New Research by Women Studying Violence

"Getting Noticed: NSF Grants and Proposals that Work"
Friday, December 6  |  1:30pm - 3:00pm
Hesburgh Center C103

with Zaryab Iqbal
Political Science (PS) and Security and Preparedness (SAP) Program Director, National Science Foundation
Associate Professor in Political Science, Pennsylvania State University

The workshop's keynote address by Zaryab Iqbal will be open to all in the Notre Dame community and promises valuable information for any scholar seeking funding from the National Science Foundation. Iqbal will address NSF funding opportunities for carrying out international research, particularly in the social sciences, including implications of recent changes in NSF funding. She also will discuss the NSF’s initiatives to promote diversity and inclusivity in research funding and share tips for preparing and submitting research proposals.

Schedule 

All sessions will take place in the Hesburgh Center 
Please note that only the 1:30 keynote session is open to the public. All other sessions are closed.

Friday, December 6
 

8:00-9:30am Introduction to the event and research panels

Workshop Participants meet with Dr. Zaryab Iqbal (NSF program director)

9:30-10:00am Break
 

10:00am-12:00pm    Research Sessions 1 and 2

Panel 1

“Rewriting Violence: Risk Effects and the Targeting of Journalists in Mexico’s Criminal Conflict”
Sandra Ley, Center for Research and Teaching in Economics (CIDE)
Discussant:
Angélica Durán-Martínez, University of Massachusetts-Lowell 

“WHY do Collectives Organize? Participatory Investigations & the Legal & Political Opportunities of the Uneven State”
Janice Gallagher, University of Rutgers-Newark
Discussants:
Angela Lederach, PhD graduate in anthropology and peace studies, University of Notre Dame
Aleida García, Visiting Fulbright Scholar, University of Notre Dame

“Religion, Violence, and the Secular State in Post-Revolutionary Mexico”
Gema Kloppe-Santamaría, Loyola University of Chicago
Discussants:
Adela Cedillo, Kellogg Visiting Fellow
Carla Villanueva, PhD Candidate in history, University of Notre Dame

Panel 2

“Rebel Primary Commodity Markets, Price Shocks, and Supplier Victimization”
Chelsea Estancona, University of South Carolina
Discussants:
Rachel Sweet, Keough School of Global Affairs, University of Notre Dame
Angela Chesler, PhD Candidate in political science and peace studies, University of Notre Dame

“Blacklisted Rebels: Signing UN Action Plans for Children”
Minju Kwon, University of Notre Dame
Discussant: 
Lucia Tiscornia, Center for Research and Teaching in Economics (CIDE)

“Blaming the State: The Effect of Intimate Partner Violence Victimization on Political Judgments”
Helen Kras, University of Kentucky
Discussants:
Catriona Standfield, Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, University of Notre Dame
Josephine Lechartre, University of Notre Dame

12:00-1:30pm    Lunch Break
 

1:30-3:00pm   Keynote address by Dr. Zaryab Iqbal (open to all members of the Notre Dame community)
 

3:00-5:00pm    Research Sessions 3 and 4
 

Panel 3

“Knowing What We Don't: The Problem of (Mis)Attributing Civil War Violence”
Rachel Sweet, University of Notre Dame
Discussants:
Minju Kwon, University of Notre Dame
Ilana Rothkopf, University of Notre Dame

“Reconsidering Civil War Onset.”
Amelia Hoover Green, Drexel University & Human Rights Data Analysis Group
Discussant:
Chelsea Estancona, University of South Carolina

Panel 4

“Security Sector Reform and Its Consequences: Police Militarization and Violence in the Aftermath of Armed Conflict”
Lucía Tiscornia, Center for Research and Teaching in Economics (CIDE)
Discussant:
Sasha Klyachkina, University of Wisconsin-Madison

“Democratic Reforms and the Politics of Police Violence in Buenos Aires, Argentina”
Leslie MacColman, University of Notre Dame
Discussants:
Kimberly Peh, University of Notre Dame
Maggie Shum, Keough School of Global Affairs, University of Notre Dame

“The Impact of Transnational Advocacy Networks on Gendered Political Institutions: The Creation and Closure of Women’s Police Stations in Nicaragua and their Absence in Guatemala”
Shannon Walsh, University of Minnesota-Duluth
Discussants:
Abby Córdova, Kellogg Visiting Fellow; University of Kentucky
Helen Kras, University of Kentucky

