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Introduction
Skills and Expertise
Publications
Publications (104)
This paper focuses on the connection between civil war violence and post-war criminal homicides. This paper finds that past civil war violence intensity and presence of armed groups in a community increases the level of criminal homicides three, five, and ten years later. These findings are based on our statistical regression analysis of subnationa...
The testimonial process at international war crimes tribunals is dominated by legal standards and institutional hierarchies that can mute the complexities of “bearing witness”. This chapter examines the intersections of testimony, culture, and trauma that witnesses and conflict survivors face when called to testify and highlights four areas (do no...
We know that civil wars have negative and long-term consequences for public trust in state institutions. However, few studies have examined the post-peace challenges of rebuilding trust in state institutions. In this study, we utilise the case of Colombia to explore the impact of civil wars on the institutional trust of the police. We find that per...
One critical challenge facing postconflict societies concerns the reintegration of former combatants as productive members of society. Public trust in the legitimacy of a peace agreement is a critical component of rebuilding the economic and social foundations of a war‐torn nation. We argue that the levels of trust of former combatants and confiden...
In recent years there has been increasing interest in the interactions and relationships between victims of armed conflict and former members of armed nonstate actors. For many survivors, a critical element of restoration and repair is coming to terms with the violence that was visited upon them. At the same time, many of those who took part in act...
There is an ever-expanding system of international criminal justice in which the concern for fairness is equally as powerful as it is in domestic criminal justice systems, but considerably more fraught with political baggage. The goal of our paper is to develop a model of individual evaluations of fairness of an international court and subject our...
In this paper, we focus on the completion of a government reintegration program in Colombia for former non-state armed actors, such as rebel forces and militias, in the post-conflict period. As the members of these groups lay down their arms and return to a peaceful existence, the effectiveness of their transition to ‘normal’ lives can be critical...
This paper develops an account of the relationship between language endangerment and conflict violence by combining insights from the fields of political science and linguistics. We develop a theoretical account of the manner in which the violence and disruption of community life jeopardizes the viability of communities that speak endangered langua...
Objective
As peace agreements have increasingly been put to a popular vote in places such as Northern Ireland, South Sudan, and Colombia, there is a corresponding practical and theoretical interest in understanding what factors influence public opinion toward the peace? We contend that support for peace in Colombia, as in other postwar contexts, is...
Chapter 13 examines micro-level components shaping the witness experience. It develops a model of procedural justice to examine witness perceptions about the search for historical truth and justice. Based on extensive survey data from witnesses who testified before the International War Crimes Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, the study evaluates...
Individuals internally displaced by conflict are a prominent feature of wars, political violence and other forms of repression. We suggest that a subnational analysis of internally displaced person (IDP) generation can help us determine the extent to which more specific flight-precipitating factors can account for individuals’ behaviors. In particu...
In the aftermath of war and large-scale violence, how can nations function as societies? How can people learn to live together again? Or, have the foundations of trust, civility, and predictability upon which fully functioning societies depend been irrevocably damaged? If we want to understand why reconciliation does or does not take root, we must...
We propose that linguists and political scientists develop an interdisciplinary and ethical research strategy for studying the relationships between language endan-germent and political conflict. A leading cause of language endangerment is political violence driven by outside actors who expropriate land, extract resources, and displace individuals,...
It is a central assumption of our research that threats to a fragile security and violence can continue during postconflict peacebuilding and that these threats are driven by many of the same sociopolitical dynamics that initially led to war. We examine a critical but much less queried area of postwar societal instability—violence directed at segme...
For decades a bitter civil war between the Colombia government and armed insurgent groups tore apart Colombian society. After protracted negotiations in Havana, a peace agreement was accepted by the Colombian government and the FARC rebel group in 2016. This volume will provide academics and practitioners throughout the world with critical analyses...
States have long employed other actors, including other states and nonstate actors, as fighting forces to help them achieve the national security objectives that they are unwilling or incapable of realizing unilaterally. In the international courts in recent years, however, there has been the increasing willingness to hold individuals accountable f...
The Bosnian War Crimes Chamber was established to adjudicate cases of violations of international law by lower-ranking individuals in Bosnia-Herzegovina, who were not prosecuted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (icty). One of the most critical issues facing this Court, however, is whether its justice is unbiased by t...
Intersections exist regarding how institutions and individuals respond in the wake of mass violence, and we explore one theoretical perspective: resilience—the ability to overcome in the face of adversity. By controlling for the institutional context, we analyze the microlevel impact of testifying on witnesses who testify. New survey data provide i...
This book provides the most comprehensive and scientific assessment to date of what it means to appear before war crimes tribunals. This ground-breaking analysis, conducted with the cooperation of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) Victims and Witnesses Section, examines the positive and negative impact that testif...
