL SOCIETY IN ETHIOPIA
(2023) Asfaw, Seife Ayalew; Lyons, Terrence Dr.
This dissertation challenges the conventional liberal conceptions undergirding (1) autonomous civil society, (2) the separation of the state from civil society, and (3) the political control thesis of authoritarianism studies. The conventional views the role of law as mediating state-civil society relations by limiting state power to ensure separation of the state and protect civil society "autonomy." The existing literature on authoritarianism emphasizes the "closure" and repression of civil society, especially the repression narrative. I argue that such conventional approaches to the study of state-civil society relations that rely heavily on normative analyses of the role of law in limiting state power and protecting civil society, and its repressive function of subordinating civil society in authoritarianism studies, does not adequately account for a nuanced and context-specific examination of the nature, features, and dynamics of state-civil power dynamics. By drawing on Michel Foucault’s governmentality approach, I offer an alternative framework that examines the role of law and notion of developmental states to show how various forms of power are mobilized and deployed to shape state-civil society relations in Ethiopia. Using Ethiopia as a case study, I trace the role of law and developmentalist discourse to analyze the various modes of political power that were exercised by the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Front to shape state-civil society relations in a context-specific and sociohistorically situated manner, and provide a more nuanced understanding of the nature, features, and dynamics at work. By exploring how the Ethiopian developmental state is thought about and practiced, my analysis shifts the focus from a normative analysis of state-civil society relations to that of historically situated power relations wherein discursive and non-discursive constructions and problematizations of various socioeconomic and political issues might be genealogically mapped as problem spaces. My research design in this study is aimed at critically analyzing the assumptions and forms of embedded political reason in the activities of government, specifically in the context of Ethiopian developmental state’s regulation and institutionalization of the civil society sector. This study draws on a wide range of archival materials, manifestos, policy documents, government laws and regulations, public debates, and conducted interviews with senior members of the EPRDF and officials. I combined the genealogical method and governmentality approach to examine how the Ethiopian state embeds itself in society, through economic policy, discourse and political practice. By using Foucauldian notions of “power” and “discourse” and subjectification effects, I illustrate how the discursive and non-discursive construction of the developmental state as a governing logic (mode of rule) could be useful for studying power relations to capture the diverse strategies and objectives of state exercises of power beyond the conventional democratic vs. authoritarian binary. By foregrounding the idea of the developmental state as a Foucauldian-esque “mode of rule,” I problematize current renderings of the “repression narrative or political control thesis” in civil society studies and challenge liberal notions of autonomous civil society and the apartness of the state. By examining how the actions and discourses of the Ethiopian developmental state, including its mode of organizing party-state structures and civil society, its enactment of laws, and how the formation or reformation of developmental governmentality shaped the role of law to regulate civil society, I argue that the law operates as a powerful ordering rationality for government, producing subjectivities solely by its discursive force and injunctions. This dissertation shows how developmentalism emerged as a hegemonic “regime of truth” in Ethiopia, and problematizes civil society as a governable field that required state intervention. I explicate the disciplinary, regulatory, and productive role that the law plays in shaping and reconfiguring Ethiopian state-civil society relations for the aggrandizement of state power. Ultimately, two theoretical contributions are made by this dissertation. First, the study expands the field of governmentality studies into state-civil society relations. Second, it challenges the narrow view of state authoritarianism and argues for a Foucauldian understanding of the exercise of state power in modern state forms. This study by demonstrating that the law beyond beyond serving as a tool for repression, also instructs and shapes the behavior of civil society actors and maintaining their positions as "productive" partners who advance the developmental aims of the state, it highlights the crucial role of law in state formation, statecraft, and civil society in non-democratic contexts.
