"The US has been at the forefront of mediating in ethnic civil conflicts in recent years, in Bosnia, Northern Ireland, and more recently in Iraq. In Bosnia and Northern Ireland the U.S. has been a central player in installing constitutions that have set up ethnocratic regimes, where although there are reasonably free and regular elections, political parties are legally set up along ethno-sectarian lines. There is essentially no political conversation outside of the ethnic/religious group," writes Lise Morje Howard, Assistant Professor in the Department of Government at Georgetown University.
Lise Morjé Howard was previously the founding director of the Master of Arts Program in Conflict Resolution at Georgetown. She received her M.A. and Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of California, Berkeley, and her A.B. in Soviet Studies magna cum laude from Barnard College of Columbia University. Previously, she was an Assistant Professor of Government at Wesleyan University and held pre- and post-doctoral fellowships at Stanford, Harvard, and the University of Maryland, College Park.
