Militarization permeates both formal and informal institutions, often reinforcing gender hierarchies and diverting resources away from sectors such as education and health that disproportionately benefit women and girls. As a result, female empowerment tends to decline under militarized conditions—especially in states experiencing civil war. We argue that United Nations peacekeeping operations can counter these effects by directly improving female empowerment indicators and fostering post-conflict demilitarization, thereby creating potential virtuous cycles of empowerment. Using a series of empirical tests, including difference-in-differences estimations and mediation analyses, we examine the impact of peacekeeping operations on conflict-affected states. Our findings indicate that the presence of peacekeeping operations is positively associated with increased levels of female empowerment, across multiple operationalizations of conflict and post-conflict militarization. Moreover, peacekeeping operations appear to promote empowerment both directly and indirectly by reducing state military expenditures.
This paper investigates how the regulation of online content in democracies has eroded the norm of freedom of information and made it easier for autocrats to justify controlling and suppressing information. We introduce the concept of inadvertent norm erosion: the contestation of a norm in such a way that the norm’s content or scope is eroded beyond the norm reformer’s intentions. We show that through several phases, the European Union, in advocating for occasional exceptions to freedom of information, has shifted the norm on information freedom toward a more illiberal equilibrium. Authoritarian governments frame their actions as defending “digital sovereignty.” In doing so, they explicitly mimic democratic justifications rooted in protecting citizens from harmful or illegal information. Yet liberal policy makers’ self-identification as defenders of the liberal order prevents them from acknowledging the unintended consequences of their actions or taking measures to counteract them. This paper contributes to theories of norms by showing how well-intentioned supporters of democratic norms can inadvertently enable erosion by countenancing exceptions to the norm. It adds to our understanding of the role of authoritarians in developing counter-norms, showing how they are parasitic on the actions of self-proclaimed defenders of the liberal international order.
States emerge in international relations when they are recognised as legitimate territorial rulers, but conflict erupts when different sides claim the same territory, mostly during secession or decolonisation. International actors can recognise only one side of the conflict and, therefore, face the challenge of how to engage with the other side and de facto authorities they do not recognise, especially for conflict management. Scholars have explored ‘engagement without recognition’, that is, international actors’ atypical links with statehood claimants, mainly focusing on contemporary, secessionist cases in Europe and its neighbourhood. Instead, this article focuses on two historical (i.e. no longer existing) and more geographically diverse examples that also represent different types of statehood conflict: international responses to the Biafran secessionist conflict (1967–1970) and the East Timorese independence movement (1975–2002), representing a decolonisation-related case. The analysis shows that engagement without recognition has a longer history and wider geographical scope than commonly assumed. It also offers fresh findings on how drivers, normative frameworks and forms of engagement, actors involved and impacts on conflict vary across conflict types. The article advances our understanding of engagement in conflict-affected territories and contributes to studies of how, and by whom, sovereignty is practised in international relations.
With international organizations increasing in number and policy scope, so, too, has the potential for states’ dissatisfaction with them. One possibility for states to signal severe dissatisfaction with international organizations is by threatening to withdraw from the organization in question. While the realization of threats into actual exits challenges international organizations, their hands are not tied as they may respond to exit threats through (costly) concessions aimed at appeasing the threatening state. This paper systematically investigates the concession politics of 73 regional international organizations between 1945 and 2022, revealing that 43 out of 123 exit threats were met with concessions. To explain this variation, the paper draws on international organization contestation research, theorizing international organizations’ ability and willingness to grant concessions. Based on a quantitative analysis of the broader pattern and a qualitative case study zooming into the underlying causal mechanisms, the paper demonstrates that regional international organizations are more willing to grant concessions when several states form an exit-threatening coalition, when the disagreement between the international organization and the member state is less severe, and when they include a state willing to perform hegemonic functions among their members. By contrast, ability factors such as decision-making rules or international organization wealth have no systematic effects.
This article examines the role of flags in conflict and peacebuilding using the cases of Cyprus, Korea, and Northern Ireland. It begins by discussing flags’ association with nationalist politics and state power, yet also their potential to promote an ‘everyday nationalism’ which can support ‘everyday peace’. Then it introduces the three case studies, divided geographical units (two islands and a peninsula), which experience both traditional nationalist pressures towards ongoing division and (to varying extents) reconciliation efforts towards integration within a new political structure. The analysis explores these tensions in each case, with a focus on how flags have been used, contested, and envisioned during peace efforts. The Discussion suggests that attempts at establishing shared flags have thus far failed to gain wide acceptance due to the resilient organisational and ideological power of rival nationalisms. It draws comparative insights on the ‘post-historical’ and ‘counter nationalist’ meanings advanced by the shared flags within the case studies and suggests that these symbols at least served as a tool, for actors at all levels, to envisage and communicate an alternative political future comprising new inter-communal relationships.