REINFORCING GLOBAL DEVELOPMENT AND SECURITY EFFORTS: PREVENTION OF VIOLENT EXTREMISM POLICY AND STRATEGIES OF STATE AND NON-STATE ACTORS THROUGH EDUCATION - A COMPARATIVE CASE STUDY OF AFGHANISTAN, PAKISTAN, AND UZBEKISTAN
(2022) Partov, Umed; Korostelina, Karina
This comparative case study offers a rigorous assessment of evidence found within studies on terrorism, peacebuilding, and global development as well as in the education policies and programs of state and non-state actors, which focus on preventing extremism (particularly transnational violent extremism) in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Uzbekistan. The study draws attention to a new paradigm and policy approach that has been gaining traction among policymakers, practitioners, and, to a lesser degree, in academia, namely the PVE-E approach (Preventing Violent Extremism Through Education). Research shows that, due to transnational ripple effects, violent extremism and radicalization are posing growing security challenges and potentially impeding national economic growth, human capital development, and threatening global security. In support of a multimodal, multidisciplinary, and cross-sectoral approach, the study emphasizes the importance of education policies and interventions that both directly and indirectly support non-violent social identity transformation, especially in the case of violent extremism. The study focuses on the social identity conceptual framework as an analytical tool to help us understand violent extremist behavior and its root causes.
Institutional Resilience During War
(2022) Abdul Ghaffar, Jeehan; Paczynska, Agnieszka
My research assesses why some formal service-delivery institutions are more resilient than others during wars; what role trust plays in institutional resilience and why some institutions are able to maintain donors’ support even in times of war while others could not. This is a qualitative research based on a case study of three formal institutions in Yemen: the Social Fund for Development (SFD) and Public Work Project (PWP) and the Central Bank of Yemen (CBY) during the war. My research shows that the most important ingredients of institutional resilience are performance, independency, trustworthiness, support, access to financing resources and human resources, strong systems, and leadership as well as adaptability. It also demonstrates that trust in this case becomes critical in gluing together the different ingredients that strengthen institutional resilience.
Narration of History and Transformation of the Conflict through Shifted Perceptions of the Other: The Case of Georgia
(2022) Saldadze, Malkhaz; Allen, Susan
This study explores how discourses about past and narration of history have been developed and how they affect formation of identity in Georgia. The research methods include: interviews with twenty-five individuals representing various identity groups and having various social backgrounds, including those from breakaway Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Besides, in-depth biographical interviews method, I used thick description and engaged observation methods to get insight into public memorial practices and processing memory. I also dealt with secondary data, using comparative sequential method to understand whether there are changes taking place in history textbooks, wider literature, media products and speeches of the country’s leaders. This method also let me understand what are the changes in narration styles elaborated in public and political realms of Georgia. The research is based on understanding of how narration styles accumulated in different and specific milieus of society and public, and transmitted by political elites shaped identity boundaries that bring conflict as a modus vivendi and a modus operandi in generations of those who lived in Soviet Georgia and in modern day Georgia. Meanwhile, public disputes on matters of recent history illuminate the development of alternative languages of telling the history and its application in daily social life. The latter changes emerge in a variety of social and cultural conflicts alongside the boundaries of ethnicity, religion, sexuality, gender identity and social status. Thus, society is divided and split, differentiating human beings bringing identification marks of the Other into discourse. Differentiation and conflict between various narratives and their bearers not always result in conciliation or consensus even if dialogue frameworks are set. It depends on public and political spheres in which these frameworks should operate. Power imbalances that are manifested in struggle and resistance do not always result in the emergence of the unifying and inclusionary political discourse. The persistence of contradictions between themes, styles and political effects of narration and representation contribute to seemingly unresolvable social-cultural and political conflicts. This research on how languages of telling stories of the past are elaborated and applied to actual societal, public and political spaces presents possibilities for positive transformation of inevitable conflicts and empowering of relevant groups of people engaged in them to develop emotional-cultural skills of learning and understanding perspectives of their own and of those identified as Others. This knowledge holds promise for affecting power imbalances too. The research concludes that learning based on critical thinking and empathy can shift perils of perception of truth of one’s own and widen spaces of cognitive and cultural processing of information and interpretation that may overcome and transform the deeply rooted older languages and styles of narration of history that divide public and polarize politics in Georgia.
THE POLICE STATE LEGACY, SECURITY SECTOR GOVERNANCE AND REFORM (SSG&R) WITHIN A P/CVE* FRAMING IN TUNISIA: LOCAL OWNERSHIP AT A CRITICAL JUNCTURE
(2024) Jabbari, Fatma; Paczyńska, Agnieszka Dr.
