Peace and Conflict Studies Commons^™

From Allies To Co-Conspirators: Unveiling The Many Faces Of Solidarity In Contemporary Racial Justice Social Movements In The U.S., Nashay Lowe

Doctor of International Conflict Management Dissertations

Scholars and practitioners often have different understandings and interpretations of allyship in the social movement context. There are conflicting expectations of allies, making it difficult to clearly identify their role and relationship to the overall movement and membership. The result can be confusion, unmet expectations, and disappointment. This research addresses this challenge by examining allyship as a means of solidarity in racial justice social movements. To achieve this, the study utilized multiple methods, including (a) a synthesis analysis of literature on the subject; (b) semi-structured interviews with activists, allies, and scholar-practitioners involved in racial justice causes ranging from Black Lives …

Inscribing Violence: Quantifying The Impact Of World Heritage Site Inscription On Direct And Structural Violence., Anne Chance

Doctor of International Conflict Management Dissertations

The World Heritage Program and nomination process have undergone considerable criticism regarding their impact on host nations. These critics have often described violence as an unintended side-effect of heritage sites, but this research has lacked a systematic analysis of types of violence associated with the inscription of sites. The background to this study explores the application of Galtung’s Triangle of Violence, which considers the symbiotic dynamics of cultural violence, structural violence, and direct violence. In so doing, I constructed the Measures of Structural Violence matrix by which to examine direct and structural violence in states that host heritage sites.

Using …

Moral Injury, Identity Dissonance, And Reintegration: A Compendium Of Reintegration And Survey Of United States Military Veterans, Thomas Hodges

Doctor of International Conflict Management Dissertations

How do military moral injuries affect reintegration? All service members leave the military eventually, but reintegration can be challenging, bringing changes in career, family life, and friendships, potentially prompting a loss of purpose, drive, and connection. Service members may also struggle with a crisis of identity upon separating from the military, feeling their military identity is incompatible with civilian life. While these difficulties are common for service members in reintegration, they may be worsened by moral injury, the adverse biological, social, psychological, and spiritual effects of experiencing an event that deeply offends a person’s sense of right and wrong. People …

"Proventing" Intimate Partner Violence-Related Attitudes Through Arts-Based Peace Education: A Sequential Explanatory Study Of Dancing Classrooms Alumni, Cody Wehlan

Doctor of International Conflict Management Dissertations

Research links intimate partner violence (IPV) to socialized, and often gendered, power-over attitudes that view abuse, control, and physical violence against, or by, an intimate partner as acceptable and appropriate in various contexts. While many IPV prevention programs emphasize education for reducing intimate partner violence-related attitudes (IPVA), most programs respond after violence has occurred and are often ineffective. Presenting an innovative form of proactive prevention, or “provention”, this dissertation combines arts-based peace education, youth IPV prevention, and intergroup contact theory (ICT) to outline how youth-focused social dance may effectively provent IPVA risk factors by teaching young people collaborative, power-with social …

Sound Of “Di” Police: Community Policing And Crime Abatement In Post-Colonial Jamaica, Bradley Gardner

Doctor of International Conflict Management Dissertations

Abstract

In 2007, the third largest island in the Caribbean, Jamaica, implemented a policing strategy known as community policing. With a population of just over 2.9 million, Jamaica is listed as number 10 out of 20 of the most dangerous places in the world. Additionally, the IMF has listed crime as the number one impediment to the country’s economic growth. The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between community policing in Jamaica, and the number of crimes committed in its local communities. Particularly, this study analyzed the relationship between Community Policing activities and the number of homicides, …

Assembly And Maintenance Required: The Institutional Work Supporting Court-Connected Mediation Programs, Vittorio Indovina

