International Security Editor Jacqueline Hazelton's "Bullets Not Ballots" Wins APSA Foreign Policy Section's Best Book Award

Award to be presented in September 2022 at the American Political Science Association Annual Meeting in Montreal, Quebec.

Bullets Not Ballots: Success in Counterinsurgency Warfare, which was published as part of the Cornell Studies in Security Affairs in May 2021, has been named the American Political Science Association (APSA) Foreign Policy Section's Best Book for 2021–2022. The award will be presented in September 2022 at the APSA Annual Meeting in Montreal, Quebec and also includes a 500 USD honorarium.

Based on International Security Executive Editor Jacqueline Hazelton's doctoral dissertation, Bullets Not Ballots challenges the claim that winning "hearts and minds" is critical to successful counterinsurgency campaigns. Good governance, this conventional wisdom holds, gains the besieged government popular support, denies support to the insurgency, and enables military and political victory. Hazelton argues that major counterinsurgent successes since World War II have resulted not through democratic reforms but rather through the use of military force against civilians and the co-optation of rival elites. An article, "The 'Hearts and Minds' Fallacy: Violence, Coercion, and Success in Counterinsurgency Warfare," which was also based on Dr. Hazelton’s dissertation, was published in International Security (Summer 2017).

Hazelton completed her dissertation during her International Security Program research fellowship (2009–2011) and received her Ph.D. from Brandeis University's Department of Politics in 2011. She became Executive Editor of International Security in February 2022.

Dr. Hazelton is donating her honorarium to the APSA Foreign Policy Section's Graduate Student Travel Grant Competition. The grant is intended to support the APSA travel costs of a graduate student.