Thirteen years after the fall of the Ben Ali regime and the advancement of the “post-police state” narrative in Tunisia, international actors invested in Security Sector Governance and Reform programs (SSG&R) with a Preventing and Countering Violent Extremism (P/CVE) framing. However, the modalities of local ownership within this set of programming are complex, given the programs' security dimension, the police state legacy, and pre-existing socio-political configurations. Through multifaceted and multi-method research, this study contends that SSG&R tends to be driven primarily by the excessive preoccupation with the security of Western ideals with little consideration of local agency, power struggles, socio-political structures, and historical legacies. Suggesting a universalism and the existence of templates in SSG&R for P/CVE. While promoted as a positive case, the SSG&R process in Tunisia remains stalled, focused on the professionalization of the police forces while overlooking citizen participation and oversight, and mechanisms of accountability. While the literature on the local turn continues to argue for more meaningful engagement with local stakeholders, their knowledge, and priorities, it remains critical mainly of how the localization agenda is implemented. Building on comprehensive research and analysis, this study concludes that local ownership in itself is a securitizing discourse that patronizes the ‘local’ by imposing Western-centric conceptualizations of it. It undermines the complexity and agency of locals and views human security as linear and secondary to hard security.
Us Against When: Futures and Complexity-Informed Conflict Transformation in the United States
(2024) Eggers, Keil; Allen, Susan H.
Peacebuilding practitioners in the United States comprise a sensemaking community that is grappling with multiple approaches to making positive change in the United States. Each organization and practitioner brings a set of methods to address that problem and an ideal audience that they believe should be the locus of change. The Us Against When project partnered with the Horizons Project and Common Ground USA to develop an image of a more peaceful United States and test how a peacebuilding scenario resonated with these organizations’ audiences. The research addressed the following question: How can a complexity-informed sensemaking approach help United States-based peace organizations align their image of the desired future with their constituents and improve practice by utilizing sensemaking data to inform decision-making in their programming? Sensemaking activities included interpretation of the scenario in the SenseMaker tool, participatory sensemaking process, and early feedback from the organizations about the ways the resulting insights informed their decision making. The peacebuilding scenario was interpreted by over 800 respondents in five states at higher risk for political violence (Arizona, Texas, Georgia, Pennsylvania, and Ohio). The research’s experimental approach demonstrated how techniques from futures studies and complexity science could contribute to the ability of peacebuilders to construct sensemaking feedback loops and better orient their practice in complex conflicts.
Reclaiming the Right to Knowledge and Knowledge Sovereignty: Participatory Action Research and Police Violence in the Deaf Community
(2024) Mahan, Laura; Allen, Susan
In recent years, people in the United States have been expressing increasing concernsover police officer’s use of force against citizens. Perhaps even more concerning is the increasing number of d/Deaf people being injured or killed by police, which has raised further concern over whether police are trained to work with d/Deaf people. This dissertation delves into the complex issue through engaging in a decolonial participatory action research (DPAR) journey that explores, analyzes, and creates room for the understanding of police brutality in the Deaf community and offers ways in which Deaf community members create ways to confront and disrupt police violence against Deaf people in Virginia. In other ways, this dissertation is a personal and collaborative reflection of the process and importance of engaging DPAR in an academic setting where independent research is often the standard. But in its totality, it is more than a project confronting police violence in Deaf communities and an exploration that supports the importance of the use of PAR in academia. It is a call to action for researchers, academics, practitioners, and communities to create forms of inquiry that are grounded dialogue and action that seek to heal and restore.
Searching for Sanctuary: Refugee Protection & Human Security in Zimbabwe
(2023) Brown, Hannah Krentler; Rothbart, Daniel
There are more than 35 million refugees worldwide who have been forced to flee across an international border and seek protection. However, refugees rarely seem to actually find the protection they pursue. As refugees remain vulnerable and continue to face numerous insecurities, many accuse the international community and refugee host countries of failing to provide adequate protection to refugees. A human security approach to refugee protection helps us understand why the international community is struggling to adequately protect refugees, as it provides an alternative to refugee protection that moves beyond simplistic and unitary understandings of security, and moves the focus of security from the state to the individual. Looking specifically at the case study of refugees in Zimbabwe through a human security frame, this research seeks not only to help identify more appropriate responses to refugee protection, but also assist in determining priority areas where there may be gaps in humanitarian protection. Further, this research project could help to address a fuller range of security and protection issues to secure sustainable solutions to refugee protection.