Doctor of International Conflict Management Dissertations

In the past few decades, many courts in U.S. implemented mediation programs to offer disputing parties a cost-effective alternative to litigation and reduce the caseload of overcrowded courts, and such programs gained the global community's interest. This qualitative research study sheds lights on the institutional work needed to maintain court-connected mediation program. Its main assumption is that court-connected mediation programs, like many other institutions, are not self-reproducing institutions. Supportive activities are always required to maintain institutions over time. Through the lens of the institutional work scholarship, this study collects and analyzes data from thirty-two semi-structured interviews of court-connected mediation program …

Disease, Development, And Disorder: Examining The Effect Of Health On Subnational Development And Conflict In Sub-Saharan Africa, Dlorah C. Jenkins

Doctor of International Conflict Management Dissertations

Progress towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) has been uneven across and within countries - particularly in Africa, least developed countries, and low-income countries. The COVID-19 pandemic has threatened to reverse much of the progress made towards achieving the SDGs, especially SDG 3, which aims to “ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages”.

The tendency for disease, underdevelopment, and conflict to occur concomitantly suggests potential causal mechanisms linking them. This study attempts to address two pieces of the puzzle: the causal effect of disease on underdevelopment and the impact of development on conflict risk. Focusing …

No Soldier Left Behind? Breaking The Silence On Military Service, Values And Identity In Israel, Lina Tuschling

Doctor of International Conflict Management Dissertations

This dissertation explores the relationship between observed incidents and perceptions of value violation or confirmation among Israeli soldiers. Through content analysis of 900 testimonies, the work explores the intersection of social identity, military ethics and nonviolent movements. The data show that many soldiers do not see their tasks as supporting the overall mission of keeping their country and nation safe, leading to a decline in motivation and sense of purpose. Further, deeper reflections on whether actions on the ground are in line with proposed national values result in incidents of role conflict, individual cognitive dissonance and vicarious dissonance.

Findings from …

Am I My Brother’S Keeper? : Local And Global Responsibility In The Digital Age, David Gethings

Doctor of International Conflict Management Dissertations

What is our responsibility towards others, both locally and globally, particularly as it relates to human rights? In a world connected by ever-advancing communications technology and social media, the question of responsibility takes on a greater significance when individuals have the capacity to be better informed than at any previous time in history. The digital age connects people from around the globe, fostering greater awareness about global issues and creating personal connections, which builds understanding and empathy. Traditionally, domestic responsibility has centered on civic engagement, such as being active politically and in the community. International responsibility has largely remained the …

Drawn To Peace: Comics As Multimodal Narratives In Peace And Conflict Education, Laurence Stacey

Doctor of International Conflict Management Dissertations

Comics, a type of multimodal narrative, have historically been used as platforms for political discourse. Through a combination of visual, verbal, and spatial devices, comics often explore issues of peace, conflict, and justice “from below,” in ways that reveal the complexities of narrative and identity. In doing so, they have the potential to interrogate grand narratives that often go undisrupted. Humanities scholars have long recognized the value of literary and visual arts in preparing students to engage the salient themes of peace education. However, the medium of comics remains undertheorized in that field, despite the increasing popularity of comics as …

The Role Of Digital Technology In Improving Electoral Integrity: Hope Or Just Hype?, Ziaul Haque

Doctor of International Conflict Management Dissertations

As elections are increasingly plagued by malpractice, violence, systemic manipulation, and corruption, electoral administrators worldwide view Information and Communication Technology (ICT)-based solutions as convenient and cost-effective in enhancing electoral integrity. ICT optimists contend that digitization enhances efficiency, speed, and detectability of fraud and manipulation, and thereby improves the quality of elections. ICT skeptics, however, argue that digitization reduces voters’ confidence in elections as these technologies are susceptible to new vulnerabilities such as hacking, breakdown, and programmatic manipulation. While arguments on both sides are appealing, there has been very little systematic effort to empirically test these assertations. This dissertation partially fills …

Regional Economic Communities In Africa As A Conflict Mitigation Mechanism: The Case Of The Economic Community Of West African States, Jean-Marc Akakpo