6:30-7:00pm    Reception

7:00-9:00pm     Dinner

Saturday, December 7 

9:00-11:00am   Research Sessions 5 and 6

Panel 5

“Post-Conflict Governance: Divergent Legacies of Civil War in Post-Soviet Chechnya” 
Sasha Klyachkina, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Discussant:
Sandra Ley, Center for Research and Teaching in Economics (CIDE)

“Negotiating with Criminals, Non-Rebel Actors in Latin America”
Angélica Durán-Martínez, University of Massachusetts-Lowell
Discussant:
Leslie MacColman, University of Notre Dame

“'Fotos y Firmas': The Theatrics of Care and Contested Performances of Peace”
Angela Lederach, University of Notre Dame
Discussant:
Janice Gallagher, Rutgers-Newark

Panel 6

“Art or Science? Struggles over the Meaning of UN Mediation”
Catriona Standfield, Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, University of Notre Dame
Discussant:
Shannon Walsh, University of Minnesota-Duluth

“State Absence and Violence against Women:  How Gangs’ Territorial Control Exacerbates Gendered Crimes in El Salvador”
Abby Córdova, Kellogg Institute Visiting Fellow; University of Kentucky
Discussant:
Amelia Hoover Green, Drexel University & Human Rights Data Analysis Group

“Indigenous Female Guerrillas: A Case of Disruption of Class, Gender, and Ethnicity Hierarchies in Mexico’s Sierra Tarahumara during the 1970s”
Adela Cedillo, Kellogg Institute Visiting Fellow
Discussant:
Gema Kloppe-Santamaría, Loyola University Chicago

11:00 – 12:00    Wrap Up

Paper abstracts

Adela Cedillo
Project title: Indigenous Female Guerrillas: A Case of Disruption of Class, Gender, and Ethnicity Hierarchies in Mexico’s Sierra Tarahumara during the 1970s
Abstract: The Zapatist Army of National Liberation (EZLN) took up arms against the Mexican government on New Year's Day in 1994. Since then, the EZLN has received worldwide academic attention, in part because of the vast representation of indigenous women and its espousal of radical feminism. However, the scholarship has neglected the fact that the first female indigenous combatants in contemporary Mexico militated in revolutionary movements in the 1970s. My work looks at the participation of Rarámuri and Guarijío women in the rural guerrilla commandos that formed part of the September 23rd Communist League (the Liga) in the Sierra Tarahumara from 1973 to 1975. My research aims to respond to why indigenous peasant women who belonged to patriarchal societies in the highlands decided to participate in a guerrilla movement. This article explores how indigenous women went from civilian collaborators of the Liga—given their unresolved agrarian issues with the Mexican state—into armed combatants that fought against the counterinsurgency threatening their communities. I argue that unlike urban female guerrillas who also joined rural commandos, indigenous women did not challenge the hierarchies of class, gender, and race in exchange for the influence of socialism or other external ideologies. The guerrilla movement proved to be a space of self-liberation in which indigenous women developed a sort of “performative feminism,” a type beyond theoretical or political reflection but with a feminist outcome in the praxis.

Abby Córdova
Project title: State Absence and Violence against Women:  How Gangs’ Territorial Control Exacerbates Gendered Crimes in El Salvador
Abstract: Academic research and journalistic reports have documented that high levels of criminal violence exacerbate the risks of gender-based violence and its impacts. For the most part, however, scholars have compartmentalized the study of criminal violence and violence against women. Recent ethnographic studies have moved this research agenda forward and started to examine the distinct ways in which women experience and resist violence in contexts of criminal violence in the developing world. In this paper, I contribute to this literature by identifying some of the channels through which state absence and the resulting territorial control by criminal organizations increase women’s vulnerability to gender-based violence in and outside the home. With a focus on gang violence in El Salvador, I argue that criminal organizations engage in violence against women as part of their strategy to help maintain territorial control, which in turn contributes to the normalization of gender-based violence among the broader population in controlled territories. More specifically, I posit that, in territories where the state is absent, criminal organizations’ hegemony results in a spiral of violence against women in the streets of neighborhoods and within homes, largely perpetuated by diminished reporting rates resulting from fear of gang retaliation and more negative perceptions of the police. To test my hypotheses, I rely on a mixed-method strategy, using qualitative and quantitative data. The quantitative analysis relies on Geographic Information Systems (GIS) data to explore variations in gender-based violence depending on whether women reside in a gang-controlled territory or a nearby zone.

