Works in Progress

Book Project

Anarchy or Tyranny?: Stabilisation operations as Statebuilders

This book looks at how the nature and role of the state is perpetuated by the international society through stabilisation operations. With the rise of liberal interventionism, peace operations now intervene within, rather than between, states. Particularly ambitious new operations, called stabilisation operations, deploy within active conflicts with mandates to use force to deter spoilers and rebuild states. In Africa, stabilisation operations work, with varying levels of coordination with the African host state, the United Nations, the African Union, the European Union, and parallel military operations deployed by predominantly western coalitions of the willing. Anarchy to Tyranny draws upon the use of these multi-actors peace operations, which include UN mandated stabilisation operations and at least one other actor, to provide empirical evidence of the continued contestation around the role of the state, emphasising how state authority is understood differently by the African Union, African host states, the UN Security Council and other stabilisation actors. This has important implications for the creation of a viable state – particularly if western conceptions of statehood are forced upon African states without consideration of their own unique history of state formation.

GR2P Special Issue

Terror/Counterterror and the Responsibility to Protect 

Issue Abstract: The relationship between counterterrorism and R2P is murky. At first glance, R2P and counterterrorism operate at odds with each other. In the past twenty years military-focused counterterrorism efforts have often taken priority over civilian-focused protection efforts. In extreme cases, this emphasis on military responses has allowed atrocity crimes to occur or has even been responsible for R2P crimes themselves.

When the initial failures of military-focused counterterrorism became clear, efforts at combatting asymmetric violence expanded to encompass the broader realms of preventing/countering violent extremism. Counterterror efforts now significantly overlap efforts to prevent or respond to atrocity crimes as indicated by R2P. UN Security Council now often considers efforts to counter terrorism and prevent atrocities concurrently. This overlap opens up opportunities for R2P and CT to both reinforce and undermine each other.   

This special issue is devoted to exploring the complex relationship between broad conceptions of counterterrorism and the pillars of R2P. It does this in three ways; first, by providing possible theoretical frameworks for understanding the overlaps between R2P and counterterror; second, by exploring the overlaps between R2P and atrocity crimes by non-state actors, and third by applying the R2P frame to different state and international responses to terrorism.