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Gender Equality and State Aggression: The Impact of Domestic Gender Equality on State First Use of Force
Abstract
I examine the role of domestic gender equality in predicting whether or not a state is more aggressive in international disputes. This research adds to a growing body of feminist research in international relations, which demonstrates that states with higher levels of gender equality exhibit lower levels of violence during international disputes and during international crises. Many scholars have argued that a domestic environment of inequality and violence results in a greater likelihood of state use of violence internationally. This argument is most fully developed within feminist literature; however, research in the field of ethno-nationalism has also highlighted the negative impact of domestic discrimination and violence on state behavior at the international level. Using the MID data set and new data on first use of force, I test, using logistic regression, whether states with higher levels of gender equality are less likely to be aggressive when involved in international disputes, controlling for other possible causes of state use of force. Beyond this project's contribution to the conflict literature, this research expands feminist theory by further incorporating it into traditional international relations theory to deepen our understanding of the impact of domestic gender equality on state behavior internationally.
... Does gender equality get better or worse following civil conflict? Scholarship on gender and conflict recognizes that post-conflict reconstruction must include gender equality and is vital for sustainable peace (Caprioli, 2003(Caprioli, , 2005Melander, 2005;Zuckerman & Greenberg, 2004). The Fourth World Conference on Women at Beijing in 1995 asserted that a gender perspective should be actively included in policies and programmes addressing armed or other conflicts (United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women, 1995). ...
... Does gender equality get better or worse following civil conflict? Scholarship on gender and conflict recognizes that post-conflict reconstruction must include gender equality and is vital for sustainable peace (Caprioli, 2003(Caprioli, , 2005Melander, 2005;Zuckerman & Greenberg, 2004). The Fourth World Conference on Women at Beijing in 1995 asserted that a gender perspective should be actively included in policies and programmes addressing armed or other conflicts (United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women, 1995). ...
... Moreover, civil conflict is also protracted, leading to a long history of decreased gender equality. In conjunction with the fact that states with lower gender equality are already at a higher risk for civil conflict (Caprioli, 2005;Melander, 2005), it would be even more important to assess the environment of gender equality after conflict ends. ...
Does gender equality get better or worse following civil conflict? Given the plethora of research linking gender equality to less bellicosity, we aim to look at the relationship between post-conflict situations and gender equality. Specifically, we argue that circumstances surrounding how a conflict ends can better explain gender equality levels in a country in the post-conflict set up. We discuss whether outright victory for rebel groups will have the best impact for women due to the regime change and democratic process that typically follows. We conduct a Qualitative Comparative Analysis of 13 cases of intrastate conflicts in South and Southeast Asia for the years 1975–2006 along with an in-depth case study of Nepal. We find that rebel victory does have a positive impact on women in post-conflict situations when religious freedom was high, the conflict was centre seeking and wanted to establish a democratic regime.
... Meanwhile, research in political science increasingly indicates that societal gender equality produces more cooperative and peaceful outcomes. Caprioli (2003) found that states with greater gender equality use lower levels of violence in their international crises. Similarly, Regan and Paskeviciute (2003) have found a relationship between lower birth rates, an oft used indicator of women's equality, and lower levels of interstate violence. ...
... Similarly, Regan and Paskeviciute (2003) have found a relationship between lower birth rates, an oft used indicator of women's equality, and lower levels of interstate violence. Caprioli (2003) and Melander (2005a) discovered a negative relationship between gender equality and the likelihood of intrastate conflict decreases, and Melander (2005b) found that gender equality is positively related to respect for physical integrity rights. Hudson et al. (2012) identified a pacifying effect of women's social and political equality more broadly. ...
... In practice, women's situations may combine characteristics or partially coincide, as my fieldwork and the following overview of lived experiences and coping strategies shows. Caprioli (2003) examined the impact of gender inequality on the likelihood of intrastate violence with a regression analysis covering conflicts between 1960 and 1997 across the globe, a literature review, and an analysis of structural and cultural violence. She concluded that gender inequality impairs women's status and their ability to develop livelihoods, but also increases the likelihood of interstate conflict (Caprioli 2003). ...
... Caprioli (2003) examined the impact of gender inequality on the likelihood of intrastate violence with a regression analysis covering conflicts between 1960 and 1997 across the globe, a literature review, and an analysis of structural and cultural violence. She concluded that gender inequality impairs women's status and their ability to develop livelihoods, but also increases the likelihood of interstate conflict (Caprioli 2003). The major hindrance to gender equality is patriarchal structures which perpetuate stereotypes and reinforce inequalities in post-conflict situations. ...
Across the globe, a growing number of social movements, such as demonstrations in support of equal civil status or reproductive freedom and against sexualized violence, show that women's and gender rights are highly contested. Against the backdrop of a long history of unequal rights implementation, the contributors to this volume deal with the questions of why and in which ways gender equality has become contested in various political contexts. Local case studies examine the relevant structural, institutional, and socio-cultural causes of the global challenges to equality. This book follows an interdisciplinary approach and unites scholars from law, linguistics, cultural studies, history, social sciences, and gender studies in diverse contexts.
... This is by no means the only way to approach the topic. Top-down, macrolevel studies of the connection between gender and violent conflict have explored the effect of degrees of gender equality and found them to be correlated with the likelihood that states solve conflicts violently (Caprioli 2000(Caprioli , 2003(Caprioli , 2005Caprioli and Boyer 2001;Hudson et al. 2009;Marshall and Ramsey 1999;Melander 2005;Regan and Paskeviciute 2003;Tessler, Nachtwey, and Grant 1999;Tessler and Warriner 1997). Explaining the reasons for this correlation has so far proven difficult, but attempts to do so have ranged from assuming the inherent peacefulness of women (Caprioli 2003;Caprioli and Boyer 2001) to adducing evolutionary and psychological processes through which societies ruled by men become "primed for violence" (Hudson et al. 2009, 19; see also Caprioli 2005). ...
... Top-down, macrolevel studies of the connection between gender and violent conflict have explored the effect of degrees of gender equality and found them to be correlated with the likelihood that states solve conflicts violently (Caprioli 2000(Caprioli , 2003(Caprioli , 2005Caprioli and Boyer 2001;Hudson et al. 2009;Marshall and Ramsey 1999;Melander 2005;Regan and Paskeviciute 2003;Tessler, Nachtwey, and Grant 1999;Tessler and Warriner 1997). Explaining the reasons for this correlation has so far proven difficult, but attempts to do so have ranged from assuming the inherent peacefulness of women (Caprioli 2003;Caprioli and Boyer 2001) to adducing evolutionary and psychological processes through which societies ruled by men become "primed for violence" (Hudson et al. 2009, 19; see also Caprioli 2005). In other words, the idea of gender as a social construct is secondary in these explanations. ...
Conventional stories about conflicts often miss the role of everyday practices in escalating and de-escalating violence and how intersecting social dynamics of gender, ethnicity, age, and religion shape these practices. In this article, we introduce the Special Section on Gender and the Micro-Dynamics of Violent Conflicts. Situating the section within the scholarship on gender and violent conflict, we discuss the opportunities and paradoxes opened up by the adoption of a micro-level approach. We present theoretical and methodological reflections that emerge from the findings of the contributions and that arose in the process of implementing the research project on which these articles draw. We also reflect on the practical implications of our research. Specifically, we discuss conundrums of violent conflict research regarding two key feminist concepts – namely, gender and intersectionality – and explore (explanatory) arguments about the complex intersectional relationships between gender and violent conflict.
... Although several quantitative studies have investigated different aspects of militarization and gender inequality, such as the impact of war on women's access to economic and political resources (Hudson et al., 2012;Peksen, 2011;Plümper & Neumayer, 2006), or the effect of women's parliamentary representation on military expenditure (Caprioli, 2003;Caprioli & Boyer, 2001;Hughes & Paxton, 2019), only one study has examined the relationship directly. Employing various panel data methods, Moghadam (2019, 2022) analyzed 133 countries for 1990-2017, using the Global Militarization Index (GMI), the UNDP's Gender Inequality Index (GII), and the female labor force participation rate. ...
... Finally, gender equality is not a priority of policy makers during war time (or afterwards). It is also worth noting that countries with higher gender inequality are more likely to escalate interstate conflicts into wars (Caprioli, 2000), and more likely to increase aggression during disputes (Caprioli, 2003;Hudson et al., 2012). In other words, although our findings do not provide direct evidence, one can predict that the detrimental impacts of wars and conflicts are likely to be higher in countries that already have high gender inequality. ...
This study empirically investigates the link between militarization and women's labor force participation rate, and gender inequality. Applying a panel cointegration method for 74 countries for 1990–2017, the study demonstrates the impact of militarization for different country groups, showing a significant negative association between indicators of militarization and women's labor force participation, and gender equality. The findings suggest that militarization is likely to decrease women's labor force participation and increase gender inequality. When considered with the previous literature, an implication of the study is that militarization contributes to lower economic growth via the channel of higher gender inequality.