Angélica Durán-Martínez
Project title: Negotiations with criminal, non-insurgent armed groups in Latin America
Abstract: In 2012, the government of El Salvador sponsored a gang truce between the MS-13 and factions of the Barrio 18 gang that reduced homicides by 50% over one year. Yet a similar attempt to sponsor a truce in Honduras a year later did not cause a homicide reduction. This example illustrates the central questions this project tackles: Why would governments engage in negotiations with criminal groups, which can be politically costly? And once such efforts emerge, under what conditions can they reduce violence and improve security? This paper is the tentative introduction of a book project that aims to study these questions in Belize, Colombia, El Salvador, and Honduras while advancing two hypotheses. First, I argue that states are likely to engage in negotiations at opposite ends of criminal trajectories, either when criminal groups represent a clear territorial challenge, or when they are not very sophisticated and thus are easier to frame as a problem rooted in socio-economic inequality. But because negotiations are politically costly, states engage only when they can portray negotiations as the best option available, either because there is a clear failure of repressive policing, or a tentative success of a conflict mitigation strategy based on dialogue, often initiated by civilians. The second hypothesis argues that the success of negotiations depends on the balance of power between state and criminal actors, but their sustainability depends on moving beyond homicide reduction strategies as the process evolves. Negotiations are more likely to reduce violence when states are cohesive and thus able to enforce promises, and when criminal actors have enough territorial control to enforce promises of violence reduction.

Chelsea Estancona
Project title: Rebel Primary Commodity Markets, Price Shocks, and Supplier Victimization
Abstract: Rebel organizations often benefit from the sale of primary commodities. However, producing these commodities may require labor from noncombatants. Rebels provide security and payment to civilian suppliers, but their ability to do so depends on consistent profits. How, then, do price shocks to labor-intensive primary commodities impact rebel-supplier relationships? I hypothesize that negative commodity price shocks lead cash-strapped rebels to ensure suppliers' loyalty by substituting coercion for positive incentives. Conversely, states seek to limit rapid increases in rebels' profit while avoiding the reputational costs of civilian victimization. Thus, the victimization of rebel suppliers from groups such as pro-government militias (PGMs) is hypothesized to increase after positive commodity price shocks. I test these hypotheses with a new dataset covering 1998-2008 that combines monthly U.S. STRIDE data on cocaine price with municipal-level data from the Colombian Centro Nacional de Memoria Historica about the FARC and paramilitary groups' use of civilian victimization.

Janice Gallagher
Paper Title: Collusive Impunity: Victims, States, Narcos and the Shifting Possibilities for Justice
Abstract: In this chapter, I explore why participatory investigations, and the activists and advocates that spawn and engage them, emerge in some local contexts and not others. In this chapter, I discuss how the internal movement resources (usually a local NGO willing and able to take up the cause of disappearances and accompany the victims of violence), local institutional contexts (party in power, timing of elections, institutional strength) and the nature and intensity of the violence (configuration of alliances between and amongst criminal groups and state officials) help explain the emergence of participatory investigations. I make the novel argument that state officials’ shifting internal alliances with the officials in power, or their external alliances with members of criminal organizations, are elite divisions which can lead to windows of opportunity where the investigation and prosecution of disappearances may appear. I show that when two key actors – the governor and State Attorney General - see it as politically advantageous to engage in the prosecution of members of former administrations and/or certain criminal organizations, that they rely on participatory investigations to provide them with credible evidence of wrongdoing by these actors. Under these conditions, lower-level state investigators, responding either to the political signaling of their bosses and/or a desire to investigate cases, often take proactive roles – working hard to investigate disappearances which would otherwise go unsolved and uninvestigated under different political circumstances. I highlight the judicial advances which were possible, and not possible, under such a political configuration in several state-level case studies.

