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The article focuses on the challenges faced by the Osage Nation post-Civil War, including land loss, resource depletion, and conflicts with settlers and other tribes. Topics discussed include Osage livelihood, treaty negotiations, and struggles on their new reservation, highlighting governmental neglect and infringements on Osage rights and lands.

With the rise of ISIS in eastern Syria after 2014, there was a discussion among Western powers about the possibility of arming Arab tribes to lead the fight against ISIS on the ground. This paper challenges the assumption that tribes are cohesive units and argues that internal differences and contested leadership run counter to the image of tribes as unified groups. While tribes are fragmented, one can, however, observe some examples that testify to the existence of tribal solidarity during the course of the Syrian civil war. Overall, this paper attempts to answer the following questions: What caused fragmentation among members of the Syrian tribes during the Syrian Civil War? What inspired cohesion in other instances? It argues that multiple factors, such as violence, patronage networks with internal and external authorities, and competition among leaders to represent the group internally and externally, can have a fundamental effect on the processes of cohesion and fragmentation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study seeks to examine how the Palestinian national ethos was formed based on both primordialism and territorial perceptions. It is based on primary sources—memoirs, public statements, and Palestinian media releases—dating back to the British Mandate for Palestine and examines the use of the basic elements of the ethos: victimhood, victory at all costs, and universal justice. The paper discerns two stages in the process of ethos formation: the first started in the 1910s and ended when the British Mandate was over. The second began after the civil war of 1947–1949 in Palestine. The loss of the Arab-Palestinian side and the consequences of the Nakba has not terminated yet. While the first stage focuses on injustice, the second phase includes all three features of the national ethos. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The book "Southern Europe in the age of revolutions" by Maurizio Isabella explores the political and social changes that occurred in Southern Europe during the 19th century. The author examines the impact of the French Revolution and Napoleonic wars on the region, particularly in Spain, Portugal, and Italy. The book discusses the transformation of civil-military relations, the rise of patriotism, and the debates over constitutional rights and government. It also explores the struggles for independence in the Balkans and the Greek War of Independence. The author emphasizes the complex interplay between revolution and counter-revolution, as well as the diverse motivations and perspectives of different individuals and communities. The book highlights the role of religion, ethnicity, and social class in shaping political movements and conflicts. Overall, the book provides a comprehensive analysis of the political and social dynamics of Southern Europe during this period. [Extracted from the article]

This article employs quantitative critical race theory (QuantCrit), set against a historical context backdrop, to understand key aspects of Black religious engagement and post-college educational pathways. The variables selected for this study illuminate post-graduation outcomes for Black students valued by the Freedmen's Bureau and other similarly focused organizations that coalesced immediately before, during, and shortly after the American Civil War. Data from the 1979-80 National Survey of Black Americans (NSBA) provides the content for an analysis herein of Black Americans engaging in the church following college graduation and their pursuit of advanced degrees. This survey conducted roughly 100 years following the Civil War, has remained influential to policymakers to the present day and allows an opportunity to reflect on today's views on Black education at this sesquicentennial juncture. So doing provides for a reconceptualization of Black post-college success as originally imagined by organizations dedicated to social and educational initiatives for freedmen and remains independent of the metrics that often obscure the landscape and perception of Black post-college success. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article ponders Israeli-Druze relations during Lebanon’s 1983 War of the Mountain in light of derestricted sources pertaining to the Robert C. McFarlane mission in Lebanon. After the assassination of the Lebanese President-elect Bashir Gemayel in September 1982 and the rise to the presidency of his brother Amine, Israel’s relations with Lebanon’s Christians soured. By contrast, Israel’s connections with the Lebanese Druze intensified, and the Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin threatened to establish a “Druze Canton/Israeli Protectorate” in the Shuf-Aley region. Ostensibly, Walid Jumblatt, the leader of the Druze community, allied himself during the Lebanese Civil War with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and Syria. Untapped diplomatic documents show, however, that Jumblatt also courted Israel and developed ties with the Menachem Begin administration. Uri Lubrani, an Israeli official who recruited members of Israel’s Druze community to serve in the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) in the 1950s, played an important role in developing Israel’s ties with Jumblatt. In this paper, I flesh out the dynamics of Israel’s discrete relations with Lebanon’s Druze community and their implications on the trajectory of the Lebanese conflict. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article assesses the agency of UN mediators through a single case-study of the UN mediator in Syria – Staffan de Mistura. Drawing on and contributing to an emerging research agenda, we argue that UN mediators do have significant room of manoeuvre and thus the ability to conceive, negotiate, and execute key mediation policy-decisions. Our analysis bridges the literature on levels of analysis in International Relations (IR) and Foreign Policy Analysis (FPA). We developed a method that uses process-tracing to identify distinct mediation initiatives. We then pinpoint the mediator’s input on the conceptual and operational components of these main pillars of the mediation process. We question the prevailing perspective wherein the individual mediator has become conspicuous by their absence as the research gaze has been geared towards contextual constraints to mediation, the organization employing the mediator, and developing generic guides for good practice in ‘successful’ mediation. We put the study of the mediator’s agency firmly back into the comparative study of mediation, this way strengthening the validity of arguments that mediators’ personalities, skills and their individual characteristics shape their mediation initiatives just as they point up to considerable personal responsibility for which they need to be better held to account. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1542, with the promulgation of the New Laws, Spanish authorities made a greater effort to eliminate indigenous slavery in America, after the doubts expressed by various missionaries about the treatment given to the indigenous people by Spanish settlers. However, legally sanctioned slavery among indigenous people continued in the border regions of the Spanish Empire. My interest is to demonstrate that the persistence of this practice did not result in a legal contradiction, but rather was a means of sanctioning rebellious indigenous groups, using arguments of Francisco de Vitoria and other School of Salamanca scholars, especially in places where control of sovereignty was in question. Methodologically, I will use original texts from various sources, such as the minutes of the Cabildo of the Audiencia of Guadalajara, as well as reports on the Chichimeca War by various clerics and jurists who witnessed the conflict, such as Guillermo de Santa María, Jean Focher, and Fulgencia Vique. Temporally, I will focus on the discussion of war and slavery against the nomadic peoples of northern New Spain, known as the Chichimecas. The result was that, for many New Spanish clerics, slavery would serve to punish the supposed crimes of these peoples against peace, and also to change their archaic customs and teach them sedentary and civil life. Finally, I argue that the establishment of indigenous slavery in the northern frontier of New Spain demonstrates the limitations of the Spanish Empire in maintaining its most remote borders, especially when faced with peoples who did not have a civil political life with definable centers and hierarchies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As an implication of the ethnically and nationally diverse nature of Mediterranean polities, identification-driven boundary-making strategies bear considerable relevance for their political processes, both in the contemporary context and in the historical past. By utilizing a Discourse-Historical Approach (DHA), this study provides an interpretative exploration of Greek-Cypriot elite discursive framing strategies regarding Turkish-Cypriot and Greek-Cypriot ethno-national identity during the Cypriot Civil War (1963–1967). The available historical interpretations of this period lead us to expect an exclusionary strategy of boundary contraction to be more prevalent than the inclusionary one of boundary expansion in the discourse of Greek-Cypriot elites. Through an examination of a sample of primary textual sources, the analysis disconfirms such an expectation, as elite figures primarily constructed broader, inclusive frames of ethno-national identity during the civil war. The relative absence of boundary contraction and the prevalence of boundary expansion indicate the applicability of Wimmer's (2008) universalist approach to ethnic boundary-making, in contrast to the expectations that are built by the Cyprus-specific historical evidence. This study thus lays the groundwork for future research to delineate the discursive framing strategies of elite figures in Cyprus and beyond the ethno-nationally divided island. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The period between 1900 and 1936 was decisive in the evolution of the city of Madrid, certifying its conversion to a modern European capital. However, the urban transformations in these decades were not uniform and led to noticeable contrasts in the investments made in its different socio-spatial areas. This article will focus on understanding the management and administration of these problems by studying the municipal political action by a socialist movement that gradually stepped up its social support until it took over the reins of the local authority before the Civil War. Starting from the analysis of its actions on three fronts (those implemented on the installations in the areas with the greatest deficits in terms of urbanization, in the field of enhancing subsistence, and in educational facilities), this article will seek to show how socialist policy in the Spanish capital took on an urban profile, in line with European ideas, beyond those that traditionally invoked socio-economic goals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Under what conditions do states protect minority rights in a context of domestic resistance? Recent decades have seen rapid divergence on LGBT rights worldwide, with Africa presented as "norms antipreneur" in the face of international pressure. Yet, in 1996, South Africa was the first country in the world to provide constitutional protection on grounds of sexual orientation. This article develops an original theory on LGBT rights protection using a conflict-to-rights framework. Employing process tracing, elite interviews and archival sources, I show how a situation of insurgency allows LGBT activists to build networks and increase egalitarian attitudes to attain in-group status. Continued violence also works to block public participation in policy-making while dividing opposition forces, allowing a tiny group of activists to effectively lobby for change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, the authors discuss a month-long research study where sixth grade students researched three women for the half-century after the U.S. Civil War War that worked to change their respective communities to address public issues: Jane Addams, Clara Lemlich, and Ida B. Wells. The sixth graders read a picture book for each of the three women, and examined primary and secondary sources to explore how each worked to overcome obstacles and advocated for change. They completed a variety of graphic organizers and writing activities using evidence from the primary sources and trade books. We share the findings from students’ graphic organizers and writing activities and provide needed next steps based on the findings from our research study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A critical element in civil wars is military fragmentation. Yet, we have a limited understanding of why military elites fight in civil wars and on what side. In this article I develop a theory of the economic and professional motivations of military elites. I test this theory using the case of West Point graduates in the American Civil War. I argue that in addition to home state, economic and professional interests were a major influence on West Pointers. Graduates with connections to Southern cash crops were less likely to fight for the Union and more likely to fight for the Confederacy. Higher ranking graduates were more likely to fight for both sides, as they were better positioned to compete for promotion. I test this argument using a new dataset of more than 1000 West Point graduates' wartime allegiances and antebellum careers and find strong evidence in support of my expectations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On May 28, 1794, a criminal investigation that had begun almost a month before concluded with the execution of sixty-three men and women, the imprisonment of fifteen more, and a few days later the destruction of an entire village. This article examines the burning of Bédoin, the crime that provoked it, and the judicial process that accompanied it, to explore the relationship between criminal cause and punitive effect during the Terror of year II. As a case study in revolutionary justice, this episode appears extreme, but this article argues that it allows us to interrogate the meanings that ordinary revolutionaries attached to terms like crime and complicity when the survival of the state seemed at stake. In looking beyond the Terror to the controversies that enveloped this village's destruction, this article also examines the aftermath of atrocity to consider how a society comes to terms with crime when both the definition of criminality and the identity of the criminal are in flux. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the winter of 1845–6 the United States Army languished on the border waiting for an opportunity to provoke what would be the Mexican–American War, or, as the Mexicans would come to call it, La Intervención Americana. To break the dull monotony, the army turned to theatre. In January, Second Lieutenant Ulysses S. Grant was cast as Desdemona in a production staged for the troops and the local community. Grant would later be the victorious general in the Civil War and the eighteenth president of the United States from 1869 to 1877. He was not yet that person. In 1846 he was a twenty-four-year-old, newly commissioned officer, only three years out of the US Military Academy. His peers, a cohort of junior officers who would become the senior military leadership on both sides of the Civil War, were also actors in the production, as well as its producers. The anecdote is humorous in large part because the Grant of national record and memory is the least Desdemona-like figure anyone can conceive. It has been repeated multiple times across the nineteenth century and still holds in the imagination almost two hundred years later. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contemporary studies of civil conflict focus heavily on combatant treatment of civilians. Research on human rights (HR) abuses committed by states has benefitted from several widely available datasets on state violations. By comparison, researchers and policymakers have been limited by a dearth of data on violations committed by rebel groups. We introduce a new resource, the Rebel Human Rights Violations (RHRV) dataset, which measures the frequency with which rebel groups engage in eight HR abuses. The data include information for all rebel groups around the world between 1990 and 2018, and capture a wide range of violations, including arbitrary killing, detention, forced recruitment, property damage, torture, sexual violence, forced displacement and movement restriction. The RHRV provides new opportunities for researchers and policymakers to analyze an important aspect of civil conflict: the abuse of civilian populations by rebel groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article introduces the Women's Activities in Armed Rebellion (WAAR) project, a multi-methods project that includes a cross-sectional dataset of women's participation in more than 370 organizations fighting in civil conflicts between 1946 and 2015. The dataset features 22 measures of women's participation in rebel organizations: it includes prevalence and presence measures of women's participation in combat, non-combat and leadership roles; details on all-female units within groups (and their primary focus – combat or support activities); and presence measures for types of support work (disaggregated into clandestine work, outreach to civilian populations and logistical support) and types of leadership activities (military or non-military) that women contribute. The WAAR project also includes a detailed, qualitative assessment of women's involvement in each organization, comprising an approximately 360-page handbook of female rebel participation in the post-WWII period. This article describes the WAAR project and suggests avenues for future research leveraging these data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

East Africa presents striking examples of the different ways in which states may seek to promote forgetting through control or suppression of memories of mass violence. In Rwanda, the 1994 genocide is intensively memorialized, yet violence committed by the ruling party is not part of the official history. In Burundi, a power-sharing deal to end a civil war led to the erasure of memory through deliberate neglect. In Kenya, sites of terrorist violence have been fortified and reopened in the name of resilience—a form of triumphalist amnesia. Yet in each country, citizens practice informal varieties of commemoration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How does civilian protest shape civil war dynamics? Existing research shows that civilian protests against violence and war contribute to peace and restrain violence against civilians. There is less research on civilian protests that are at odds with peaceful conflict resolution, such as protests to salute armed actors, advocate against peace agreements, and oppose peacekeepers. This study develops a novel typology of wartime civilian protest that brings together protests to different ends, and theorizes the heterogeneous effects of protest on civil war dynamics. Using quantitative and qualitative evidence from new disaggregated and georeferenced event data from Côte d'Ivoire, the study demonstrates that—contingent on certain demands—protests were associated with violence against civilians, violence involving peacekeepers, and failed conflict resolution. These findings contribute new knowledge on how civilians shape the dynamics of civil war, and caution that nonviolent civilian action may not only be a force for de-escalation and peace. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Algerian military's response to the 2019–2020 Hirak protests was relatively peaceful. In contrast to its violent repression of protests in 1988, and subsequent coup and civil war in the 1990s, the military showed considerable restraint toward the Hirak. Leveraging a survey of 2,235 self-reported military personnel, I show that the military's restraint emanated from protesters' use of nonviolence and fraternization, as well as from a recognition that the military's more repressive approach in the 1990s was a mistake. At the same time, a priming experiment suggests that the military's willingness to repress increases when protesters threaten the military's corporate interests, and when Russia, Algeria's primary arms supplier, reiterates its support for the regime. Overall, the results show how protester tactics, international reactions, and political learning can condition the military's repression or restraint during times of unrest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the effect rebel women have on the shape of civil war peace agreements, paying particular attention to the specific gender-inclusive provisions female rebels advocate for. I argue that, through conflict experiences and socialization, rebel women develop group identities that foster collective demands. Their identities as fighters and women from marginalized groups encourage rebel women to lobby for provisions that address the grievances of women from these societal groups. Using data on women's participation in conflict and the terms written into contemporary peace agreements, I find support for this contention. Greater participation of female combatants is associated with an increased likelihood of observing gender-inclusive agreement provisions calling for the inclusion of women from marginalized groups and addressing the specific post-conflict needs of female ex-combatants. This study is one of the first to show that women's participation in rebellion matters for the shape of post-conflict peace. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The three‐decade‐long Sri Lankan civil war between the Government of Sri Lanka (GoSL) and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (the LTTE, also known as the Tamil Tigers) came to an end following a major GoSL offensive in May 2009, which resulted in GoSL claiming a "victor's peace." The war caused the death of around 80,000 to 100,000 people and internally and externally displaced hundreds of thousands. During the three decades, five attempts at formal peace processes were initiated, all of which ended unsuccessfully. This paper identifies the root causes of the Sri Lankan civil war using the social cubism analysis by Byrne and Carter (Peace and Conflict Studies, 1996, 3, 5). It then examines two of the five formal negotiations, namely the Indo‐Lanka Agreement of 1987 and the Wickramasinghe‐LTTE agreement in 2002. Finally, it explores an alternative approach to building peace in Sri Lanka using the multimodal approach by Byrne and Keashly (International Peacekeeping, 2000, 3, 97) utilizing the nested paradigm, and the time dimension of peacebuilding by Building Peace: Sustainable Reconciliation in Divided Societies (1997). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A burgeoning body of research examines how women's inclusion influences civil war peace processes. While scholars note that women's inclusion can positively affect peace, the theoretical mechanisms remain underexamined. This article begins to address this lacuna by examining how female rebels affect the probability of peace talks. We propose that women's inclusion directly affects the likelihood a rebel group participates in negotiations with the state by increasing its propensity to cooperate and compromise. Our analysis of 112 African rebel groups fighting in civil wars between 1989 and 2014 finds that women's participation in rebel groups affects the likelihood of negotiation onset. We analyze the mechanism driving this relationship and find that rebel groups with women members are more likely to issue negotiation requests to the government. These findings offer nuance to the women-and-peace hypothesis and demonstrate that even women with higher propensities toward violence can be a force for peace. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on something not previously addressed by the literature, labour inspection in Spain in the first decades of the Franco dictatorship. Despite the Franco dictatorship's fascist-style approach of regulatory interventionism, this research shows a relapse into an abstentionist conception of labour inspection that led to worker vulnerability. The study has not only found, as was already known, normative similarities with the contemporaneous Italian and German dictatorships, but also similar (although more severe) limitations to the functioning of the inspection service. The slight improvement registered from 1947 onwards and the effort to achieve a limited equivalence with Western democracies also failed to notably improve working conditions, occupational safety and worker protection. The Labour Inspectorate suffered from understaffing and a lack of resources up to the very end of the dictatorship, something which the incipient democracy then inherited. These human and material resource shortages continue to be a problem and are currently debated in Spain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why do some insurgent groups escalate violence to higher-intensity insurgencies or civil war? We explore this question among 140 insurgent groups worldwide across various thresholds of armed conflict. We argue that the main drivers of escalation are insurgent networks and domestic resource mobilization. Findings show that territorial control and engagement in criminal activities to finance operations are key factors associated with insurgent-inflicted battle deaths. The number of insurgent alliances, however, is the strongest determinant of higher-intensity armed conflicts. State counterinsurgency strategies also play an important role. Many of these insights support an exploratory look at rising insurgent violence in West Africa's Sahel region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Democratic transitions, franchise extensions, and civil war settlements can often be seen as power-sharing agreements in which opposing factions try to use institutional structures to 'lock in' the terms of a settlement. But the commitment power inherent in institutions varies. When the institutional environment is weak and credibility is low, it is difficult for a powerful elite to tie its hands and give up power. This article studies a window-of-opportunity model in which an enfranchised elite faces a periodic threat. Institutional weakness is parameterized in terms of the elite's marginal return to trying to undermine a power-sharing agreement. The analysis shows that (i) bargaining breaks down if the overall institutional environment is too weak and why it does; (ii) equilibrium agreements share more power with the opposition when the institutional environment is weak; (iii) there is a non-monotonic relation between power sharing and how often the opposition poses a threat; and (iv) power sharing