... In practice, women's situations may combine characteristics or partially coincide, as my fieldwork and the following overview of lived experiences and coping strategies shows. Caprioli (2003) examined the impact of gender inequality on the likelihood of intrastate violence with a regression analysis covering conflicts between 1960 and 1997 across the globe, a literature review, and an analysis of structural and cultural violence. She concluded that gender inequality impairs women's status and their ability to develop livelihoods, but also increases the likelihood of interstate conflict (Caprioli 2003). ...
... Caprioli (2003) examined the impact of gender inequality on the likelihood of intrastate violence with a regression analysis covering conflicts between 1960 and 1997 across the globe, a literature review, and an analysis of structural and cultural violence. She concluded that gender inequality impairs women's status and their ability to develop livelihoods, but also increases the likelihood of interstate conflict (Caprioli 2003). The major hindrance to gender equality is patriarchal structures which perpetuate stereotypes and reinforce inequalities in post-conflict situations. ...
Alexandra Scheele / Julia Roth / Heidemarie Winkel (eds.)
Global Contestations of Gender Rights
Across the globe, a growing number of social movements, such as demonstrations in support of equal civil status or reproductive freedom and against sexualized violence, show that women's and gender rights are highly contested. Against the backdrop of a long history of unequal rights implementation, the contributors to this volume deal with the questions of why and in which ways gender equality has become contested in various political contexts. Local case studies examine the relevant structural, institutional, and socio-cultural causes of the global challenges to equality. This book follows an interdisciplinary approach and unites scholars from law, linguistics, cultural studies, history, social sciences, and gender studies in diverse contexts.
... Generally, countries characterized by gender discrimination are more likely to be affected by violence and interstate clashes. Many studies focusing on the role of gender inequality and interstate disputes also highlight the association between the incidence of internal violence and gender inequality (Tessler and Warriner 1997;Boyer 2001 andCaprioli, 2003). ...
... In the world, all the countries are fragile where females have limited access to the labor market and other opportunities. These results are consistent with existing literature (Klasen and Lamanna 2008;Tessler and Warriner 1997;Caprioli and Boyer 2001;and Caprioli, 2003). Expansion of opportunities and employment in the labor market is considered an important tool for sustainable development. ...
... Generally, countries characterized by gender discrimination are more likely to be affected by violence and interstate clashes. Many studies focusing on the role of gender inequality and interstate disputes also highlight the association between the incidence of internal violence and gender inequality (Tessler and Warriner 1997;Boyer 2001 andCaprioli, 2003). ...
... In the world, all the countries are fragile where females have limited access to the labor market and other opportunities. These results are consistent with existing literature (Klasen and Lamanna 2008;Tessler and Warriner 1997;Caprioli and Boyer 2001;and Caprioli, 2003). Expansion of opportunities and employment in the labor market is considered an important tool for sustainable development. ...
The objective of this paper is to theoretically and empirically investigate the impact of gender inequality on state failure, taking to a global perspective. The ratio of female to male labor force participation has been used as a proxy for gender equality and the Fragile State Index of Fund for Peace has been used to classify state failure. This study has used panel data of 142 countries for the period 2006-2016 and employed the fixed effects method to reach the conclusion that gender inequality does indeed significantly lead to state failure in all regions of the globe. The crux of this study, however, is the negative effect of gender inequality on global order in the process of sustainable development. In addition to that, agricultural employment and children out of school too cause for the dwindling strength of states all over the world. All our findings reiterate the need for a comprehensive plan for the provision of economic opportunities to females for the prosperity of all developing regions of the globe. Gender inequality is one of the most significant factors that reflect their backwardness, and the expansion of opportunities, along with a feasible working environment, will bring positive change to the sustainability of their economies.
... Also, there is another group of studies, which scrutinize the effect of gender equality on armed conflict, again by implementing one-dimension equality analysis. Caprioli (2003;, for example, has found that low female labor force participation and higher level of fertility rate raises the risk of domestic conflict. Bussmann (2007) and Jennings (2011) explain the gender and conflict relation by using biological hypothesis and mention that women are more peaceful than males because of the biological differences by nature. ...
... This study, therefore, aims to make a contribution to the literature by providing a broader view on the relation between peace and gender equality relation by using global scale indexes that are constructed by prominent institutions. The other studies (Caprioli, 2003(Caprioli, , 2005Bussmann, 2007;Jennings, & Melander, 2005) focus on the role of women in conflict. As mentioned before, conflict is the only one dimension of peace and it can emerge in different forms such as internal, external or organized. ...
This study uses a cross sectional data for 115 countries in order to examine the relationship between global peace and gender equality, by using Global Peace Index (GPI) as a dependent variable, and Gender Inequality Index (GII) and Social Institutions and Gender Index (SIGI) as independent variables. We test whether the gender equality is related to peace and whether the impacts differ when other determinants of peace have taken into consideration. The results suggest that level of gender equality and cohesion are the most robust and significant variables affecting level of peace in a positive way among other control variables. Two indexes have been used as a measure of gender equality in order to check the robustness of the results and the same results and conclusions were obtained from the regressions. Interestingly, the study also finds that income level of the country, as a control variable, is insignificant in all regressions.
... In other studies, no systematic gender gap has been found (Tessler and Warriner 1997). Nevertheless, a correlation was found between a country's gender equality policy and the political tendency to oppose militarism and the use of force in the local and international arenas (Caprioli 2000(Caprioli , 2003. In addition, an experimental study conducted in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict found that the gender of an outgroup leader proposing a compromise solution affected the level of support for that solution (Maoz 2009). ...
This study explores the effect of priming gendered stereotypes on emotions toward immigrants and attitudes toward refugees among Jewish-Israelis and Germans. It aims to contribute a new theoretical perspective on the importance of gendered stereotypes in media discourses. Drawing on previous research, which suggests a theoretical model for examining the indirect effect of stereotypical gendered stereotypes in predicting emotions and attitudes toward outgroups during political conflicts, this study aims to explore the effect of stereotypical gendered priming on emotions toward immigrants and attitudes toward refugees. It uses three online experiments conducted among Germans and Jewish-Israelis: the first two studies examine the effect of gendered stereotypes on emotions toward immigrants and attitudes toward refugees among Jewish-Israelis; the third replicates this model in Germany in order to explore the effect of gendered stereotypes on attitudes toward refugees there. Such empirical examination can promote a better understanding of the role of exposure to gendered stereotypes in shaping public opinion toward marginalized groups. It may also contribute to attempts to promote constructive political debate and media coverage by specifically addressing the societal constructs-gendered stereotypes-that can potentially advance positive political attitudes and behavior.
... Indeed, the evidential basis for claiming that women's empowerment and gender equality lead to a reduction in violent extremism or terrorism is speculative at best. While there is some evidence to suggest that states characterised by gender inequality are more likely to resort to violence as a means of settling interstate disputes (Tessler and Warriner 1997;Caprioli and Boyer 2001;Caprioli 2003), and that states characterised by greater gender equality are less likely to experience intrastate conflict (Caprioli 2005), there is little clear evidence of a causal relationship between gender inequality and violent conflict, and even less research on the relationship between gender inequality and violence classified as violent extremism or terrorism. And yet, the supposition that women's empowerment and gender equality will lead to the reduction of violent extremism is almost always treated as a given within P/CVE policy and programming. ...
Since the adoption of UNSCR 2242, which calls for the integration of the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) and the Preventing and Countering Violent Extremism (P/CVE) agendas, feminist scholars and activists have cautioned that such a move instrumentalises and securitises the WPS agenda and its objectives of gender equality and women’s empowerment. Based on over 80 interviews with civil society actors involved in P/CVE in Kenya – specifically, Mombasa, Isiolo and Nairobi – this article argues that both the calls for empowerment and the critiques of instrumentalization similarly draw on racialised constructions of women’s agency, or lack thereof, in the global south. Further, the instrumentalised/empowered binary is premised on a liberal feminist conceptualisation of agency only as resistance, which does not accurately capture the complex ways in which WPS actors and feminist peace activists negotiate with and work to transform security agendas. While recognising the harms caused by state and donor-led P/CVE approaches, this article centres the perspectives and experiences of men and women who work in daily violence prevention within and beyond the frame of P/CVE to theorise the agentive capacities that emerge from securitised spaces.
... Where there is a greater gender equality and political representation in parliaments, a country is less likely to be involved in wars (Caprioli 2005, Hudson et al. 2012, Fearon 2002. With greater gender equality, they are also less likely to resolve disputes with other countries through violent conflicts (Caprioli 2003). There is also evidence that the degree of violence in a conflict decreases when a country is more gender equal and where there are more female leaders (Caprioli & Boyer 2001). ...