Amelia Hoover Green
Project title: Reconsidering Civil War Onset
Abstract: Most datasets on civil war use an implicit or explicit battle death threshold as a key determinant of onset. Yet it is well documented that battle deaths are poorly measured. I examine whether standard results on civil war onset are robust to errors in battle death measurement by using existing battle death measurements as the basis of a simulation exercise, and find that many are not. More interestingly, this exercise uncovers a variety of covariates whose significance increases in the context of the simulation. I speculate that this is related to the systematic differences between mid-size conflicts (those near the usual threshold) and "clear cases" with higher numbers of deaths.

Gema Kloppe-Santamaría
Project title: Religion, Violence, and the Secular State in Post-Revolutionary Mexico
Abstract: The aim of this paper is to reflect on the complex and contentious relationship between religion and violence in post-revolutionary Mexico. Starting with the tensions generated by the anticlerical and antireligious policies promoted by the Mexican state during the 1920s, and continuing with the 1930s and 1940s decades, a period that allegedly saw a détente between state and Church in Mexico, the paper seeks to examine three interrelated questions: 1) What were the theological, political, and cultural bases that contributed shaping Catholics’ understanding of the legitimacy or illegitimacy of violence as a means to defend religion? 2) How was “religious violence” construed by the Mexican secular state and what were the implications of an official discourse that rendered religion as inherently prone to violence? 3) What were the conflicts and divisions that emerged between the clergy and lay groups and organizations, as well as within the clergy, regarding the legitimacy of violence?

Sasha Klyachkina
Project title: Post-Conflict Governance: Divergent Legacies of Civil War in Post-Soviet Chechnya
Abstract: What are the alternatives to the state after armed conflict, and when do citizens encounter and rely on them instead of, or alongside, state authorities? A burgeoning research agenda has challenged the primacy of the state, demonstrating instead that elders, religious authorities, armed groups, kinship networks, and other informal authorities are key to both undermining and establishing governance. Nevertheless, it is not entirely clear how armed conflict changes both the range of governance authorities and the manner in which civilians chose between them. Utilizing original interview and survey data from Chechnya, I trace the impact of two civil wars on governance. The paper demonstrates divergent legacies of the two wars. I show that the First War, characterized by widespread indiscriminate state violence, fostered non-state governance by altering citizens' preferences and demands. The Second War, however, layered selective targeting and direct counterinsurgency sweeps onto the First War's indiscriminate violence, setting the foundation for state centralization of governance. I argue that changes to civilian preferences and elite relationships jointly shaped which governance domains became the purview of state control and which are regulated by ostensibly non-state authorities.

Helen Kras
Project title: Blaming the State: The Effect of Intimate Partner Violence Victimization on Political Judgments
Abstract: Under what conditions do intimate partner violence (IPV) victimization has an effect on political judgments? While we know that crime victimization shapes people’s political attitudes, it remains unclear whether IPV also impacts victims’ political attitudes. Drawing on theories of policy feedback effects, emotions and crime victimization, I generate hypotheses about the factors that should influence IPV survivors’ political opinions. I argue that by enacting salient legislation on violence against women, the state raises survivors’ expectations about the accessibility of services mandated by the law. By assuming responsibility for combating violence against women, the state enables survivors to connect their well-being to the government. Consequently, I hypothesize that survivors who could not access public services that help them cope with victimization to hold negative opinions about the government. I find that survivors who have not used public services are more likely to think that the state does not support them and are more likely to rate the performance of the national government negatively compared to survivors with services and non-victims.

Minju Kwon
Project: Blacklisted Rebels: Signing UN Action Plans for Children
Abstract: This paper examines the conditions under which rebel groups sign the United Nations (UN) action plans for ending and preventing child rights violations in armed conflict. To find the factors that influence rebel groups’ signing of UN action plans, I examine four potential mechanisms: 1) a rebel groups’ goals and governance; 2) domestic competition for legitimacy; 3) the UN’s commitment to resolving the conflict; and 4) the likelihood of future conflict. By statistically analyzing 114 rebel groups blacklisted by the UN for violating child rights from 2002 to 2018, I argue that a rebel group’s commitment to child rights is determined by the group’s level of concern with its domestic and international legitimacy. Specifically, a rebel group is more likely to sign a UN action plan when it is secessionist. A rebel group's provision of educational services has a statistically significant and positive effect on the group's signing of its UN action plan in particular models that control for the UN’s commitment measured by peacekeeping missions rather than Sanctions Committees. A host state’s commitment to child rights has a statistically significant and positive effect on its rebel groups’ singing of UN action plans in particularly models that control for the UN’s commitment by using peacekeeping missions. This paper contributes to the literature on both international institutions and political violence by leveraging theories in these fields and considering new empirical evidence on non-state armed groups’ behavior.