Contested LGBTIQ+ Activism, Complex Identities, and Entrenched Norms: Investigating the Normative Effects of EuroPride 2022 in Serbia
(2023) Sweigart, Michael; Korostelina, Karina V.
A global proliferation of local and transnational movements for the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, and queer (LGBTIQ+) people in the 21st century has faced resistance in many contexts from opponents who frame LGBTIQ+ rights as a threat to national values, norms, and identities. The present mixed-methods dissertation examines whether and how such highly contested transnational LGBTIQ+ activism can influence social norms on gay and lesbian rights. The dissertation addresses this question through three empirical studies focused on the case of Serbia, where pressure from the European Union (EU) to improve respect for LGBTIQ+ rights, including by protecting space for LGBTIQ+ activism, has been vehemently opposed by some domestic groups. Study 1 (N = 2,043) provides a foundational understanding of gay and lesbian rights norms in Serbia by analyzing a nationally representative dataset and identifying factors associated with rights support (European identity, acceptance of diversity, and location in Belgrade) and opposition (Serbian national identity, traditionalism, religiosity). In addition to validating the findings from Study 1, Study 2 (N = 500) applies more complex analytical techniques to analyze how gay and lesbian rights norms vary across groups with different latent combinations of social identity. The study found that a group with the highest levels of Serbian national identity and lowest levels of European and EU identities expressed gay and lesbian rights attitudes and behavioral intentions that were more aligned with perceptions of Serbian norms (i.e., perceptions of other people’s attitudes in Serbia) and less aligned with their perceptions of norms in Europe. Conversely, a group with the highest levels of European and EU identities expressed attitudes and behavioral intentions that were less aligned with their perceptions of Serbian norms. Building upon the first two studies, Study 3 (N = 854) used data from a two-wave panel study with a sample Belgrade, Serbia residents to evaluate the effects of EuroPride, a highly contested pan-European LGBTIQ+ Pride event held in Serbia in 2022, on norm perceptions, personal attitudes, and behavioral intentions on gay and lesbian rights. Study 3 found that EuroPride had inconsistent social normative effects which did not vary across the latent identity-based groups identified in Study 2. The dissertation grapples with possible explanations for the event’s null effects, including 1) conflicting normative signals from national and religious leaders, 2) delegitimization of Pride activism as a foreign-driven political exercise, and 3) attitudinal saturation following more than a decade of annual Pride parades in Serbia. Drawing upon the three studies, the dissertation discusses interdisciplinary theoretical implications and recommendations for policymakers and practitioners supporting transnational LGBTIQ+ activism. Finally, limitations and areas for future research on pro-LGBTIQ+ social change are discussed.
Reducing Negative Social Boundaries: Utilizing Integrated Threat Theory
Martin, Emily; Korostelina, Karina
The United States currently suffers from social division which has produced extreme polarity and a divisive social environment. There is a need to understand successful mechanisms that aid in the dissolution of negative conflict. Using Integrated Threat Theory as the theoretical framework for this study, semi-structured interviews were conducted with representatives from each political party with the goal of understanding successful conflict resolution mechanisms used in real-life scenarios. Analysis of their experiences with social and political conflict was performed using thematic analysis by clustering codes to create themes and subthemes. This study found mechanisms concerning ethical and emotional personality traits most successful when building bonds with others. In addition, this study identified four types of coping mechanisms used by participants in response to political conflict: Avoidance, Compromise, Engagement: Fact-based and Engagement: Through Relations. These findings will help contribute to further research within the conflict resolution field with the goal of resolving polarized political and social conflict.
The Role of Climate Change in Driving Sex Trafficking in Louisiana
Jordan, Marissa L; Dwyer, Leslie
This thesis examines how anti-trafficking service providers of East Baton Rouge Parish and Orleans Parish, Louisiana understand climate change’s role in driving sex trafficking. In exploring their understanding, this project investigates whether climate change is a factor in sex trafficking patterns and whether anti-trafficking service providers see climate change as a factor. I argue that climate change is a factor in sex trafficking patterns as climate change exacerbates vulnerabilities to sex trafficking. By drawing on interviews done with two service providers of East Baton Rouge Parish, four service providers of Orleans Parish, and one with relations in both locales, this project uses narrative theory to draw out the perspectives of service providers on these issues and the reasoning for those perspectives. Including their perspectives will add to the limited knowledge of the climate change and sex trafficking nexus. Through localizing this knowledge, I hope to foster specific policy responses to this phenomenon.