This book demonstrates how, after many years of inactivity after the World War II tribunals, judges at the Yugoslav, Rwanda and Sierra Leone tribunals, and to a lesser extent the International Criminal Court, have seized the opportunity to develop international law on war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. Meernik and Aloisi argue that j...
Domestic Politics and International Human Rights Tribunals: The Problem of Compliance. By Hillebrecht Courtney . New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014. 208p. $93.00 cloth, $32.99 paper. - Volume 14 Issue 4 - James Meernik
The Pilot Study consists of a five part survey instrument involving 220+ questions and 15 - 20 minute interview evaluating witness’ background and reasons for testifying; socio-economic impact of testifying; security concerns; physical and psychological health and well-being; and perceptions about justice and the ICTY. Surveys were administered by...
International law is an evolving body of jurisprudence characterized by ambiguities, gaps, and lack of precedent. I argue that the propensity of the prosecution or the defense to emerge victorious on issues on appeal will depend on the legal issues they raise. I introduce a new database on the outcomes of every extant appeal filed by both the prose...
Key to the success of peacebuilding and social reconstruction in the former Yugoslavia are the attitudes of these young people. Our goal in this paper is to explore young people’s attitudes about the prospects of reconciliation vis-a-vis those with whom their nations were formerly at war. In particular, we examine three sets of factors. First, we c...
Objectives
To assess the impact of the gender of judges, prosecution attorneys, and defense lawyers on sentencing decisions at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY).
Methods
We use regression modeling of all sentences handed down by the ICTY and test for the impact of gender with direct measures of the numbers and pe...
Research on human rights treaties has mostly reached depressingly similar conclusions – that such treaties and their resulting institutions have little or no impact on human rights. The International Criminal Court, however, possesses significant power to investigate and prosecute violations of international law that equip it with potentially more...
Most observers of the International Criminal Court (icc), as well as the several ad hoc tribunals have argued that one of the greatest challenges facing these institutions is their lack of power to enforce their indictments and apprehend suspects. In view of the justifiable concern with the ability of international courts to secure the detention of...
Despite the fact that international courts have proven popular in the last 20 years, systematic and empirical inquiry to determine whether they are beginning to realize their objectives is a fairly recent phenomenon. Support among the publics in the affected countries is critical to their success for, as deGuzman writes, ‘… the globalization of com...
The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) was created by the United Nations Security Council in 1993 to advance a number of goals including providing justice, deterring human rights atrocities and advancing peace. We investigate the impact of the ICTY on another goal – reconciliation – that lies at the convergence of just...
The International Criminal Court (icc) came into force in July 2002 with the potential to drastically alter both the war fighting and peacemaking behavior of states. The icc is designed to try and subsequently punish those found guilty of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide. Supporters of the icc have argued that its establishment wil...
Theories abound as to why states consent to international courts, but little research has examined how individuals decide which justice options-local trials, international trials or other transitional justice options-are the preferred venue for settling violations of international law. We demonstrate that not only do individuals hold organized and...
I examine the correlates and consequences of plea bargains at the ad hoc international criminal tribunals. I first examine the prevalence of those factors that are associated with the occurrence of plea bargains in order to better understand the circumstances under which they occur. I analyse whether certain types of case characteristics appear to...
The Realities of the International Criminal Justice System takes an analytical and critical look at the impact of the major instruments of international criminal justice since the 1990s with the advent of the International Criminal Tribunals for Rwanda and Yugoslavia. © 2013 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. All rights reserved.
The American president’s foreign policy agenda represents a complex mix of policy preferences driven both by necessity and choice. It would seem that, given the ability of other actors to substantially influence the nature of the president’s foreign policy agenda, and given the president’s own limited time, attention and expertise, the president’s...
The interested reader who will bear with us through a rather non-traditional analysis of media coverage of the U.S. Presidency will hopefully be enlightened and entertained. We provide analysis of television media coverage of presidential events where there is some possibility of scandal or incompetence, but where there is an absence of direct evid...
The International Criminal Court (ICC) has the legal power to issue arrest warrants, but not the political power to arrest. Rather, it must rely on other national and international actors to enforce these requests. All the actors—the ICC, the suspected war criminals, and the key state actors—in these high stakes dramas involving the apprehension of...
The legitimacy of the International Criminal Court and especially public acceptance of its actions will be crucial to its success in apprehending suspects, conducting fair trials and garnering the support it needs in the international community. I contend that individual opinions about the ICC will be anchored in the degree to which the Court is se...
Given the myriad of human rights abuses that occur globally and daily, why are some nations on the receiving end of a substantial amount of international opprobrium, while others receive far less attention and condemnation? The authors contend that the increasing presence of human rights organizations in such states is the critical link between the...