Angela Lederach
Project title: “Too Much Prisa”: The Theatrics of State Care and the Politics of Peacebuilding
Abstract: Chapter three offers an ethnographic account of prisa (haste, hurry) - paying close attention to the state's discourses, performances, and everyday practices of peace interventions to provide a thick description of how peacebuilding with "prisa" is enacted, contested, and resisted within campesino communities as the implementation of the peace accords unfold in Montes de María, Colombia. The chapter outlines the ways in which the state makes claims to building a “new nation,” defined by unity and presence, through performances. I argue that state performances flatten and obfuscate grassroots leaders’ demands for political participation rooted within their emancipatory and decolonial vision for peace through a “theatrics of state care” that reify uneven power relations and deny local agency. In particular, I illustrate how everyday state practices limit participation to “fotos y firmas” (photos and signatures), where attendance sheets and meetings have become the state’s primary form of action. Performances, however, are always dialogical, and require attention to the ways in which social leaders contest, refuse, subvert, and flip the state’s script to foreground their claims to political participation and demand for processes of building "paz sin prisa" (peace without hurry). The “contentious performances” between the state and campesino social leaders take place within the context of the ñame (yam) crisis of 2017 (Tilly 2008). In outlining the direct linkages between the state’s response to the death of the avocado and the ñame crisis, I reveal the violent and mutually-constitutive effects of “emergency” (Ticktin 2011) “waiting” (Auyero 2012) time operative within spectacles of peace that perpetuate "prisa" through everyday interventions that enact harm at supposed sites of state care. 

Sandra Ley
Project title: Rewriting Violence: Risk Effects and the Targeting of Journalists in Mexico’s Criminal Conflict
Abstract: Over the last 12 years, Mexico has become a dangerous place to be a journalist. Increasingly, journalists are targeted and killed for reporting on the causes and consequences of violence tied to organized crime. In this paper, we seek to understand how this risk-environment influences the content and strategies of reporting at one of Mexico’s most well known national newspapers, Reforma. Our study utilizes two novel sources of data. The first capture attacks on journalists during the drug war period while the second uses natural language processing techniques to measure changes in reporting on victimization and violence at Reforma. In this paper, we present preliminary evidence demonstrating the link between violence against journalists and changes in news content over time.

Leslie MacColman
Project title: The Politics of Urban Violence and Police Reform in Buenos Aires, Argentina
Abstract: In the aftermath of large-scale, organized violence, countries face the difficult task of (re)building a police force which is capable of providing public security while, at the same time, ensuring basic human rights. This has proven an extraordinarily difficult task, and historical legacies of police violence are often correlated with ongoing patterns of abuse. Scholars of police reform often suggest that the antidote to police violence is democratization, in other words, making the police force more accountable to the public and their elected civilian leaders. But does democratic accountability always reduce police violence? I address this question by analyzing within-case variation of police violence in the city of Buenos Aires, Argentina between 2008 and 2018. In particular, I examine changes in volume, form, and distribution of police violence under three distinct police forces:  the Argentine Federal Police and the Metropolitan Police – two police forces which operated in parallel between 2010 and 2015 – and the City Police – which resulted from their fusion in 2017. Drawing on unofficial statistics collected by NGOs, I trace the evolution of lethal police violence under these three police forces. This analysis shows that, despite the rhetoric that circulates in certain academic-activist spheres, lethal police violence remains a rare event. I then turn to non-lethal forms of police violence, which tend to be much more frequent and far more difficult to measure. I draw a distinction between ‘planned’ police violence against collective actors, such as protesters and ambulant vendors, and ‘ad-hoc’ violence, against individuals engaged in low-level crime and delinquency. This helps me explain changes in patterns of police violence based on variable relationships between police and political actors. I close by arguing that, contrary to prevailing literature on democratic police reform, under some circumstances increased civilian oversight might actually foment police violence.

