Against All Odds: 2013 Richardson Award to Mats Hammarstr�m and Peter Wallensteen

The institutionalization of peace research has been a tortuous process and it has proven particularly difficult to establish separate departments for peace research in the universities. The Department of Peace and Conflict Research at Uppsala University is a spectacular exception. This article honors two outstanding scholars who made it happen against all odds and who received the 2013 Lewis Fry Richardson Lifetime Achievement Award for their contribution to the scientific study of armed conflict. Peter Wallensteen and Mats Hammarstr�m were awarded the prize for their individual scholarly output but above all for their joint achievement in establishing peace and conflict research at Uppsala University with its two pillars, the Uppsala Conflict Data Program and the training program for young scholars. They have made a lasting contribution to an institution of world-wide renown that pursues research in the scientific tradition of Richardson

The determinants of election to the United Nations Security Council

This is the author's accepted manuscript. The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11127-013-0096-4.The United Nations Security Council (UNSC) is the foremost international body responsible for the maintenance of international peace and security. Members vote on issues of global importance and consequently receive perks—election to the UNSC predicts, for instance, World Bank and IMF loans. But who gets elected to the UNSC? Addressing this question empirically is not straightforward as it requires a model that allows for discrete choices at the regional and international levels; the former nominates candidates while the latter ratifies them. Using an original multiple discrete choice model to analyze a dataset of 180 elections from 1970 to 2005, we find that UNSC election appears to derive from a compromise between the demands of populous countries to win election more frequently and a norm of giving each country its turn. We also find evidence that richer countries from the developing world win election more often, while involvement in warfare lowers election probability. By contrast, development aid does not predict election

The geopolitics of Boko Haram and Nigeria's ‘war on terror’

The April 2014 kidnapping of the schoolgirls at Chibok, north-eastern Nigeria, has meant that Boko Haram is now widely discussed by Western governments and in Western media. Yet within Nigeria the group has been well known for several years. Boko Haram's activities, or actions attributed to the group, have developed in a range of ways, many contradictory, including bombings, kidnappings of Europeans within Nigeria and neighbouring Cameroon, killing of medical personnel, and overtures for dialogue with the Federal Government. There are recurrent reports of links to Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, and in the past few years the United States has taken a much more active role in the region. Some of the wider geopolitical issues relate to the French-led intervention in Mali; a country to which Nigeria has also sent troops. This article tries to disentangle these different questions. It looks first at who Boko Haram are, and their history. It situates the group within the wider context of Nigerian politics, and to discuss the biopolitical and geopolitical elements of their operations and of the actions of the Nigerian security services and other actors towards them. It ends by relating what is happening within and beyond Nigeria to the wider context of the ‘war on terror’

Probing the Links between Political Economy and Non-Traditional Security: Themes, Approaches, and Instruments

This is a pre-print of an article published in International Politics. The definitive publisher-authenticated version of: Hameiri, Shahar, and Lee Jones. "Probing the links between political economy and non-traditional security: Themes, approaches and instruments." International Politics (2015), is available online at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1057/ip.2015.1In recent decades, the security agenda for states and international organisations has expanded dramatically to include a range of ‘non-traditional’, transnational security issues. It is often suggested that globalisation has been a key driver for the emergence or intensification of these problems, but, surprisingly, little sustained scholarly effort has been made to examine the link between responses to the new security agenda and the changing political economy. This curious neglect largely reflects the mutual blind-spots of the sub-disciplines of International Security Studies and International Political Economy, coupled with the dominance of approaches that tend to neglect economic factors. This special issue, which this article introduces, aims to overcome this significant gap. In particular, it focuses on three key themes: the broad relationship between security and the political economy; what is being secured in the name of security, and how this has changed; and how things are being secured – what modes of governance have emerged to manage security problems. In all of these areas, the contributions point to the crucial role of the state in translating shifting state-economy relations to new security definitions and practices

The Elephant in the Room: Off-shore companies, liberalisation and extension of presidential power in DR Congo

In the Democratic Republic of Congo, donors promoted rapid liberalisation and presidential elections in the aftermath of the war, and after two terms, President Kabila has not left office. This article engages with the question of how liberalisation and elections are connected, and how they are related to the extension of presidential power. It finds that the international market for minerals has shaped the domestic political economy but its nature has effectively been ignored in the formulation of donor policy; efforts at regulating trade have been concentrated on due diligence of origin in Congo but have not addressed the secrecy of international trade. Liberalisation has removed control of economic resources from Congo, provided returns for elite politicians and funded violence to control the disenfranchised population. The offshore companies are the elephant in the room; without acknowledging them, analysis of the liberalisation and its interaction with presidential tenure lacks assessment of the opportunities, interests and power that shaped the processes

On Brokers, Biases and Leaving the Veranda : Working with Research Brokers in Political Science Based Field Research

In this paper I critically discuss the pros and cons of working with research brokers from a political science perspective. I do this by sharing my experiences of collaborating with two types of local "fixers" - cultural and communal brokers. I argue that even if similar approaches risk introducing a number of broker-induced biases, countermeasures can be taken to mitigate their effect: e.g. continuous triangulation, interviewing "sleepers" and asking in-depth questions to exclude interviewees who misrepresent themselves. However, researchers must be aware that working with multiple brokers can also generate methodological and ethical challenges that need to be taken into consideration