Jihadist insurgency, Civilians' Targeting, and Conflict Dynamics in the Sahel: A Case Study of Burkina Faso
(2022) Bere, Mathieu; Rothbart, Daniel
This study addresses a theoretical and empirical puzzle that both counterterrorism practitioners and scholars experience, namely the uncertainty surrounding terrorist attacks against civilians and the logic guiding such attacks. This dissertation offers a case study of Al Qaeda or the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) affiliates operating in Burkina Faso in West Africa's Sahel region. This study addresses the following two research questions: first, why do these so-called jihadist groups target noncombatant civilians?, and second, how have their attacks against civilians impacted the various stakeholders’ responses and the dynamics of the conflicts that fuel the violence? To investigate these questions, the study employs mixed research methods by collecting, carefully triangulating, and analyzing qualitative and quantitative data gathered from various sources: four datasets, jihadists’ statements, semi-structured interviews with 27 key informants, and an online survey with more than 100 respondents from Burkina Faso. Then, it resorts to different analytical techniques to identify trends and patterns in the terrorist attacks against civilians, the targets' characteristics, and the perpetrators' modus operandi and motivations. About the targets of terrorists’ attacks, the data analysis reveals significant variations in the numbers of terrorist incidents and the fatalities when one compares these incidents by target type, by year, and by geographic region. The findings of this case study suggest that there is a strong association between the terrorist targeting of civilians and some factors such as the geographic location, the targets’ profile, the perpetrators’ ideology, or strategic objectives. In most incidents, civilians have been selected and attacked by jihadist militants based on: 1) their being perceived as a threat, 2) their attractiveness, and 3) their accessibility. Violence against civilians by jihadist groups and government counterterrorism forces has also been used as an instrument of social control aiming at setting standards of acceptable conduct and punishing behavioral deviation. Moreover, this case study demonstrates that the perpetrators were motivated by: (i) strategic objectives, including financial profit; (ii) psychological and personal reasons; (iii) ideological-religious reasons based on a military interpretation of the Islamic concept of Jihad, and lastly, (iv) unknown or mixed motives. Furthermore, the study assesses the humanitarian, economic, social, political, and geopolitical impacts of the terrorist crisis and shows how terrorism may damage interpersonal, intergroup, and inter-state relationships without helping its perpetrators achieve their policy goals. The study closes with a critical review of policy options, although further research is needed for establishing an early warning system for civilians’ protection in the Sahel.
Looking Ahead of the Wave: Reimagining State Sovereignty in an Era of Climate Crisis
(2022) Moore, Brigit; Hirsch, Susan
Climate change threatens to produce destabilizing impacts across the globe, up to and including violent conflict. If climate change is not sufficiently mitigated, certain states, especially Small Island Developing States (SIDS), may even face the novel situation of state extinction due to disappearing territory, mass migration of citizens, or both. Although scientific studies suggest how climate change will alter environmental conditions across the globe, little is known about how leaders who will have to make critical decisions in this new and potentially cataclysmic context respond to this information. This dissertation seeks to fill this gap by examining how leaders in the Pacific understand and respond to the risks and impacts of climate change as they plan for an uncertain future. More specifically, this research investigates if and how climate change may alter conventional conceptions of statehood and sovereignty. The findings, which emerge from a comparative case study of two Pacific atoll SIDS, Kiribati and Tuvalu, whose existence is most threatened by climate change, show that Pacific leaders work to preserve their state’s existence, not only through climate change mitigation and adaptation strategies, but also by reimagining state sovereignty to include non-Western priorities. One priority is clarifying international law to preserve maritime sovereignty in perpetuity, regardless of the impacts of climate change-induced sea level rise. The second priority is including cultural sovereignty, or the ability to live according to Pacific cultural values within their homelands, as a priority in maintaining state sovereignty. The reimagining of state sovereignty that is emerging from the Pacific in the context of climate change-related uncertainty has broader implications as well. Overall, it may even serve as a starting point for examining how the Western, state-based system might be reconceptualized as the global community contends with an era of climate crisis.