This book is a labor of love inspired by the continuous interaction between young Greek and Turkish participants in numerous forums that the two editors have nurtured for close to a decade. In an international order dominated by hostility, distrust and negative stereotypes, dialogues across borders are a positive response. The conflict between Greece and Turkey is considered one of the most complex conflicts in Europe, and possibly beyond. For decades, the bilateral strife has repeatedly led insecurity as well as periodic violence and war. Also, in this part of the world, the past weighs heavily on the present. What happened long ago determines what happens today and may stand in the way of a peaceful future, or even in imagining one. Conflicts bedevil the bilateral relationship on multiple fronts. As in other cross-border rivalries, we are witnesses to dynamic developments as new contentious issues have emerged to complicate the agenda.
With an eye on what the two sides can do together; this book presents original research co-written by at least one Greek and one Turkish scholar with the objective to provide policy recommendations that could help in bridging the gaps to enhance Greek-Turkish dialogue and cooperation.
... [4] In particular, states with greater domestic gender equality are less likely to use force first against other nations. [5] Moreover, states with greater levels of gender inequality are more likely to suffer from civil wars and other forms of intrastate conflict [6]. Importantly, these relationships are not simply related to the frequency of international conflict, but to their severity as well. ...
Gender plays a prominent role in many aspects of political violence. First, it contributes to its occurrence. Second, sexual violence causes enormous suffering during conflict. Last, sustainable peacekeeping depends on female inclusion and participation. The prominence of gender in political violence rests on the dominance of men over women in many aspects of political, social and economic life. Inequities in family law and perversions in the marriage market, especially polygyny, contribute to the perpetuation of male dominance hierarchies in ways that increase the likelihood and costs of political violence for everyone.
... Studies show that men who subscribe to patriarchal values of honor and idealize masculine notions of toughness are more likely to participate in political violence (Bjarnegård, Brounéus & Melander, 2017), and that political organizations that have more gender-inclusive ideologies are more likely to employ nonviolent tactics (Asal et al., 2013). States in which gendered inequality is prevalent are more likely to: go to war (Caprioli, 2000); use severe violence (Caprioli & Boyer, 2001); be the first to use violence in interstate disputes (Caprioli, 2003); suffer intrastate conflict (Caprioli, 2005); escalate to high intensity violence and to be less likely to de-escalate violence once it begins (Melander, 2005). An analysis of women's relative status and peacekeeping missions shows that peacekeeping missions in more egalitarian countries are more successful (Gizelis, 2009). ...
To what extent do gender relations in society influence the likelihood of negotiations during intrastate disputes? A substantial body of literature recognizes gendered inequalities as integral to understanding conflict, yet they have received little attention in systematic studies of conflict management. I argue that patriarchal gender relations that reflect a preference for masculinity over femininity influence states’ propensity to negotiate with rebels. I draw on the concept of practices to explain how gender relations shape government preferences for negotiations. Specifically, I contend that practices of excluding women from fully participating in public life institutionalize violence as the preferred way of managing conflict. The implication is that countries with more patriarchal gender relations are less likely to engage in negotiations during intrastate conflicts. I test this argument on all civil conflict dyads between 1975 and 2014. The analyses show that countries that marginalize women’s participation in public life are significantly less likely to engage in negotiations. The results provide strong support for my theoretical argument and offer systematic evidence in support of core claims of the feminist peace theory.
... Gender equality leads towards growth in investments, productivity, human capital and income per capita, and decreases the level of violence during international disputes and crisis whereby leading towards more democratic and peaceful state of international behaviour (Lagerlof, 2003;Braunstein, 2011;Caprioli, 2003;Wu & Cheng, 2016). The importance of this evidence is stressed through placing gender equality as fifth sustainable development goal set by the United Nations (UN) in 2016 to transform our world. ...
Female labour force participation (FLFP) stands among main gender equality issues in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH). Female labour force participation (FLFP) stands among main gender equality issues in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH). Furthermore, the article investigates whether perceptions of the existence of gender stereotypes on the labour market influences women’s economic activity. Finally, the article investigates whether differences of such an impact exist between young and adult women and how they are being manifested. The research model is based on a log-log regression analysis performed on a sample of 1,213 interviewed women through the 2017 wave of the National Survey of Citizens’ Perceptions (NSCP-BiH). Our findings indicate that traditional views on women’s role in society act as an important moderator of woman’s economic activity, and hence, shape the overall labour environment and economic development in BiH. Although perceiving that the BiH labour market is biased towards men, women in BiH are not discouraged by such a stance when their labour market participation is considered.
... One body of literature emphasizes a consistent empirical finding: Societies characterized by higher levels of gender equality and "security for women" are less prone to domestic conflict and less likely to engage in international conflict. For example, research by Caprioli has demonstrated that societies characterized by higher gender equality are less likely to become involved in militarized disputes, less likely to initiate the use of force, and less likely to experience civil strife (Caprioli 2000(Caprioli , 2003; see also Caprioli and Boyer 2001). In a landmark study, Hudson, Ballif-Spanvill, Caprioli, Emmet, and McDermott (2009) measured the security of women, including indicators of violence against women, and found that societies with higher levels of physical security for women were also more peaceful in their foreign policies. ...
We ask two questions in this article: First, what is the level of public support for the pursuit of gender equality in foreign policy? Second, what are the most significant correlates of that support? We report the results of the first national opinion survey that queried citizens about their support for policies to increase global gender equality. We find that an average of 60 to 90 percent approve of pursuing gender equality and specific programmatic initiatives. Americans also strongly agree with one rationale for pursuing global gender equality: 65 percent agree that “The world would be a more peaceful place if more women were involved in making decisions.” Second, we find that a number of individual characteristics and personal values are strongly correlated with support for gender initiatives. Our results also suggest that women's greater endorsement of universalism values explains their higher levels of support for global gender equality.
... One body of literature emphasizes a consistent empirical finding: societies characterized by higher levels of gender equality and "security for women" are less prone to domestic conflict and less likely to engage in international conflict. For example, research by Caprioli demonstrates that societies characterized by higher gender equality are less likely to become involved in militarized disputes, less likely to initiate the use of force, and less likely to experience civil strife (Caprioli 2000(Caprioli , 2003; see also Caprioli and Boyer 2001). In a landmark study, Hudson, Ballif-Spanvill, Caprioli, Emmet, and McDermott measured the "security of women," including indicators of violence against women, and found that societies with higher levels of physical security for women were also more peaceful in their foreign policies (2009). ...
Forthcoming in: Journal of Human Rights, Summer 2020
... A central aspect of any future governance model dedicated to dealing with issues of population, climate change, conflict, and development is the role women play in it. The evidence is overwhelming that when global governance efforts aim to provide women more autonomy and resources, women, states, and the world benefit [8,19,39]. This is why the current Sustainable Development Goals and the previous Millennium Development Goals included provisions regarding gender equality and women's health: the effects of women's health clinics, more women in government, and more gender-specific economic resources are all correlated with decreases in population growth, greater state stability, and greater economic growth [1,21]. ...
Abstract To address future challenges of planetary decision-making on key ecological and social issues in an increasingly nationalistic world, we propose a new global governance model of technocratic ascendancy that can be integrated with quasi-democratic norms. Our model proposes the creation of a series of self-organized “Hybrid Leadership Assemblies” (HLA) led by “Hybrid Leadership Councils (HLC)” and supported by a number of more specialized Issue Action Committees (IACs) in five key issue areas: Environmental Protection and Climate Change Management, Security from Armed Conflict, Fighting Poverty and Inequality, Managing Population Growth, and Women’s Inclusion. Inspired by the popular environmental slogan, “Think global, act local,” our proposed governance model makes a revived subsidiarity principle central to its re-imagination of global governance as a non-hierarchical system of organization. In addition to creating opportunities to approach challenges at multiple levels of governance, our broadly participative model also makes innovative networking across different groups, levels of governance, and issues integral to solving complex socio-ecological problems.
... Thanks largely to the contributions of feminist IR, the pervasive influence of militarized masculinity and reified notions of the protective state were revealed to underpin the dominant intellectual and ontological position in security studies (Detraz, 2012;Sjoberg, 2009). A chief consequence of this underpinning is the enduring and glaring omission of the role of gender and its impact on strategic and defense policy (Stiehm, 1996;Cohn, 1987), conflict behavior (Sjoberg, 2013), notions and relations of power (Shepherd, 2015), the appeal and use of violence (Carpenter, 2006;Caprioli, 2003), and the roles and contributions of women in the security arena more generally (Enloe, 2014;Ruane, 2011;Tickner, 2001). ...