I argue that decision-making processes by the president and the national security establishment and a conception of past US military operations as credibility-establishing precedents for future US military actions have tended to result in a fixation on political developments occurring in a relatively small number of nations. Together, these foreign...
Objective. I develop a theory of judicial decision making at the international tribunals regarding the punishment of those who have committed violations of international law. Previous research has found and criticized inconsistent sentencing at the tribunals, but I argue that we can explain such sentences through a theoretical framework that outlin...
The establishment of the International Criminal Court presents nation-states with a fairly novel opportunity to demonstrate their commitment to international humanitarian law, or to signal their displeasure with its development and the risks it poses to their sovereignty and foreign policies. The aim of this paper is to analyze the incentive struct...
This chapter conceptualizes the ICTY as a judicial institution whose justice affects international and local (former Yugoslavia) sets of stakeholders. If an evaluation is to be conducted on the impact of the ICTY, the competing tensions and difficulties the Tribunal faces in advancing its mission given the diverse interests of these constituencies...
Scholars posit that the strategic interests of the United States condition the receipt of humanitarian aid; however, we argue that the concept of strategic interests is not well defined in the literature and therefore not well operationalized. We first address this issue with a simple conceptual framework - United States security hierarchy - that w...
We analyze whether international criminal tribunals and domestic human rights trials can play an important role in peacebuilding in post-conflict societies. Advocates and scholars argue that by providing justice and truth, helping to remove war criminals and peace spoilers from their societies, and by contributing to deterrence, these institutions...
Rescuing American CitizensPeacekeeping MissionsThe Promotion of DemocracyBibliography
The establishment of the International Criminal Court presents nation-states with a fairly novel opportunity to demonstrate their commitment to international humanitarian law, or to signal their displeasure with its development and the risks it poses to their sovereignty and foreign policies. The aim of this paper is to analyze the incentive struct...
Suspected war criminals who remain at large can do great damage to post-conflict, peace-building efforts. I develop a model of war criminal apprehension predicated on the behavior of international actors to alter the cost/benefit calculus of suspected war criminals and their supporters and make them either more susceptible to capture or make them m...
We develop a theory of foreign policy voting in the Senate premised on the assumption that foreign policy programs are a mostly collective good whose costs and benefits accrue to all, but which generate insufficient political benefits to make such policies politically popular, and often make it difficult for senators to support presidents. While ce...
Since the 1970s, and especially again since the attacks of September 11, 2001, a considerable body of literature has addressed the nature, causes, and consequences of the relative decline of United States power. Of particular interest is research that suggests the US is guilty of the same kind of imperial overstretch that brought down the Spanish i...
US presidents have used military force short of war many times since World War II. While some military operations are finished in a fairly brief period of time, such as the evacuation of US citizens from an unstable foreign capital, other deployments may last much longer, as the US military is charged with accomplishing more ambitious foreign polic...
Objective. The objective of this article is to explain judicial decision making at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia by analyzing the impact of individual, national, and international factors.
Methods. We use regression and probit analysis of data on the verdicts and sentences handed down by the judges.
Results. We find...
In recent years, scholars studying U.S. foreign policy and the diversionary use of force have begun to focus more attention on when foreign regimes time crises with the U.S. Many argue that U.S. domestic conditions play a role in this. I argue that these models should take into consideration the foreign policy relationship between foreign governmen...
The reconstruction and maintenance of peaceful communities in the aftermath of conflicts is one of the most critical areas of concern for both policymakers and scholars. This article examines explanations of the level of societal peace - the degree of conflict and/or cooperation in a society - and the extent to which internationally provided justic...
This article examines the effects of civil wars on economies. The “war renewal” school of thought maintains that wars can produce beneficial effects as they improve efficiency in the economy, especially by reducing the power of special interests, bring technological innovation, and advance human capital. The “war ruin” school of thought sees mostly...
With the creation of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY), the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) and the International Criminal Court (ICC), the international community has taken the most decisive steps yet to reach inside the state to protect individuals from and prosecute individuals for violations...
This article explores the conditions under which Congress supports U.S. involvement in international affairs. While Presidents have tended to support internationalist foreign policies, Congress, pre-occupied with district and state-level concerns, has shown more reticence in this area. Probit analysis was used to study internationalist, presidentia...
This article explores the conditions under which Congress supports U.S. involvement in international affairs. While Presidents have tended to support internationalist foreign policies, Congress, pre-occupied with district and state-level concerns, has shown more reticence in this area. Probit analysis was used to study internationalist, presidentia...
Given the importance of violent conflicts and their consequences in global politics, the increasing attention paid to rebuilding conflict-stricken nations by the major powers, and the growing interest in scholarship on these phenomena, theory-building and empirical analysis of post-conflict economic assistance are essential. This article analyzes t...