Toward a Broader Theory of Affective Political Polarization and How It Impacts Electoral Regimes
Addison, Douglas Michael; Addison, Douglas Michael; Flores, Thomas
Across the world, a growing number of incumbent political parties are unwilling to ensure inclusive and fair contests for power. This thesis provides insight into how affective political polarization might play a role in this unfortunate contemporary history. The analysis offers a more detailed picture than what is available in the literature of how affective political polarization interacts with various combinations of incumbent-led electoral violence, autocratization, and democratization. At an abstract level, evidence is provided that affective political polarization is correlated with global trends of increasing electoral violence and autocratization at the expense of democratization. More practically, the thesis establishes the beginnings of a broad framework that might explain several common within-country transitions from one combination to another, from one election to the next. Analysts and practitioners may find the framework useful for further thinking about political conflict in electoral regimes.
Peacebuilding Evaluation by Civil Society Organizations in Mindanao: Towards Robust Evaluation of Peacebuilding Programs
(2022) Torres, Wilfredo Magno; Allen, Susan
Peacebuilding and conflict resolution is an exciting field of study and engagement. But trying to find out if peacebuilding efforts are really making a difference is often a tedious and painful process for many project managers and practitioners. This is especially true for peace and conflict resolution projects that operate in real-world conflict and fragile settings as these often pose serious and unique challenges to existing evaluation methodologies. This dissertation investigates the experiences of civil society organizations (CSOs) in evaluating their peacebuilding efforts by exploring their understanding of key evaluation issues and how these relate to peacebuilding and evaluation theory and practice. The central question that frames this study is: How do CSOs working in conflict and fragile settings in Mindanao want to improve evaluation to support peacebuilding efforts in that region? This qualitative study elicits the tacit knowledge of CSOs and their subjective understandings on how they think their peace projects are making a difference in addressing conflicts in their respective contexts, based on how they conduct evaluations. The study gathers data on at least three spheres of CSO endeavor: peacebuilding efforts, evaluation practices, and CSO understanding of key evaluation issues, dimensions, or concepts such as: causation, impact, attribution/ contribution, effectiveness/ success, issue of transfer, complexity, sustainability/ adaptability to change; and the effects on drivers of conflict. Data gathered on these key evaluation issues are used as a set of lenses for guiding the process of inquiry in scrutinizing evaluation approaches and challenges, and the possible improvements to make evaluation more supportive of peacebuilding efforts. The knowledge shared by CSOs based on their own experiences of peacebuilding and doing evaluations, compared with the current state of peacebuilding and evaluation theory, generates new insights that can provide some clarification on the commonly contentious issues in the evaluation of peacebuilding efforts, thereby enriching the peacebuilding and evaluation fields as a whole.
Deconversion as Conflict: The Moral Grammar of Latter-day Saints and Ex-Mormons
Hill, Oakley Thomas; Hill, Oakley Thomas; Simmons, Solon
In religious psychology, deconversion is often studied as an intrapersonal phenomenon, a shift from religious belief to disbelief. But deconversion is at least analogous to (if not coterminous with) social conflict in that both are complex, non-linear social phenomena characterized by destructive relational patterns and protracted social identities. Hence this thesis presents a theory of deconversion as conflict. This theory is informed both by original research and the literatures of religious psychology, peace and conflict studies, and narratology. Original research includes a root narrative analysis of a triangulated dataset—five focus group interviews and a small sample of representative texts from three conflict parties. This includes the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, its current members, and its former members. This analysis demonstrates stark differences in moral grammar that make it difficult for each party to understand the points of view of the other. Who one group sees as a hero, the other sees as a villain; and what one group sees as their primary method of overcoming abuse, the other sees as an abuse of power. These disparate moral systems influence each party to choose resolution strategies such as evangelism and apologetics that fracture their relationship and prevent reconciliation. These findings suggest: a) deconversion transforms the relationships between believers and the newly formed disbeliever, b) evangelism and apologetics are win-lose modes of interaction unfit for the purpose of conflict resolution, and c) a healed relationship between believers and disbelievers will not occur automatically but requires renegotiation.

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