This introductory chapter sets the stage for the range of applications and interrogations of securitization contained in this book. It does so primarily by chronicling the larger shift in the security studies field toward critical approaches which, in turn, paved the way for the so-called 'constructivist turn' and the development of securitization as a concept (C.A.S.E. Collective, 2006). This chapter situates the constructivist turn in relation to the emergence of critical security studies-a broader ontological shift itself explained by a convergence of social forces and intellectual factors. Following this origin story, we turn to a synthetic review of the main contributions of the constructivist turn to security studies, and what we consider its signal contribution: namely, the concept of securitization. This effort at providing a brief and synthetic intellectual history of securitization helps set the stage for the articulation of three common overarching concerns around which the inquiries and investigations advanced in this volume are oriented. Over a generation after Richard Ullman (1983) issued a clarion call for the redefinition of security, scholars and practitioners alike continue to seek a deeper understanding of the contingent processes that lead to specific constructions and interpretations of security and insecurity by agents engaged in the process of socialization and meaning-making-a process Ole Waever (1995) labeled 'securitization.' This introductory chapter sets the stage for the range of applications and assessments of securitization contained in this book. It does so primarily by chronicling the larger shift in the security studies field toward critical approaches which, in turn,
... Scholars have also found correlations between different aspects of gender equality (mainly political and economic) and the presence or absence of armed conflict, both intrastate and inter-state, human rights abuses, the likelihood of becoming involved in militarized intrastate disputes and the likelihood of using violence first during militarized interstate disputes and that an increase in gender equality lead to a decrease in conflict levels (Caprioli, , 2003Capr- ioli and Boyer, 2001;Fish, 2002;Caprioli and Trumbore, 2003a, 2003b, 2006a, 2006bSobek et al., 2006;Melander, 2005aMelander, , 2005bFran- cis, 2004;Schmeidl & Piza-Lopez, 2002). Other scholars have found correlations between so-called honor cultures, which are focusing on controlling women, their bodies and sexuality and restricting their freedom of movement, on the one hand and high levels of interpersonal violence on the other (Pinker, 2011;Brown, Osterman and Barnes, 2009;Baller, Zevenbergen and Messner, 2009;Somech and Elizur, 2009;Lee, 2011;Lee and Ousey, 2011;Begikhani , 2011;Inglis and MacKeogh, 2012;Ijzerman and Cohen, 2011). ...
sa Ekvall has a Master degree in Contemporary African History from Université de Paris I-Panthéon-Sorbonne and a Master degree in Peace and Conflict Research from Uppsala University. After having finished her studies Åsa worked in the field of development and later humanitarian aid for ten years in South Africa, Bosnia and Hercegovina, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Chad and Sudan/Darfur. Her work focused on, although not exclusively, women's rights and empowerment and gender-based violence. The field work made Åsa curious about how gender inequality and violence were related and she started to do a PhD on the topic with Antwerp University. A couple of years later this turned in to a joint PhD with the International Institute of Social Studies of the Erasmus University. During her PhD studies Åsa has worked as a consultant on gender issues as well as helped setting up the Dutch National Committee of UN Women where she currently works as coordinator for the Safe Streets Program. Åsa also continues to consult and can be reached through her website ekvall.nl.
... The conclusion reached was: Not very much. 10 In fact, basic knowledge about issues, terminology and how to make the case to others regarding the importance of WPS was found significantly lacking. 11 Consequently, use of a WPS "lens" as part of US security environment assessments is often missing, and those assessments are a first and critical step in the development of effective security strategies. ...
... Under an efficient but oppressive authoritarian regime, culture is likely to stagnate and the society is likely to suffer from the loss of connection to the rest of the world. 2 And within each category of country, those that thrive and those that are floundering, there is a common thread: the status and condition of women. Patriarchal societies that treat women as inferior generally do the same to their ethnic and religious minorities. ...
In the context of Russia’s war in Ukraine, the status of neutrality or military non-alignment is facing deeper challenges since its expected demise in the post–Cold War period. This article explores the gendered and emotional politics of neutrality and its relationship to peace and security. Neutrality has consistently been conceived as an irrational security option for weak states that refuse to bandwagon. ‘Hegemonic’ or ‘disciplining’ discourses of neutrality have conditioned current debates about alliances and security threats, and are imbued with gendered binaries and logics. Such discourses – textual, visual and other – are important because they reveal how neutrality has been positioned in relation to war, peace, morality and agency, and how such positioning constrained the possibilities for thinking about the ‘peace potential’ of neutrality. However, the gendered and emotive history of neutrality also contains a complexity that can be overlooked if simply understood in terms of binary discourses of weakness and irrationality. Inverted gender and emotional codings are also at work in discourses about neutrality. Seeing this complexity in terms of gender and emotions is critically important for conceptualising peace and security beyond narrow confines.
Gender is an important consideration in development. It is a way of looking at how social norms and power structures impact on the lives and opportunities available to different groups of men and women. Globally, more women than men live in poverty. Women are also less likely than men to receive basic education and to be appointed to a political position nationally and internationally. Understanding that men and women, boys and girls experience poverty differently, and face different barriers in accessing services, economic resources and political opportunities, helps to target interventions. Before undertaking a gender analysis, it is important to understand the concept of 'gender'. The World Development Report (WDR) 2012 defines gender as socially constructed norms and ideologies, which determine the behaviour and actions of men and women. Understanding these gender relations and the power dynamics behind them is a prerequisite for understanding individuals' access to and distribution of resources, their ability to make decisions and the ways in which women and men, boys and girls are affected by political processes and social development. Compared with men, women control fewer political and economic resources, including land, employment and traditional positions of authority. Acknowledging and incorporating these gender inequalities into programmes and analyses is therefore extremely important, both from a human rights perspective and to maximize impact and socioeconomic development. The WDR highlights the importance of directly targeting the persistent constraints and obstacles to women's equality (especially in areas of economic empowerment, educational gaps, household/societal voice, and violence against women) in order to enhance productivity and improve longer-term development outcomes. Gender equality is also important for sustainable peace, and there is a growing body of empirical evidence suggesting that a higher level of gender inequality is associated with higher risks of internal conflict.
Feminist foreign policy is an inclusive, rights-based and ethical policy framework that is, in its core, a foreign policy approach towards a peaceful, prospering and gender just international community. As such, it offers tools and avenues of action for diplomats, policymakers, researchers and activists alike. This chapter outlines the various theoretical foundations the concept combines and highlights the necessity of a thorough intersectional and post-colonial perspective, furthermore showing that feminist foreign policy is not, by any measure, a policy approach/practice for women and girls only. Moving from the theoretical to the practical dimension, the chapter briefly discusses examples of policy implementation by governments under the label of feminist foreign policy as well as examples of feminist and gender-sensitive foreign policy approaches not labelled ‘feminist’. We conclude that, when implemented through an intersectional-feminist lens, feminist foreign policy offers both an analytical and practical toolbox for diplomats.
In this article, we examine how changes in the status of women affect the intensity of terrorism by using three novel approaches. First, we link terrorist ideology more directly to women’s status using a well-tread topic in feminist literature that is rarely applied to political violence: misogyny. Second, we provide more explicit linkages to misogyny by disaggregating terrorist ideology into four typologies (ethnonationalist, religious, right-wing, and left-wing), arguing that the first three have strong themes of masculinity and patriarchy; ideologies when taken to their extremes distill into misogyny. Finally, previous efforts to study gender equality frequently suffer from imprecise theory and concept stretching. We sidestep this issue by instead focusing on women’s status and employ a new series of measures that broaden our understanding of women’s status from a rights-based approach to one that includes women’s security, inclusion, and legal rights. We do this by disaggregating 634 terrorist organizations to determine whether the level of specific women’s status indicators affects the frequency of violence from specific terrorist ideologies. We test this on a sample of 185 countries from 1970 to 2014 and find that increases in women’s security provoke violence from ethnonationalist and religious groups while increases in women’s legal rights incite violence from right-wing groups.
Since 1995, presidents from both parties have increased US government initiatives in pursuit of global gender equality, but there has been little scholarly work that explores public support for these initiatives. We analyze the level of citizen support for several types of global gender equality programs. In addition, we explore support for one specific rationale for the policy –the argument that the participation of women in decision-making will make the world a more peaceful place. Our central hypothesis is that personal security dispositions are an important correlate of support for global gender initiatives, and our analysis yields support for the hypothesis. Citizens who place a high value on personal security display stronger support for gender equality in foreign policy. We close with suggestions for further research and discuss the policy implications of our findings, in particular with respect to public opinion on the use of military force.
