Conflict & Conflict Resolution

614 Items

Hezbollah supporters distribute sweets to passersby, as they celebrate the fall of the Syrian town of Qusair to forces loyal to President Bashar Assad and Hezbollah fighters, in Bazzalieh village, Lebanon, near the Lebanese-Syrian border, Wednesday, June 5, 2013.

AP Photo/Hussein Malla

Journal Article - International Security

Foreign Intervention and Internal Displacement: Urban Politics in Postwar Beirut

| Winter 2023/24

Dozens of in-depth interviews in Lebanon after its civil war show how wartime displacement transformed localities in ways that transcend religious identity. With more than 80,000 people displaced from southern Lebanon because of fighting since October 7, 2023, the Israel-Gaza war is likely to strengthen Hezbollah’s grip when the displaced populations return and in localities in south Lebanon where displaced populations settle. 

Journal Article - International Security

Reining in Rebellion: The Decline of Political Violence in South America, 1830–1929

    Authors:
  • Raúl L. Madrid
  • Luis L. Schenoni
| Winter 2023/24

After a century of rebellion, South America experienced a rapid decline in revolts in the early 1900s. Historical narratives and an analysis of a comprehensive new dataset show that the decrease stemmed in large part from the expansion and professionalization of the region’s militaries, which were driven by an export boom and the threat of interstate conflict. 

Announcement - Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School

ISP Research Fellow Apekshya Prasai Selected as a 2023 HFG Emerging Scholar

| July 17, 2023

Apekshya Prasai, a political science doctoral candidate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was recently named a 2023 Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation Emerging Scholar.   The Emerging Scholars (nine in all) are doctoral candidates who are in the final year of writing dissertations on the nature of and responses to violence around the world.

Peter Ajak speaking to a small group outside.

Courtesy of Peter Ajak

- Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School

Belfer Center Fellow Peter Ajak Navigates Challenges from Lost Boy to South Sudanese Activist

| Spring 2023

Peter Ajak is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Belfer Center’s International Security Program. A South Sudanese peace activist, a scholar, former political prisoner, and a former child soldier and Lost Boy of Sudan, Ajak’s life has been consumed with the commitment to bring freedom to his people.

Women who have been internally displaced selling charcoal on a market in Al Fashir, capital of the Sudanese state of North Dafur, February 18, 2015.

Wikimedia Commons

Journal Article - International Security

Rise or Recede? How Climate Disasters Affect Armed Conflict Intensity

    Author:
  • Tobias Ide
| Spring 2023

Climate disasters shape the trajectory of internal conflicts in states highly vulnerable to changes in conflict dynamics. Conflict after a climate disaster escalates when the disaster induces shifts in relative power that enable one side to increase its military efforts. But when one actor is weakened by the disaster and the other lacks the capability to exploit that weakness, conflict intensity declines.

An old man walks past a gutted car in downtown Kabul, Thursday, June 25, 1992.

AP Photo/B.K. Bangash

Journal Article - International Security

Dealers and Brokers in Civil Wars: Why States Delegate Rebel Support to Conduit Countries

    Authors:
  • Niklas Karlén
  • Vladimir Rauta
| Spring 2023

State support to non-state armed groups outside a state’s own territory is commonly seen as a direct relationship between a state sponsor and a rebel group. But powerful states can use a third state—a dealer or broker—as a conduit for military and other support. States that fail to identify an alignment of interests with these intermediary dealers and brokers face strategic failure.

Protesters wave pride flags

AP/John Raoux

Journal Article - Journal of Peace Research

Guest Editors' Introduction: Nonviolent Resistance and Its Discontents

| 2023

In the past decade, myriad studies have explored the effects of nonviolent resistance (NR) on outcomes including revolutionary success (short-term and long-term) and democratization, and how nonviolent mobilization can play a similar role to violence in affecting social change in some settings. This special issue seeks to advance scholars' and policymakers' understanding of the role of nonviolence by tackling some key assumptions in existing work that are complicated by historical and contemporary realities of deepening polarization worldwide. This issue addresses four key areas within conflict and peace research that limit scholars' and policymakers' ability to make sense of NR: (a) the fragmented nature of civil resistance campaigns in terms of supporters and demands; (b) the increasing prevalence of authoritarian or anti-egalitarian nonviolent campaigns; and (c) the complicated nature of revolutionary success. Cutting across all three of these substantive areas is another key area, which is: (d) the United States as an increasingly salient site of conflict and contention.

Protesters walk past a police security line

AP/Emrah Gurel

Journal Article - Journal of Peace Research

Swords into Ploughshares? Why Human Rights Abuses Persist after Resistance Campaigns

| 2023

Human rights abuse tends to increase during national crises, such as civil wars and mass nonviolent uprisings. Under what conditions does this abuse abate or persist? The author argues that violent challenges provoke much more coercive state responses, exposing more personnel within the security forces to extreme forms of repression and priming them (both leaders and followers) to reproduce these behaviors after the conflict has terminated. This effect is mitigated or avoided when challengers rely on nonviolent tactics instead of violence, leading to less post-conflict abuse.