Suchergebnisse

Research on rebel behavior focuses on the violent conduct of these groups. Work on rebel governance, however, has documented the myriad ways in which rebel groups seek to gain legitimacy, project strength, and govern civilian populations beyond direct violence. These efforts stress the importance of governance institutions for securing cooperation and compliance from the civilian population, a central concern for rebel groups. Judicial processes are one avenue through which this cooperation and compliance can be secured. These efforts encompass a range of processes including ad hoc trials, truth commissions and commissions of inquiry, offers of amnesty, and reparations programs. Using new data on the rebel use of judicial processes from 1946 to 2011, I examine the argument that rebel judicial processes can best be understood as a mobilization strategy by the group, offering concessions to a supportive civilian population or coercion when support is weak.

"Transitional Justice During Armed Conflict" published on by Oxford University Press.

"Understanding Government Behavior During Armed Conflict" published on by Oxford University Press.

ObjectiveThis article discusses the challenges of conducting research in hybrid regimes. Under these conditions, governments proscribe the types of questions researchers can ask and self‐preservation on the part of the researcher induces further self‐censorship. This ultimately impacts the type of research we conduct and the outputs of that research.MethodsExperiences conducting research in Rwanda are used to explore these challenges.ResultsResearch restrictions and monitoring in hybrid regimes is found to limit the types of research questions that scholars can ask as well as the questions that they do ask.ConclusionsIn this article, I suggest that being knowledgeable of the context, exercising creativity when needed, and demonstrating respect for research participants are essential skills for navigating the obstacles of conducting research in a hybrid regime.

Scholars of political violence often face problems concerning data availability. Research on the perpetrators of that violence is no exception. Over the past 40 years we have made great strides in understanding who joins in violent action and why, yet have rarely probed the representative nature of the subjects queried or contemplated the implications of this sampling for our conclusions. It is generally assumed that those left to 'tell the tale' about what transpired are representative of those who participated in the violence. In this article, we use the context of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda to probe questions about which perpetrators of violence we include in our research and subsequently, who we miss. We theorize an often overlooked group of perpetrators, the 'murderers in the middle', who take orders from above, mobilize others to kill, and zealously participate themselves. We contend that this group of perpetrators is potentially unique from those generally captured, identified, and studied in that they are likely to have actively and willingly engaged in violence for personal gain as well as for ideological reasons. Systematically missing groups of perpetrators has potential implications for research on participation in mass violence as well as our understanding of why this behavior occurs.

ABSTRACT
Despite dynamic discussions of research methods within political science, there has been comparatively scarce attention paid to the possibility and effect of research-related trauma—the trauma experienced by individuals working on issues and data related to violence and death. There are many activities within the field of political science that put members of the profession directly at risk for this form of trauma. In this article, we draw attention to the possible risks of research-related trauma for scholars, graduate students, and research team members, and offer some recommendations for best practices in what can be a challenging discipline.