The UN. has intensified efforts to recruit female peacekeepers for peacekeeping missions. From 2006 to 2014, the number of female military personnel in UN peacekeeping missions nearly tripled. The theory driving female recruitment is that female peacekeepers employ distinctive skills that make units more effective along a variety of dimensions. Yet skeptics argue that deeper studies are needed. This paper explores the theoretical mechanisms through which female military personnel are thought to increase the effectiveness of peacekeeping units. Using new data, we document variation in female participation across missions over time, and we explore the impact of female ratio balancing on various conflict outcomes, including the level of female representation in post-conflict political institutions, the prevalence of sexual violence in armed conflict, and the durability of peace. We find evidence that a greater proportion of female personnel is systematically associated with greater implementation of women’s rights provisions and a greater willingness to report rape, and we find no evidence of negative consequences for the risk of conflict recurrence. We conclude that the inclusion of more female peacekeepers in UN peacekeeping does not reduce the ability to realize mission goals.
International IDEA’s Annual Review of Constitution-Building Processes: 2020 provides a retrospective account of constitutional reform processes around the world and from a comparative perspective, and their implications for national and international politics. This eighth edition covers events in 2020 and includes chapters on the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic and emergency legal frameworks on constitutionalism and constitution-building worldwide; the impact of the pandemic on attempted executive aggrandizement in Central African Republic, Hungary and Sri Lanka; the impact of the pandemic on peace- and constitution-building processes in Libya, Syria and Yemen; gender equality in constitution-building and peace processes, with a particular focus on Chile and Zimbabwe; constitutional amendments to enhance the recognition of customary law in Samoa and Tonga; and the establishment, functioning and outputs of the French Citizens’ Convention for Climate. Writing at the mid-way point between the instant reactions of the blogosphere and academic analyses that follow several years later, the authors provide accounts of ongoing political transitions, the major constitutional issues they give rise to, and the implications of these processes for democracy, the rule of law and peace.
The effects of gender on foreign policy decision-making is an understudied topic. While some research has examined the role of women chief executives in conflict, little research has looked at what role women defense and foreign affairs ministers play on outcomes. In this article, we examine the role that women chief executives, defense ministers, and foreign affairs ministers play in both conflictual and cooperative foreign policies. Specifically, we ask whether women foreign policy leaders are more likely to enact foreign policy decisions and whether they will be more extreme in their decisions. Past research posits that women leaders face a double-bind. Women must be both leader and woman while in office. We argue that this pressure will affect the decisions women make in foreign policy. We examine this relationship from 1980 to 2008 and find that women foreign policy leaders are different from men; they are more active in conflictual foreign policy and have more extreme cooperative foreign policy.
Recent world events, such as the rise of hypermasculine authoritarian leaders, have shown the importance of both sex and gender for understanding international politics. However, quantitative researchers of conflict have long relegated the study of sex and gender inequality as a cause of war to a specialized group of scholars, despite overwhelming evidence that the connections are profound and consequential. In this review essay, we demonstrate the tremendous progress made in this field by analyzing a wave of research that examines the relationships between sex and gender inequality and war. We divide this work into theories that emphasize strategy versus those that analyze structures. In addition, we focus on two aspects of this research agenda—specifying mechanisms that link sex and gender inequality to war, and leveraging data at multiple levels of analysis—to outline fruitful pathways forward for the broader international security research agenda. Ultimately, we argue that the study of the nexus of sex and gender inequality and war will enliven theoretical debates, illuminate new hypotheses, and enrich the policy discourse with robust evidence.
Approximately one-quarter of civil war peace agreements contain some reference to gender, prompting the question of whether or not gender provisions within peace agreements are effective tools for improving women’s rights following conflict. As calls by the United Nations and the international community place increasing emphasis on women’s involvement in peace processes, this article generates insight into whether peace agreements, a key component of peace processes, help to spur greater political rights for women. The theoretical expectations of the article posit that peace agreements generate legal frameworks for post-conflict states. Specifically, peace agreements have the potential to tie actors’ hands to new policies and generate shifts in societal norms and practices; the direction of new policies and practices, however, is dependent on the contents of agreements. When agreements are gender-inclusive, they increase the likelihood of improvements in women’s political rights. The expectations are quantitatively tested using civil war peace agreements signed between 1981 and 2011. The findings indicate that the content of agreements matters; gender-inclusive agreements lay the foundations for improvements in women’s political rights following conflict. The article demonstrates that peace agreements, when crafted to include gender provisions, are meaningful tools that international and domestic actors can harness to strengthen women’s rights after civil war.
In spite of increased attention following resolution 1325 to women’s sidelining in matters related to peace and conflict, women continue to be marginalized in peacekeeping missions, peace negotiations and peacebuilding processes. Yet both rights-based and instrumentalist arguments push firstly for the right of women to be part of the resolution to the conflict and the construction of the post-conflict society and secondly for the necessity of including women in an effort to attain gender equality for a durable peace. The aim of this chapter is to identify and develop the necessary conditions to build a feminist peace, characterized as inclusive and transformative. Through a transdisciplinary literature review drawing on the domains of feminist studies, peace studies and security studies, the author singles out two interrelated aspects which are necessary to address for the construction of a feminist peace: enlarging the understanding of ‘security’ to encompass an absence of violence in the private as well as the public sphere and empowering women socio-economically to give them the means to participate in the post-conflict political economy.
This article investigates the gap between policy and practice in gender-responsive security sector reform (SSR) by exploring the ways in which risks perceived to be associated with gender-responsive SSR in conflict-affected environments legitimize inaction. A typology of risks is presented, which range from risks to individuals, security sector institutions, and peacebuilding efforts and encompass security, programmatic, fiduciary, and reputational risks. The risks are analyzed to consider the extent to which they are present and could be managed, mitigated, or avoided, rather than stall action. This article argues that the process of determining what constitutes a risk, and what constitutes a risk worth taking, is inherently political and serves to reinforce dominant power relations, including gendered power relations. The article then discusses the risks that result from inaction and the opportunities that are missed when arguments about risk trump gender responsiveness. As a result, it is argued that gender inequalities persist, women continue to be marginalized within and beyond the security sector, and transformational opportunities that could lead to sustainable peace are missed. The article concludes by arguing that the potential risks resulting from not advancing gender-responsive SSR far outweigh the perceived risks associated with it.
We investigate whether female political empowerment is conducive to civil peace, drawing on global data on female political empowerment over a 200-year period, from the Varieties of Democracy database. We augment previous research by expanding the temporal scope, looking at a novel inventory of female political empowerment measures, attending to reverse-causality and omitted variable issues, and separating between relevant causal mechanisms. We find a strong link between female political empowerment and civil peace, which is particularly pronounced in the twentieth century. We find evidence that this relationship is driven both by women’s political participation—particularly the bottom-up political participation of women, e.g., in civil society—and the culture that conduces it. This is the strongest evidence to date that there is a robust link between female political empowerment and civil peace, stemming from both institutional and cultural mechanisms.
This report builds on previous research, exploring the key role gender plays in opportunities for peacebuilding. The report takes a critical look at the gender and power dynamics around forest management and shines a light on the role women play. Women’s participation in forest use, forest management and forest governance is shaped by gender norms and representation. Gender shapes the differences in the social expectations surrounding women and men. It influences how and why conflict turns violent, and how violence is perpetrated.
Projects that do not engage women will overlook perspectives and experiences that impact the effectiveness of a project. Taking only a number-counting approach to the participation of women in meetings and trainings is, however, insufficient. Bringing a gender analysis to forest management offers a unique opening for an inclusive gender-transformative approach that is conducive to building sustainable positive peace.
Cambridge Core - American Studies - The Power of Global Performance Indicators - edited by Judith G. Kelley
The Power of Global Performance Indicators - edited by Judith G. Kelley March 2020
Over the past decade, several European states have moved to ban or restrict the wearing of Islamic face veils. Supporters of these bans maintain that they are necessary to ensure national security and cultural assimilation. Opponents, on the other hand, argue that prohibitions on the veil unjustly restrict the religious liberty of Muslim women. Interestingly, though, despite the controversy surrounding restrictions and bans on the veil and conflicting expectations on the effects of these limitations, little research has attempted to rigorously analyze their effect on radicalization. We seek to address this gap through a statistical analysis of the effects of these laws on Islamist terrorism in the states of Europe. We find that states that enforce veil bans are indeed statistically much more likely to experience more and more lethal Islamist terrorist attacks than countries where such laws do not exist.
Kenya’s 2010 constitutional reforms devolved the political system and included a quota designed to secure a minimum threshold of women in government. While the 2017 elections yielded the country’s highest proportion of women in government in history via both elected and appointed positions, many political entities still fell short of the new gender rule, leaving them in noncompliance with the constitution. The 2017 elections reveal a tension: while devolution raised the stakes of local elections and the quota has improved women’s political inclusion, these reforms have not fundamentally changed the power of political parties, the way campaigns are financed, cultural ideas about women’s leadership, and the pervasiveness of violence in Kenyan elections. Drawing on data from both the national and county levels, this article maps these persistent obstacles to women’s political inclusion and argues that increasing women’s political power will require both the full implementation of the constitution, as well as a broader consideration of how power operates and is consolidated.