Doctor of International Conflict Management Dissertations

The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) is the regional institution mandated to develop economic and political integration between its 15 member states. ECOWAS expanded its mandate in the 1990s to include conflict prevention and mitigation. The Council of the Wise, a group of respected elders from ECOWAS member states, was created to engage in preventive diplomacy and is a unique institution based on African cultures’ respect for elders as mediators. The research question for this dissertation was: “What is the role of ECOWAS and the Council of the Wise in transforming conflict in West Africa, especially in Mali?” …

Taking Terrorists At Their Word: Testing The Co-Religionist Hypothesis In Islamic State Propaganda, Joel Elliott

Doctor of International Conflict Management Dissertations

This dissertation operates on the idea that, as conflict researchers, we can look to Islamic State’s (referred to from here on as ‘Daesh’) own recruitment propaganda to identify the best people to counter Daesh’s violent rhetoric. This project analyzes Daesh’s main print publication, Dabiq, to catalogue and classify the types of people and institutions Daesh targets most, and which types of arguments Daesh uses to attack those targets. It uses this information to test the Co-Religionist Hypothesis, which predicts that the most effective peaceful interveners in a religious conflict will be of the same religion as the belligerents. Conventional …

Kurds Under Threat: The Role Of Kurdish Transnational Networks During Peace And Conflict (2004-2017), Deniz Gumustekin

Doctor of International Conflict Management Dissertations

Previous research examines impact of ethnic ties between host states and diaspora and why states and ethnic minorities in the diaspora may occasionally support violent rebel organizations in the homeland. However, these previous studies do not really consider the relationships among co-ethnic organizations without a homeland government. This dissertation tackles the following important questions: How and when do co-ethnicKurdish organizations provide open support for each other during conflict-peace cycle events? Moreover, do external threats impact the relationship among co-ethnic organizations? The aim of this research is to identify the causal factors that influence the transnational networks between Kurdish organizations. I …

A Woman Surrounded: Exploring The Reintegration Of Conflict-Related Sexual Violence Survivors In Nigeria, Nicole Junker

Doctor of International Conflict Management Dissertations

There has been a “rapid expansion of publications” on Conflict Related Sexual Violence (CRSV) in the past five years (Campbell 2018:469). However, the more recent focus in this field of knowledge has shifted from qualitative feminist analysis to the use of quantitative and comparative methodology (Houge 2015:83, Bijleveld et al 2009, Boesten 2017:5). This shift has limited the amount of data focusing on individual or small groups of CRSV survivors. In order to examine the reintegration of CRSV survivors, this dissertation returns to the use of qualitative feminist methodology to examine the experiences of reintegration of CRSV survivors in Nigeria. …

Post-Conflict Justice And Legal Traditions: A New Conceptual Framework, Maureen E. Wilson

Doctor of International Conflict Management Dissertations

Transitional justice seeks to deal with legacies of the most brutal conflicts and political transitions within states; however, there is no one-size-fits-all approach. Post-conflict justice, as a subset of transitional justice, is concerned with justice mechanisms in the wake of armed conflict. Despite a growing literature exploring the conceptualization and effectiveness of transitional justice, less attention has been paid to the factors influencing the decision to adopt transitional justice and choice of mechanism(s). Further, theoretical understandings of how these choices ultimately contribute to the broader goals of justice, truth, and peace are limited. This study proposes domestic legal traditions as …

Does Aid Really Help? The Nexus Between Development Aid And State-Society Resilience In Fragile Situations, Cyrel San Gabriel

Doctor of International Conflict Management Dissertations

This study aims to determine how development aid impacts state-society resilience, and how such resilience impacts aid flows in fragile situations. It particularly examines if development aid builds state-society resilience in fragile situations listed in the harmonized list of World Bank, African Development Bank, and Asian Development Bank from 2006 to 2018. Results show that development aid causes a decrease in state-society resilience, while state-society resilience causes an increase in aid flows. Aid for governance and human development weakens resilience. Better governance and peace levels curb aid flows, while higher human development levels boost aid flows. Economic growth is neither …