is path dependent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that one of Ireland's literary greats Frank O'Connor (1903–1966) utilized the Irish War of Independence (WOI) as a backdrop for "Guests of the Nation," one of the most famous works about the Irish revolutionary period. The 1931 short story is set during the Irish WOI (1919–1921). This essay, however, wishes to explore the notion that a subsequent but separate conflict—the Irish Civil War (1922–1923)—was at the forefront of O'Connor's mind at the time of writing, with concepts of duty, brotherhood, and the questioning of hegemonic military codes suggesting the Civil War undercurrent throughout. Although the cast of characters presented in the story includes two captured English soldiers, Belcher and Hawkins (as well as their Irish captors Bonaparte—the narrator—Noble, and Jeremiah Donovan), the cottage and its inhabitants function, for the writer, as a literary prop that acts as a free landscape to create a "better world." This, it is argued here, allowed O'Connor to articulate his primary thoughts around the societal influences formed during the Civil War, a conflict of which, in contrast to the WOI, the writer had direct experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Between 1276 and 1318, English magnates unsuccessfully attempted to establish a lordship in the Irish kingdom of Thomond, southwestern Ireland, by exploiting a dynastic feud dividing the then-ruling lineage, the Uí Bhriain. The conflict coincided with a series of extreme events that beset western Europe in the late 13th and early 14th centuries, such as the beginning of the Little Ice Age and the Great European Famine of 1315–1322. The goal of this work was to evaluate to the extent to which economic degradation at the turn of the 14th century affected the outcome of the war. The hypothesis that such degradation affected the war's outcome was tested using agent-based modeling, which involved the virtual reconstruction of Late Medieval Thomond to study past conditions by proxy. This article describes the historical research carried out to elaborate the conceptual model, the implementation of the model as a computer simulation, and the experiments carried out to virtually explore the Uí Bhriain Civil War. A quantitative analysis of the experimental results revealed some correlation between late 13th century economic degradation and the fortunes of belligerent factions in the wars of 1276–1318, although the effect was not sufficiently strong to have been a crucial factor in the outcome of the conflict. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Successful peacekeeping depends heavily on the conflict parties providing unrestricted consent to the intervention. Consent is, however, often withheld or limited by one or more parties who calculate a higher cost to peace than to continued fighting. We highlight the role of international economic incentives in the form of foreign development aid in overcoming hurdles to obtaining consent. We argue that past aid sends a credible signal of future, post-conflict material benefits if the belligerents work toward peace. This conditionality of future benefits thereby incentivizes the belligerents to work toward peace and stability, including providing unrestricted consent to peacekeeping missions. Analyses of 119 post-Cold War civil wars and a brief narrative of East Timor demonstrate that foreign aid significantly and substantially increases the likelihood of unrestricted consent. The findings have implications for the literature on international influences on domestic political contestation and for research on the effectiveness of peacekeeping operations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examinations the nexus between creativity and teacher identity in post-war peacebuilding. It aims to understand how infusing creativity into teacher preparation geared towards peacebuilding can help language educators reflect on their identities, values and their roles in bridging a fragmented society at the end of a war. Drawing on data generated from a visual ethnography carried out in the aftermath of Sri Lanka's civil war, one of the longest civils wars in recent history, this study explores the power of self-generated identity portraits in helping teachers to visualise their identities as second language educators. This paper highlights the potential of creativity and creative approaches to teacher education to help teachers articulate their identities, expectations, responsibilities towards their learners and challenges they face. The paper highlights the power of creative approaches to meaning making, especially in tapping into identities that are otherwise hidden and the need be for teachers to be included in larger discussions on educational reforms towards peace. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While United Nations (UN) peacekeeping operations are increasingly deployed during ongoing violent conflict, they are also increasingly staffed with civilian personnel tasked with peacebuilding at the local level. How does violent conflict affect civilian peacekeepers' peacebuilding efforts locally? Shifting the research focus from military to civilian peacekeepers, we argue that the latter have various incentives and the capacity to concentrate their local-level peacebuilding efforts in violence-affected areas. We test our argument using novel, georeferenced data on peacebuilding by "Civil Affairs" personnel of the peacekeeping operation in the Central African Republic. Consistent with our expectation, violence positively correlates with civilian peacekeepers' peacebuilding interventions both within and across localities. Furthermore, mediation analyses suggest that this correlation is not merely due to greater UN military deployments in violence-affected areas. Instrumental variable regression supports a causal interpretation: violence leads to more efforts by civilian peacekeepers. These findings inform expectations and assessments of peacekeeping effectiveness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Vanni: A Family's Struggle through the Sri Lankan Conflict (2019), is an ethnographic novel about the Sri Lankan civilians who were caught between the army and the LTTE during the final months of the Civil War. The novel is read in the light of Butler's concepts of precarity, grievability and alternate frames to demonstrate how the affordances of the graphic novel negotiate the representation of trauma, loss and vulnerability of refugeehood, in order to provide for alternate frames that make visible those lives that have been deemed losable and ungrievable by the mainstream narratives. The paper analyses how Vanni, through its participatory methodology and 'distillate fiction' (Dix and Kaur 2019, 33), becomes a 'human document' (Stott 1986, 8) that contributes to an attitudinal change in the perception of the Sri Lankan refugees. It may be noted that one of the authors is a practising cartoonist whose graphic intervention, which involves the perspectival revision of a selected panel, provides a way of conducting the argument in the paper. The leverage of praxis allows the author to pick the affordances of the frame and analyse how the suppression or expression of the elements of visuality contributes to the totality of the message. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why is it that some governments ending a civil war in a negotiated settlement succeed in reducing military spending while others fail? Civil wars ending in peace agreements result in relatively low military expenditures; however, not all governments succeed in the reduction. I argue that implementing a third-party verification mechanism of peace accords helps reduce military spending in post-conflict societies because the verification mechanism facilitates the peace accord implementation by enabling reciprocal implementation and by increasing the cost of noncompliance through active information flow. Implementation of peace agreements reduces threats posed by both former and outside rebel groups. This makes the government decrease the military expenditure allocated to appease internal security threats. I tested this argument using 32 civil wars with a comprehensive peace agreement between 1992 and 2011. The results indicate that initiating a verification mechanism leads to lower military spending. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the connections between Switzerland and America that led to the development of the Vetterli infantry rifle. Using primary archival research, it shows why the Swiss Army was so keen to dispose of obsolete rifles and examines trade catalogues and other press resources to show how the Vetterli gained a 'second life' as a civilian weapon in North America. Finally, it uses recent archaeological evidence to show that the weapon became part of a wider 'firearms culture' and saw use in the largest armed revolt in America since the Civil War; the fight that became known as the 'Battle of Blair Mountain'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses three books that provide new perspectives on the history and development of race science. "Brown Skins, White Coats" by Projit Bihari Mukharji explores the concept of race beyond visible markers and focuses on seroanthropology. "Medicine, Science, and Making Race in Civil War America" by Leslie A. Schwalm examines how race science became institutionalized during the Civil War. "Masters of Health" by Christopher D. E. Willoughby explores the role of race science in the establishment of formal medical education in the United States. These books shed light on the global construction of race and its impact on social and political structures. [Extracted from the article]

Despite alarming predications about the Covid 19 pandemic that appear to fit the literature on the impact of natural disasters on civil wars, there are reasons to be suspicious that a rise in militant violence would likely occur quickly or uniformly. Although the COVID-19 pandemic is most definitely a disaster that caught the world by surprise, this "slow-rolling" shock differs in important ways from the more commonly studied acute onset natural disasters such as earthquakes, hurricanes, and tsunamis that often increase violent competition among groups for scarce resources. Instead, the effects of slow-rolling disasters unfold in phases that, at least in the short run, are likely to encourage a period of relative decline in violence, as actors try and assess the effects of COVID-19 on their organization and their opponents. Both statistical and qualitative evidence from the initial months of the COVID-19 pandemic supports the initial phases of our theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What explains civilian victimization during civil war? Existing scholarship claims that violence against civilians is driven primarily by competition between armed actors. We argue that this explanation neglects