The pronouncements of punishment for war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) will be among its most important legacies for international law and international relations. The purpose of our research is to examine the judges' opinions on the determinants of punishment a...
The author investigates the allegation that international criminal trials are only legalistic exercises that cloak a victor's justice rather than forums for an "equality of arms" between the accused and the prosecution that can provide even-handed justice. Several of the cases involving criminal defendants decided by international courts are analyz...
The development of fair and impartial criteria for judging those accused of international crimes is one of the most critical issues facing the international community and the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY). Are the resources, experience, and moral force so weighted in favor of the international community that the a...
The diversionary hypothesis, that leaders use force to distract publics from suffering economies and declining performance, has been explored in numerous articles and books. Despite this attention, the empirical evidence is often contradictory Some argue there is little evidence of diversionary behavior, while others find significant relationships...
The diversionary hypothesis, that leaders use force to distract publics from suffering economies and declining performance, has been explored in numerous articles and books. Despite this attention, the empirical evidence is often contradictory Some argue there is little evidence of diversionary behavior, while others find significant relationships...
We develop a model of public evaluations of U.S. foreign policies that emphasizes the role of core values and informational cues as a means to explain how the public renders judgments on complex issues. We argue that the public will most fundamentally be concerned with presidential success in maintaining U.S. peace and security and will rely heavil...
While the literature on the political use of military force by the USA has undergone tremendous growth in recent years, one crucial feature of this foreign policy activity has not been modeled - the conditions that give rise to the crises that precipitate a use of force. It is possible that many of the findings on the diversionary use of force obta...
Few substantive areas have merited as little empirical scrutiny as the Supreme Court's decisions on the conduct of United States foreign policy Many scholars have seemingly accepted as axiomatic that Court decisions on foreign policy have been rare and almost always supportive of the President. We challenge these twin assumptions and demonstrate th...
Given the high degree of scholarly interest in the political use of military force and its prominence in international relations, I believe the time is ripe to develop a framework for analyzing the utility of such military operations. Using the political use of military force by the United States from 1953-1978 as my empirical referent, I develop a...
To understand why Congress is prompted to react to Supreme Court federal statutory construction decisions, we examine two different explanations of this phenomenon. The first focuses on the role that political actors, such as the president, the public, and interest groups, and salient issues play in the legislative process. The second explanation i...
The end of the Cold War has provided scholars of international relations with a unique opportunity to evaluate the explanatory power of their models in a rapidly changing environment. We provide a preliminary, exploratory test of the system-level, societal-level, and state-level explanations of U.S. foreign policy behavior during and after the Cold...
A Congress-centered model of coordinate construction of the Constitution is proposed to predict when legislation, that would reverse a decision of the Supreme Court, is brought to a vote in Congress. Decision reversal of Supreme Court cases striking down law as unconstitutional are a function of federal power concerns, presidential position, the ty...
All through history, when United States presidents have sought to explain or defend US military interventions in foreign lands, no goal, with the exception of the national security of the United States, has been advanced with such regularity and frequency as the promotion of democracy. Interestingly, however, this readiness to use force in the name...
One of the most intriguing claims that has been made about the behavior of American presidents is that they have been motivated by deteriorating political conditions at home to engage in conflict abroad. However, we identify three problems with this literature: (1) the use of increments of time rather than international crises as the unit of analys...
This study is an initial empirical investigation of domestic and international environment variables on U.S. foreign aid allocation, from 1947–1990. We hypothesize that both of these environments affect aggregate aid levels, and are therefore important to the aid allocation process as contextual factors that influence the amounts of aid that will b...
Although researchers have recently made some progress in explaining the outputs of the US economic aid decision-making process, their efforts to explain the allocation of US military aid have been rather disappointing. In this article, we follow previous studies that have assumed a two-stage process leading up to the allocation of military aid, whi...
In recent years scholars of both the Supreme Court and the Congress have begun to devote increasing attention to congressional attempts to reverse Court decisions declaring federal statutes unconstitutional, while Court decisions involving state laws have not garnered nearly the same amount of attention. We know that the Court strikes down state la...
This research examines what factors are likely to cause the Congress to attempt to reverse Supreme Court decisions that hold federal laws unconstitutional during the Warren, Burger, and early years of the Rehnquist courts. First, we outline a general theory of congressional motivation to reverse Supreme Court decisions that looks to both electoral...
During the Cold War American presidents have used military force in support of U.S. foreign policy over 200 times (Blechman and Kaplan, 1978; Zelikow, 1986). In order to explain and predict this activity, I develop a model of presidential decision making that incorporates the concept of an “opportunity to use force” which most previous research has...
Thesis (Ph. D.)--Michigan State University. Dept. of Political Science, 1991. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 214-223). Microfilm. s