Beyond Resettlement: The Role Of Ethiopian Refugee Diaspora In Homeland Peacebuilding, Etsegent Endale

Doctor of International Conflict Management Dissertations

The number of people forced to flee their homeland across the world is increasing at an alarming rate. As a consequence, refugees have become a growing concern among researchers, practitioners, and policy makers. Although much attention has been afforded to refugee studies, the contributions of conflict-induced migrants towards homeland peacebuilding remain underrepresented within the peacebuilding discourse. This study explores the perceptions and understandings of peace and specific peacebuilding activities from the perspective of conflictinduced forced migrants, namely, former refugees from Ethiopia who have resettled in the United States. The objective of the study is to expand the scholarly discussion on …

“Where Do We Go From Here?” The Influence Of Personality And Social Motivators On Attitudes Toward Structural Violence And Interpersonal Forgiveness, Melvin Laven

Doctor of International Conflict Management Dissertations

The goal of this research is to develop an interpersonal definition of forgiveness. The question asked by Martin Luther King Jr. in 1967 still remains: where do we go from here? Conflict is ubiquitous and systems for managing direct and structural violence are struggling to address issues like the police brutality experienced by African American populations or women’s lived experience of sexual abuse and harassment. Forgiveness can play a role in many conflicts, what can it do in these cases? From intractable global and political disputes to basic inter and intra-personal conflicts forgiveness and reconciliation projects have meant the difference …

Examining The Receptivity Of Foreign Guests: A Study Of Economic Community Of West African States (Ecowas) Students In Higher Educational Institutions In Accra, Ghana, Kezia Darkwah

Doctor of International Conflict Management Dissertations

With an increasingly global demand for higher education, countries are competing for international students. Popular destinations like the United States are facing a decreasing number of international student enrollments due to restrictive policies that are perceived as unwelcoming to foreign guests. Regional hubs are emerging as alternative destinations for international students. Ghana, today considered one of West Africa’s most stable democracies and an important destination country in the region, receives many foreign guests including economic migrants, students, tourists, and refugees. Ghana is also emerging as a regional hub for educational migrants. How are these foreign guests received, integrated, and ultimately …

Changing The Guards: Expanding Cultural Diversity Training In Correctional Officer Basic Training, Herman Ayers

Doctor of International Conflict Management Dissertations

This research examined the effectiveness of cultural diversity training in state basic correctional officer training programs. In recent years, the demographics of the U.S. prison population has become much more culturally diverse. This shift is noted by recent academic literature from scholars who have experience working in correctional settings. The growing diversity of the inmate population puts a new emphasis on the importance of cultural diversity in correctional officer basic training programs. This exploratory study uses original data collected from a survey of correctional officers and a sample of state correctional officer basic training programs in a cross-sectional design to …

Schisms And Conflict Management In New African Immigrants’ Religious Organizations In The Greater Atlanta Area, Christina Edwards

Doctor of International Conflict Management Dissertations

New African immigrant religious organizations (NAIRO) are transnational religious organizations established and led by new African immigrants (NAI). These organizations are experiencing planned growth as outlined in their manuals, but little is known about the internal conflicts that lead to unplanned schisms or break away congregations. Foundational studies in the field of Sociology of Religion failed to include NAI-led churches in their studies and Atlanta was not selected as an immigrant hub city in their follow-up studies. This dissertation explores the social phenomenon of NAIRO internal conflicts that lead to unplanned schisms and therefore contribute to the overall growth of …

Conflict Sensitivity And Conservation: Evaluating Design, Implementation & Practice, Amanda S. Woomer

