Articles

Kate Cronin-Furman compares and contrasts Sri Lanka's post-civil war memory projects with Rwanda's genocide commemoration as the basis for a broader discussion of the relationship between memory and justice.

Diane Moore, director of the Religious Literacy Project at Harvard Divinity School, traveled to Iraq where she heard from Syrian refugees frustrated that so many people know so little about them. (Kirk Carapezza/WGBH)

To what extent can international peacekeeping promote micro-foundations for positive peace after violence? Drawing on macro-level peacekeeping theory, the authors' approach uses novel experimental methods to illustrate how monitoring and enforcement by a neutral third party could conceivably enhance prosocial behavior between rival groups in a tense, postconflict peacekeeping environment.

In civil wars, extremist rebel groups (such as the Islamic State) have often proven more successful than their moderate counterparts. Why?

"Mironova trained as a mathematician, game theorist and behavioural economist....she is one of few researchers to venture directly into combat zones to examine the roots of jihadist terror. Her work has been funded variously by the US National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START), George Soros's Open Society Foundations, the United Nations and the World Bank."

When do states carry out mass violence against minority ethnic groups collaborating with adversaries during wartime? A comparison of the policies of the Austro-Hungarian, Ottoman, and Russian Empires during World War I shows that states with influential political organizations reflecting non-ethnic social divisions are less likely to pursue mass killings of ethnic minority collaborators. This factor may also help prevent mass killing in contemporary ethnic conflicts.

The fall of Aleppo is a human catastrophe. It’s also a demonstration of the perils of choosing the middle course in a military conflict. Sometimes it’s possible to talk and fight at the same time. But in Syria, the U.S. decision to pursue a dual-track, halfway approach made the mayhem worse.

The creation and strategic utilization, and selective sectarianization of sacred history is a key component of contemporary conflicts between competing social movements and armed groups around the world. This article highlights the deployment of competing historical narratives in the ongoing conflicts in Syria and Iraq using the concept of "framing."

In recent decades, the United States has attempted to overthrow the regimes of several other countries in the hopes that the new regimes will be friendly toward Washington. Does foreign-imposed regime change (FIRC) succeed in making target states more accommodating to interveners’ interests? A new dataset and an analysis of foreign interventions in the Congo Wars show that FIRC damages relations between intervener and target state more often than it improves them.