Catriona Standfield
Project title: Art or Science? Constructing Knowledge about Gender in United Nations Mediation
Abstract: This chapter from my book manuscript on gender and UN mediation traces the development of UN mediation policy from the beginning of the organization to the current day. I draw upon an analysis of policy documents, grey literature, interviews and participant-observation to argue that, despite the trend toward increasingly specialized and professional forms of expertise about mediation, significant contestation over the nature and methods of UN mediation remains. This contestation over whether UN mediation is better understood as an 'art' or a 'science' has significant implications for how the UN has implemented the Women, Peace and Security Agenda. The WPS Agenda is supposed to promote the consideration of women and gender inequality in conflict mediation, although it has had mixed results at the UN. My analysis shows that paying attention to the institutional context for implementation helps to explain why UN mediation processes often fall short of the promises made to foster the participation of women - particularly women of the Global South - in the resolution of violent conflicts.

Rachel Sweet
Project title: Knowing What We Don't: The Problem of (Mis)Attributing Civil War Violence
Abstract: Despite growing research on civil wars, still relatively little attention has been given to some of the most basic building blocks of armed conflict: who are the perpetrators of violence? This question is often more complex than it appears. Armed groups masquerade as Boko Haram in Nigeria, uncertainty surrounds the origins of supposed Al-Qaeda attacks in Mali, and the identity of perpetrators of a spate of mass killings in northeast DR Congo—the country’s worst violence in a decade—is shrouded in mystery. Effective conflict resolution and understandings of civil war depend on our ability to accurately identify perpetrators and motives of violence. And yet, analysts have rarely matched the methodology of studying armed conflict to the reality of this empirical complexity. With growing trends toward wars in complex and multi-player environments, sound procedures for drawing these descriptive inferences are sorely needed. This paper develops a framework to evaluate the evidentiary basis of data from conflict zones. Methodologically, it examines the types of evidence used to draw inferences on the actors, timing, and events of war. What constitutes good data in conflict zones? What shared standards can be used in evaluating evidentiary quality and rigor behind sources? The paper applies the framework for evidentiary standards to a set of mass killings that erupted in Beni territory of northeast DR Congo in 2014. It draws on original data sources including rebel records, 245 qualitative interviews, newspapers, and material evidence gathered from killing sites to evaluate plausible explanations of perpetrators. It compares the results against international analysis of the killings and finds a gap between simple explanations of Islamist violence versus a more complex political competition that fueled the instability. Findings demonstrate that different evidentiary protocols hold consequences for what perpetrators are identified behind attacks, the mechanisms of how violence is produced, and the policies recommended to deescalate violence.

Lucía Tiscornia
Project title: Security Sector Reform and Its Consequences: Police Militarization and Violence in the Aftermath of Armed Conflict
Abstract: Military and Police reform implementation have been widespread in post-conflict transitions. The motivations behind these reforms involve conflict recurrence and past human rights violations. Reforms usually focus on reducing the propensity for violence in police and making them more effective. How does police reform affect police violence after armed conflict? I argue that reforms that militarize the police, make them more violent. I also argue that increases in accountability have no effect on police violence when militarization is high. This has implications for other forms of violence, such as criminal violence, which will be higher as a response. I test these propositions on a panel of 52 post-conflict countries between 1985 and 2015. My findings challenge research suggesting that security reforms lead to peace. Results support policies that reduce police’s propensity to use force. Implications are relevant for domestic and international actors engaged in security sector reform.

Shannon Walsh
Project title: The Impact of Transnational Advocacy Networks on Gendered Political Institutions: The Creation and Closure of Women’s Police Stations in Nicaragua and their Absence in Guatemala
Abstract: Although violence against women laws exist worldwide, implementation efforts are uneven. While existing research has examined the efficacy of gendered political institutions, there is little attention to variation in their emergence. Drawing on comparative case studies of Nicaragua and Guatemala, this manuscript develops a novel case-driven theoretical framework to explain the role of transnational advocacy networks (TANs) in the emergence and structure of a particular type of gendered political institution that implements laws on violence against women: women’s police stations. I propose that TANs shape the emergence of these institutions through three causal mechanisms: political pressure, information, and funding, which help overcome a lack of political will, institutional models, and local resources. While scholarship has thoroughly explored the impact of transnational advocacy networks (TANs) on the creation of laws that address violence against women, this research moves beyond policy creation to demonstrate how TANs are also crucial for policy implementation.