a crucial cause of civilian victimization: in communities they rule, armed groups employ systematic violence against civilians to establish and sustain social order. Drawing on original microlevel quantitative data from Colombia, we show that areas controlled by a sole armed actor experience high levels of victimization, while places where multiple actors jointly govern exhibit significantly less violence. To explain this pattern, we draw on evidence from original interviews, focus groups, and secondary sources. We show that armed groups employ violence to govern areas they control and enact social order. But this violence is checked when multiple groups rule jointly: the factors that sustain pacted rule disincentivize victimization. These results have implications for theories of political order, violence, and governance by non-state actors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rebels that fight near or capture cities gain more concessions from the government than those that remain in the periphery. Yet, not all groups challenge urban centers. Previous scholarship expects rebel strength to explain this strategic decision. However, weak rebel groups challenge cities, too. Our approach focuses on the conflict process more broadly. We argue that as the network of rebels challenging the government increases, opposition groups become more likely to attack cities as either they become emboldened, given the government's disadvantage in multi-front wars, or they are propelled to strategic and resource centers in competition with the other groups. Statistical analysis of all African conflicts from 1989-2009 strongly supports this logic, while an exploration of most typical cases highlights each of these mechanisms in practice. This project thus links literature on civil war tactics and conflict contagion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 1994 Rwandan genocide transformed the leadership of the Anglican Church in a way that mirrored the ethnic divides that had precipitated the genocide itself. This transition was effected through a church conflict that unfolded in the midst of a cataclysmic civil war. Understanding the nature of the conflict and leadership transition illuminates the way in which African church identity is constructed as a result of an interplay between local, regional and global actors. The post-genocide conflict in the diocese of Kigali is studied at particular length to indicate the ways in which these actors each sought position and influence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Civil wars are complex in ways that challenge effective resolution. Civil war actors tend to be dynamic in nature and often splinter then coalesce over time potentially evolving into multiple dyads pitted against their government. Previous work has demonstrated that when multiple rebel factions emerge, civil wars tend to be longer in duration as satisfying multiple factions tends to be more challenging. However, governments may choose to pursue dyadic agreements hoping to end the conflict either through subsequent dyadic negotiations or through more targeted military tactics focusing intently on the remaining faction(s). This study suggests that which dyads will be excluded from the peace is predictable, but also seeks to better understand what happens to those excluded factions that hedge their bets to continue the fight. Propositions are tested on all civil war peace agreements between 1945-2013. Key findings indicate the importance of political power-sharing provision and third-party assistance in bringing excluded groups into the fold. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses three books that address the challenges of peacebuilding and post-conflict state-building. The first book, "Governing Security After War" by Louis-Alexandre Berg, focuses on the role of political will in successful institutional interventions. The second book, "Western Intervention and Informal Politics" by Troels Burchall Henningsen, explores the complexities of state-building and the influence of informal political networks. The third book, "Peacebuilding in Africa" edited by Kelechi A. Kalu and George Klay Kieh Jr., examines the difficulties of international intervention in achieving sustainable peace in African countries. These books highlight the importance of understanding the interactions between formal and informal institutions and the role of actors within those institutions in achieving successful peacebuilding outcomes. [Extracted from the article]

Although the Declaration of Independence stated that "[a]ll men are created equal," due to the institution of slavery, this statement was not to be grounded in law in the U.S until after the Civil War. Often, American blacks looked to the courts to protect important social values and when the courts ruled in favor, there was always a backlash and resistance to judicial fiat. This paper makes a historical analysis of the South's response to judicial social change. For instance, when Brown v. Board of Education of Tepeka was decided in 1954, school boards in portions of the country actively resisted the court mandated school integration. Thus, the paper argues that social change should be a gradual process and not a forced enterprise by the courts or indeed, any governmental structure since an assertive judiciary can spark a political and cultural backlash that may hurt, more than help, progressive values. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]