Research on international human rights law suggests that the beneficial effects of treaties depend on the strength of democratic political institutions. However, democracies are, by definition, compliant with many provisions in treaties that protect civil and political rights. Additionally, theories of compliance derive from a focus on civil and political rights rather than on other rights, so we lack a good understanding of whether predictions hold for other kinds of rights. We examine compliance with the Convention for the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), which protects rights that are distinct from those that characterize democratic governance. To measure compliance, we create a new indicator of women's rights that offers several advantages over existing indicators. We examine the conditional effect of CEDAW using models that allow for heterogenous treaty effects. This helps to adjudicate between theories that expect treaties to be most effective in highly democratic countries and those that expect them to be most effective among partial democracies. Our findings do not support either expectation and suggest that effectiveness does not depend on democracy, at least in the case of CEDAW. This points to the need to enrich existing theories of ratification and compliance by accounting for differences in the nature of the rights protected by different treaties.
Prior research has found that though higher levels of women’s equality are associated with more peaceful interstate relations, female executives have been found to be significantly more hawkish than their male counterparts. We argue that this paradox can be explained by considering the gender environment in which those executives are operating. First, in contrast to prior quantitative findings that female-led states are more conflictual, we find that after distinguishing between initiation and being targeted, female executives only seek to “demonstrate their security credentials” when governing countries with very poor women’s status. Female-led states are increasingly more peaceful when women’s rights improve. Second, we find that male leaders also respond to the domestic gender environment and are significantly more likely to initiate disputes against states with female executives but are also increasingly less likely to do so as women’s rights in their state improve.
In this essay, I argue that feminist political science contributes to our understanding of power, especially through the concept of empowerment, giving us the conceptual tools to grapple with phenomena such as the impact of feminist movements and other initiatives of marginalized groups organizing to contest inequality and oppression. These concepts bring informal politics into the formal sphere and show the limits of a formal, top-down approach to power and politics more generally. It reveals how intersectionality and power are linked. I illustrate this argument in a discussion of the recent #metoo campaign, as well as through a brief examination of abortion policy and foreign policy in Canada and the United States. I conclude that, the reciprocal influence of feminist scholarship and political science has been one of mutual enrichment, though the contribution of feminist political science to the broader discipline has been limited by male bias that leads scholars to overlook and discount work by women in the discipline.
What role does gender of a country's chief executive play in human rights practices of that country? Do female leaders treat the citizens of their country better or worse than their male counterparts? We explore whether gender makes a difference in human rights practices in an effort to examine whether leader characteristics can affect human rights. Previous research has found that countries with higher levels of gender equality, measured with percent women in parliament, have fewer physical integrity rights violations. However, previous research has not found an association between female chief executives and better human rights practices, despite clear theoretical arguments for a relationship (Melander 2005). Using updated data on female chief executives for the years 1984 to 2011, together with a robust treatment effects estimator, we find that female chief executives do improve human rights when compared to their male counterparts.
In an effort to contribute to the dialogue between gender studies and international studies, this report presents findings from an empirical investigation based on the integrated secondary analysis of survey data from Israel, Egypt, Palestine, and Kuwait. The goal is to assess the utility of both gender and attitudes pertaining to the circumstances of women in accounting for variance in views about war and peace, and thereafter to examine the degree to which political system attributes constitute conditionalities associated with important variable relationships. Major findings include the absence of gender-linked differences in attitudes toward international conflict in all four of the societies studied and a significant relationship in each of these societies between attitudes toward gender equality and attitudes toward international conflict. Based on data from the Arab world and Israel, with attitudes about a peaceful resolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict treated as the dependent variable, the research also aspires to shed light on more practical considerations pertaining to the international relations of the Middle East.
Several possible explanations have been given for why democracies maintain peaceful relations among themselves. This article examines the role of domestic political institutions in establishing market relations and the degree of interference in domestic economic relations. It is argued that less representative regimes are more likely to establish pervasive policies delivering rents than more representative regimes. Pervasive rents, in turn, alter the relationship of domestic and international prices, which affects how countries choose to participate in the international economy. Republics, where rent-seeking may be pervasive, but rents tend not to be distorting, fit into liberal international systems with greater ease than other types of regimes; republics, therefore, find it more attractive to meet their international needs through trade than do nonrepublican regimes. By exploring the importance of regime type for the formation of international preferences, questions about relations between democratic states are linked to broader issues of grand strategy and policies to foster international peace and stability.
Democratic states are in general about as conflict- and war-prone as nondemocracies, but democracies have rarely clashed with one another in violent conflict. We first show that democracy, as well as other factors, accounts for the relative lack of conflict. Then we examine two explanatory models. The normative model suggests that democracies do not fight each other because norms of compromise and cooperation prevent their conflicts of interest from escalating into violent clashes. The structural model asserts that complex political mobilization processes impose institutional constraints on the leaders of two democracies confronting each other to make violent conflict unfeasible. Using different data sets of international conflict and a multiplicity of indicators, we find that (1) democracy, in and of itself, has a consistent and robust negative effect on the likelihood of conflict or escalation in a dyad; (2) both the normative and structural models are supported by the data; and (3) support for the normative model is more robust and consistent.
Near the end of the most bloody century in the history of the human species it is noteworthy how little progress has been made in the study of aggression. Our knowledge has advanced little further than a theory proposed by Freud (1920) more than half a century ago. Although Freud’s frustration-aggression theory was recast into the language of behavioristic learning theory (Dollard, Doob, Miller, Mowrer, and Sears, 1939), the basic principles are little changed from the original formulation. Alternative psychological theories of instrumental conditioning, cue-frustration and aggression, and modeling have not provided great insights into why people assault, rape, and kill one another. The view to be presented here is that the essential problem with psychological approaches to studying human aggression is an inadequate conceptualization of the phenomena to be explained. Current conceptions of aggression will be examined and an alternative interpretation will be proposed.
Although the movement to bring women into the police world has some unique factors, it can best be understood as part of the overall struggle for women to gain access to power within a male dominated culture. Viewing the issue in this perspective eliminates blame and gives a sense of meaning to the continuing quest for women’s equality. By accepting both the differences and similarities of men and women, understanding their strengths and weaknesses, society will be able to achieve a new wholeness based upon dignity and respect for all.
In the post-World War II era, American women have been consistently less militaristic and more opposed to war than American men. Theorists, both feminist and not, have attributed such differences to gender itself, maternalism, and feminism. Drawing on the American National Election Study 1991 Pilot Study, we explore these hypotheses and discover no support for the maternalist explanation, some evidence in favor of the feminist accounting, and substantial support for the gender explanation. We also probe into the structure of political thinking in these areas and discover that the roots of women's and men's thinking usually differ even when they basically agree on the "bottom line." In particular, men's attitudes are much more partisan in their origins than are women's.
This paper reformulates diversionary theory to take into account the effect of domestic structures on the propensity of leaders to use foreign policy to manipulate domestic politics. The structure of domestic political institutions and levels of policy resources condition the willingness of leaders to use conflict involvement to manipulate domestic audiences. Probit analysis of 294 militarized interstate disputes during the period from 1955 to 1976. Domestic structures have a significant effect on the propensity of leaders to use foreign policy as a vehicle of their personal political ambitions.
To some degree, biology is destiny. The feminist school of international relations has a point: a truly matriarchal world would be less prone to conflict and more cooperative than the one we now inhabit. And world politics has been gradually feminizing over the past century. But the broader scene will still be populated by states led by men like Mobutu, Milošević, or Saddam. If tomorrow's troublemakers are armed with nuclear weapons, we might be better off being led by women like Margaret Thatcher than, say, Gro Harlem Brundtland. Masculine policies will still be essential even in a feminized world.
While international borders are important in understanding the “shape” of the international system and are part of those structural characteristics which affect the interaction opportunities of nations, little attention has been paid to their conceptualization, operationalization, and measurement. This paper undertakes four tasks to help fill this gap. The first is to indicate the potentially theoretical role that borders may play in international relations, discussing the relationships between distance/contiguity and interaction opportunities. The second task entails the conceptualization and measurement of international borders. The third task involves using the data derived from this framework to describe the international system in terms of borders for the period 1946‐1965. The fourth task is to indicate the utility of a border data set by addressing questions which have been posed in the international relations literature. Research results are presented for several questions concerning the relationships between borders and war, borders and alliances, and the diffusion of war.
The relationship between sex and political behavior has been discussed only in passing in the political science literature, if it is discussed at all. There has been little evidence from the 1940s to the 1970s that gender plays a role in determining issue positions, candidate evaluations, or candidate preference, as a quick perusal of some well-read political science works would confirm.
Berelson, Lazarsfeld and McPhee in Voting , the seminal work on opinion formation in a presidential campaign, discovered no relationship between vote preference and sex. The researchers did discover a difference in reported interest in the 1948 campaign between men and women early in the campaign, but even that difference faded as the election drew near.
Campbell, Converse, Miller and Stokes in The American Voter make no mention of either the existence or non-existence of sex difference in policy or candidate preference. They focus instead on differences in turnout, involvement and efficacy. Although they suggest that at one time opinions about Prohibition may have separated men from women, the authors conclude, “In the current era, there is no reason to believe that women as women are differentially attracted to one of the political parties.”
Pomper in Voters' Choice does find a relationship between sex and one issue dimension–the dimension of war and peace. But Pomper, Campbell and Berelson agree that any sex differences cannot, by definition, be long-lasting. Berelson cites the lack of differentiation in the way policies affect the sexes, the lack of differences in intergenerational transmission, and the lack of segregation between the sexes.
Conventional wisdom holds that women are more peace-loving or more pacific than men. Most of our knowledge about the gender gap in foreign policy attitudes originates from the United States, but it cannot be taken for granted that these results can be generalized to other countries. This article examines gender differences in foreign policy attitudes in Denmark; it discusses the systemic factors behind such gender differences as well as the systemic factors that cause foreign policy attitudes to influence elections. By the 1980s a clear gender gap in foreign policy attitudes had developed in Denmark. Several explanations for this gender gap are examined in the article: the theory about women's greater distance to foreign policy, the theory about specific women's values, and the theory about the political and feminist radicalization of women. The article concludes that Denmark's gender gap in foreign policy attitudes in Denmark in the late 1980s was due primarily to a general left-wing mobilization of women. Paradoxically, however, this development also seems linked to a revitalization of traditional women's values. The discussion of the systemic causes of the gender gap and of its election impact centers around three factors: the salience of foreign policy, the political mobilization of women, and the available political alternatives in a given election.
This study quantitatively tests the relationship between state militarism and domestic gender equality. International relations literature on the impact and potential impact of women on foreign policy suggests that women are more peaceful in that they are less likely than men to support the use of international violence. Other research indicates that a domestic environment of inequality results in state militarism on the international level. Both lines of inquiry suggest that a domestic environment of equality between women and men would lead toward greater state pacifism, and four hypotheses are developed to test this relationship. The Militarized Interstate Dispute dataset is used with hostility level as the dependent variable to measure the level of militarism employed by any given state to resolve international conflicts. Independent variables for gender equality include percent women in parliament, duration of female suffrage, percent women in the labor force, and fertility rate. Several control variables (alliances, contiguity, wealth, and democracy) are added to the multivariate logistic regressions, and all four hypotheses are confirmed. This study substantiates the theory that domestic gender equality has a pacifiying effect on state behavior on the international level.
From 1900 to 1987, state, quasi-state, and stateless groups have killed in democide (genocide, massacres, extrajudicial executions, and the like) nearly 170,000,000 people. Case studies and quantitative analysis show that ethnic, racial, and religious diversity, economic development, levels of education, and cultural differences do not account for this killing. Rather, democide is best explained by the degree to which a regime is empowered along a democratic to totalitarian dimension and, second, the extent to which it is characteristically involved in war or rebellion. Combining these results with those that show that democracies do not make war on each other, the more democratic two nations are the less foreign violence between them, and that the more democratic a regime the less internal violence, strongly suggests that democracy is a general method of nonviolence.
It has often been argued that democracies are less war-prone than other forms of government because the people, who must bear the costs of war in lives and resources, will restrain the aggressive impulses of their leaders. Most empirical studies addressing this hypothesis have produced results indicating that democracies fight as often as other states. The authors argue that previous studies have misspecified the theoretical argument. The argument the authors propose and the test they design focus directly on specific mechanisms by which the decisions of leaders are constrained, rather than on composite conceptual and operational definitions of democracy. The authors also control for the opportunity leaders have to decide for war. Their results suggest that for major powers, higher levels of decisional constraints lead to a lower probability that conflicts will escalate to war, as the authors' theoretical argument predicts. The relationship does not hold for minor powers, however, and may even be reversed.
Peace and regime type can be examined at the dyadic, nation, and system levels. At the dyadic level, it is well established that democracies rarely if ever fight each other. At the national level, the broad consensus is that there is no significant relationship between democracy and war participation, but this conclusion remains controversial. At the system level, there has been little research; most scholars have taken for granted that the answer can be inferred from the findings at the dyadic or national levels. The authors show that, if the conventional wisdom holds at the dyadic and national levels, the probability of war in a politically mixed dyad must be higher than the probability of war between two nondemocracies, and the relationship between democracy and war at the system level must be parabolic. Thus increasing democratization initially produces more war, and the reduction of war starts only at a higher level of democratization.
Abstract The democratic peace literature has provided rather convincing evidence that two democratic countries are very unlikely to go to war against each other. We provide an alternative for thinking about why certain pairs of states do not engage in warfare, drawing largely from feminist scholarship. That is, we explore the extent to which fertility rates and rates of women’s employment,are associated with the use of force by a state. We draw on literature which shows that women’s attitude toward the use of force differs from those of men, to argue that the more women who have access to the political process the more constrained will be the state in its use of force. The results of our analysis demonstrate that pairs of countries with low birth rates tend not to go to war, and that the lower the birth rates the less likely is a country to become engaged in the more violent of militarized disputes. 2
This article focuses on the behavior-begets-behavior dynamic in the context of the interactions of states in crisis. Matching behavior is defined as a reciprocal relationship between incoming behavior (crisis trigger) and outgoing behavior (crisis response). A model of matching or reciprocal behavior is proposed, and several factors — threat to basic values, sociopolitical conditions, and power relations among crisis actors — are examined from the perspective of their potential disruption of the matching process. An initial finding is that crises, like the much more heavily studied conflict processes in general, exhibit a very high degree of matching behavior. However, there is considerable evidence that the factors examined here contribute to the disruption of these processes. A low threat to decision makers' values provides a context in which decision makers may respond with violence to nonviolent crisis triggers. Similarly, deteriorating sociopolitical conditions in countries experiencing a foreign policy crisis contribute to a higher than expected level of violence in crisis behavior. Finally, power parity among crisis actors was found to contribute to disruptions in matching behavior.
Research in quantitative international politics and peace science is dominated by two puzzles and their corresponding research designs. (1) Why do some nations fight wars more often than others? (2) Which system characteristics contribute to war? What is often neglected is a third puzzle: Why do particular nations fight each other? Dyadic analyses are most useful for dealing with this problem, and can be used to test the preferred policy of national security elites on matters such as deterrence. An empirical investigation is carried out to discover whether extended nuclear deterrence has reduced the risk of war in the 1960s and 1970s. While the evidence provides only moderate support, it still confirms the view that extended nuclear deterrence has reduced the risk of war.
The primary focus of this article is to break the ties to examining democracies to the exclusion of other regime types. Inspired by work in the two-level games approach to the larger question of foreign policy behavior, we broaden the two-level approach by examining the impact of domestic factors on decisionmaking across regime types and how they relate to the use and extent of violence in international crisis. Our analysis is bounded substantively and conceptually, however, by our exclusive focus in this article on decisionmaking in international crises. We use the 895 foreign policy crisis cases of the International Crisis Behavior (ICB) dataset for our analysis, which entails an examination of process and decisionmaking structural variables using cross-tabulations and a series of logistic regression models. We find that democracies exhibit many behaviors similar to non-democracies in crisis. The prevalent effects of action-reaction processes that result from the initial impact of the crisis-trigger suppress cross-regime type differences, at least in the initial stages of a crisis. Differences across regime types manifest themselves when looking at the entire crisis time period.
In order to determine the contribution of social pluralism (ethnic, religious, and racial differences) to violence, diverse multivariate cross-national analyses were done. These involved 109 variables on conflict and violence; pluralism; and social political, economic, demographic, and cultural differences for all states, 1932 to 1982. The results show that pluralism is a multidimensional empirical concept; that regardless of which dimension is focused upon, it has a lesser relationship to violence than do other national characteristics, such as political freedom. And what relationship is found between pluralism and violence, holding other variables constant, is largely accounted for by the number of ethnic and religious groups in a state. Drawing on this and other studies, the conclusion is that where political power is centralized around a trans-plural group, such as a military junta or monarch, or trans-plural ideology, such as communism or fascism, then violence is highly likely, regardless of what plural units may or may not exist. And where power is centralized, nondemocratic, and highly dependent upon one's social group membership, such as ethnicity or religion, then collective violence is also highly likely.
The classical liberals believed that democracy and free trade would reduce the incidence of war. Here we conduct new tests of the `democratic peace', incorporating into the analyses of Maoz & Russett (1993) a measure of economic interdependence based on the economic importance of bilateral trade. This allows us to conduct a simultaneous evaluation of the effects of regime type and interdependence on the likelihood that a pair of states will become involved in a militarized interstate dispute. We control in all our analyses for a number of potentially confounding influences: growth rates in per capita income, alliances, geographic contiguity, and relative power. Our logistic regression analyses of politically relevant dyads (1950-85) indicate that the benefits of the liberals' economic program have not been sufficiently appreciated. Trade is a powerful influence for peace, especially among the war-prone, contiguous pairs of states. Moreover, Kant (1991 [1795]) was right: International conflict is less likely when external economic relations are important, executives are constrained, and societies are governed by non-violent norms of conflict resolution.
It has been shown in the work of Ted Gurr and others that ethnic discrimination can lead to ethno-political rebellion, and that rebellion often leads to interstate conflict. The authors seek to discover whether rebellion is the only meaningful link between ethnic discrimination and international violence. Many scholars have argued that a domestic environment of inequality and violence results in a greater likelihood of state use of violence internationally. This argument is most fully developed within feminist literature; however, research in the area of ethno-political conflict has also highlighted the negative impact of domestic discrimination on state behavior at the international level. The analysis builds upon the literature linking domestic gender inequality and state aggression to other inequalities created and/or sustained by the state. Using the Minorities at Risk (MAR) and Militarized Interstate Disputes (MID) datasets, the authors test whether states characterized by higher levels of discrimination against ethnic minorities are more likely to exhibit higher levels of hostility or to use force first when involved in international disputes. Group-level data in MAR are used to create a set of state-level variables measuring the extent of formal and informal discrimination against minority groups. The authors then test whether states with higher levels of discrimination against minority groups are more likely to rely on force when involved in an international dispute, controlling for other possible causes of state use of force. Ultimately, the authors confirm their hypotheses that states characterized by domestic inequality with regard to ethnic minorities are more likely to exhibit higher levels of hostility and to use force first when involved in an interstate conflict.
A list was compiled of virtually all significant military confrontations between republics throughout history. By including regimes only marginally republican, some forty cases were found from ancient Greece to the 1990s; about half of these had significant combat. Detailed historical investigation of each case reveals consistent patterns. A striking lack of wars between well-established democracies prevailed not only among modern states but also among earlier regimes commonly described as democracies, for example in medieval Switzerland. A historically more numerous class of republic is the oligarchies, where those in power hold equal rights but deny such rights to other important groups (e.g. South Africa). Remarkably, oligarchies scarcely ever made war on other regimes of their own type. Oligarchies did commonly fight democracies. It also appears that both types of republic, unlike all other regimes, have tended to form durable peaceful leagues among themselves. These reliable and general observations are not consistent with explanations solely in terms of institutional structures, but they can be understood in terms of domestic political culture. Leaders who negotiated with fellow citizens as equals invariably treated foreign leaders in the same non-violent manner, provided that they perceived the foreigners too as political equals.
In the ongoing debate on explaining why democracies do not fight each other, an attempt to establish a correlation between democracies and territorial demands is made by posing the hypothesis that well-established democracies do not fight each other since they are conservative powers, usually satisfied with the territorial status quo within and across their borders. If this hypothesis is corroborated by the historical evidence, then it is possible to speculate that the zone of peace among democracies might be expanded if more countries (not necessarily democracies) also become satisfied with the status quo. To test the relevance of this proposition, the relationship between democracies and territorial demands is examined in historical and geographical terms, through the analysis of international subsystems or regions as the unit of analysis. A zone of peace is then defined as a discrete geographical region of the world in which a group of states have maintained peaceful relations among themselves for a period of at least thirty years. The historical and geographical zones of peace identified since 1815 are: (1) Europe, 1815-48; (2) Europe, 1871-1914; (3) Western Europe, since 1945; (4) North America, since 1917; (5) South America, 1883 to 1932 and since 1942; (6) West Africa, since 1957; (7) East Asia, since 1953; and (8) Australasia, since 1945.
Although a number of studies have reported gender differences on attitudes toward the use of force in foreign policy, several recent studies have reported that gender is a weak and non- significant predictor of foreign policy attitudes. The authors find that gender differences are significant even after a variety of demographic controls and that gender is among the most important demographic predictors of foreign policy attitudes. Gender differences have widened in scope over time and now include both foreign policy goals and tools. These differences are largest among the youngest cohorts. The determinants of women's and men's foreign policy attitudes, however, are essentially the same.
Using 267 repeated policy questions (962 time points), we examine gender differences in policy choices and how they have changed
from the 1960s to the 1980s. The average gender difference in preferences toward policies involving the use of force have
consistently been moderately large. Sex differences in opinion toward other policies—regulation and public protection, “compassion”
issues, traditional values—have been approximately half as large but they also warrant more attention than in the past. Our
analysis suggests that the salience of issues has increased greatly for women, and as a result differences in preferences
have increased in ways consistent with the interests of women and the intentions of the women's movement.
This article introduces and describes data on the geographic proximity of states (i.e., countries) during the 150‐year period from the Congress of Vienna through 1965. The 144 countries that are members of the interstate system during those years are coded as being noncontiguous, contiguous by land, or within 6, 24, or 150 miles by water from all other states in the system. Descriptive information is provided concerning the distribution of proximate states within the interstate system as a whole, within its various regional subsystems, by historical period, and with respect to the dominating states (i.e., major powers) in the system. In addition, several conceptual issues concerning the definition of “geographic proximity” are discussed, and the author speculates about empirical associations that are likely to exist between geographic proximity and interstate interactions. In concluding, the author outlines a few ways in which geographic proximity data might be used to contribute to an understanding of national behavior and interstate interaction.
This article reviews and assesses the empirical literature on geography and war. The early pioneering work of Mackinder, Spykman, and Mahan is reviewed as are the current theoretical frameworks under which most work on geography and war is carried out. The empirical findings are classified into two broad categories: as a facilitating condition for conflict and as a source of conflict. The former includes studies of contagion, diffusion, border effects, and spatial correlation. Studies that analyze geography as a source of conflict encompass those that look at the origins of territorial disputes, the outcome of those disputes, the recurring character of the disputes, and finally those that test the “shatterbelt” concept. Suggestions for future research on geography and war are offered.
Current consensus in the field of democratic peace research holds that democratic states go to war in general no less than nondemocratic states. The author challenges this consensus by reevaluating the main empirical studies on which it rests, using information that previous studies ignored and statistical techniques unused or even unknown at the time. The results indicate that from 1960 to 1980, democratic nations were less involved in military conflict than other regime types. Estimates of this relationship are robust to different operational definitions of both war and democracy, to the addition of control variables for other possible correlates of war, and to the application of different statistical techniques. This indicates that lack of previous significant findings have less to do with the data than with the methods used to analyze them.
Theoretical arguments and some empirical evidence suggest that war is more likely to occur between states that are geographically proximate, approximately equal in power, major powers, allied, undemocratic, economically advanced, and highly militarized than between those that are not. Bivariate analyses of these seven factors in relation to the onset of interstate war over all pairs of states in the period from 1816 to 1965 generally support these associations. However, multivariate analyses reveal some differences. In order of declining importance, the conditions that characterize a dangerous, war-prone dyad are: presence of contiguity, absence of alliance, absence of more advanced economy, absence of democratic polity, absence of overwhelming preponderance, and presence of major power. Taken together these findings suggest that our research priorities may be seriously distorted and that the idealist prescription for peace may be better than the realist one.
The literature on the democratic peace has emerged from two empirical claims: (1) Democracies are unlikely to conflict with one another, and (2) democracies are as prone to conflict with nondemocracies as nondemocracies are with one another. Together these assertions imply that the democratic peace is a dyadic phenomenon. There is strong support for the first observation, but much recent scholarship contravenes the second. This paper assesses whether the democratic peace is a purely dyadic, a monadic, or perhaps a mixed dyadic and monadic effect. Our analysis offers two important advances. First, our model directly compares the dyadic and monadic explanations by using the state as the unit of analysis rather than the potentially problematic dyad. Second, our model controls for an important but overlooked confounding variable: satisfaction with the status quo. Our results indicate that the initiation of violence within crises is predominantly a dyadic phenomenon, but we also find evidence suggesting a strong monadic effect regarding the emergence of crises.
This book charts the incidence of territorial changes and military conflicts from 1816 to 1980. Using statistical and descriptive analysis, the authors attempt to answer three related sets of questions: * When does military conflict accompany the process of national independence? * When do states fight over territorial changes and when are such transactions completed peacefully? * How do territorial changes affect future military conflict between the states involved in the exchange?