Doctor of International Conflict Management Dissertations

This dissertation investigates the use of a conflict sensitivity framework in supporting environmental conservation work. Employing an action research methodology, it consists of a multi-phase evaluation of the design and implementation of Conservation International’s (CI) Environmental Peacebuilding Training Manual. Through needs assessment, formative evaluation, and outcome evaluation phases, the dissertation explores questions related to what conflicts conservation practitioners face; what form a relevant, accessible, and effective conflict sensitivity framework might take; and what effect such a framework might have on the knowledge, attitudes, capacities, and actions of conservation practitioners. The findings indicate that conservation practitioners face a variety of conflicts …

The Inclusion Of Women’S Issues In Peace Negotiation Agreements: Guatemala, El Salvador, And Colombia, Natalia F. Meneses

Doctor of International Conflict Management Dissertations

Armed conflict and its consequences do not discriminate according to gender. It affects all people. During an armed conflict, women are the majority of civilian victims: they are forcibly displaced, their family members are killed, and they suffer sexual abuse and torture. However, most peace processes have been exclusively controlled and led by men, while women and women’s issues are usually not included in peace negotiations or resulting agreements. In the last 30 years, there have been 35 comprehensive peace accords signed across the world of which only eight included women’s issues in their agreements. It is crucial that women’s …

Non-Traditional Transitional Justice Mechanisms And Perceptions And Symptoms Of Victimization Among Diasporic Individuals: Members Of The Coptic Christian Diaspora In The United States As A Case Study, Samy S. A. Gerges

Doctor of International Conflict Management Dissertations

Transitional justice measures are state-centered measures articulating atrocities committed by officials and occurring within the borders of a specific state. Questioning members of a Diaspora about the impact of transitional justice on their self-classification as victims and their experienced symptoms of victimization may therefore support attempts to expand the field of transitional justice. This study contributes to a body of work promoting understanding of the possibilities and constraints of transitional justice mechanisms, in the context of hate crime against Copts by Muslims in Egypt. To analyze the impact of restored relationships on self-classified victimhood and experienced symptoms of victimization, the …

Art & Agency: Transforming Relationships Of Power Through Art In Iraqi Kurdistan, Autumn Cockrell-Abdullah

Doctor of International Conflict Management Dissertations

Today, the Kurds factor significantly both as a key to some of the most critical conflicts in the Middle East and also as citizens of the world interacting with a highly global, highly interconnected reality. Despite their importance, we lack a nuanced understanding of the complex and multi-layered cultural context of the Kurds that impacts the socio-political factors inside Iraqi Kurdistan.

The deeply entrenched political rhetoric of the hegemonic Kurdish nationalist narrative in Iraqi Kurdistan has served to homogenize the idea of what the Kurdish “nation” is, to whitewash deep social, economic and political concerns inside Iraqi Kurdistan and to …

Immigration-Related Identity Markers And Well-Being In Academia: Perceptions Of Conflict At Work And Life Satisfaction Among Foreign-Born Professors In The United States, Elena Gheorghiu

Doctor of International Conflict Management Dissertations

Although immigrant professionals contribute significantly to the American economy, their processes of adaptation to the host country and integration into work departments has not been sufficiently examined. Based on a survey of 241 immigrant professors in the United States, the current study sought to reveal how immigration-related identity markers, that is acculturation strategy adopted and migrant personality, impact the levels of private life satisfaction, work satisfaction, and perceptions of conflict at work. Results of Ordinary Least Squares regression analyses revealed that maintaining a balance between original cultural values and local ones, as well as scoring towards the lower-end of the …

Governance Challenges In Sub-Saharan Africa: The Case Of Land Guards And Land Protection In Ghana, David Kwasi Bansah

Doctor of International Conflict Management Dissertations

Land management policy in many developing nations has been riddled with conflict because of competing land tenure systems. Having transitioned through customary tenure systems to bureaucratic property rights regimes without a complete shift from the former, Ghana’s land management system, over time, has witnessed administrative challenges such that some desperate land protection schemes are taking root, including the use of unregulated security land guards in peri-urban areas. The fundamental objective of this research, therefore, is to explore and better understand the lengths to which people or groups will go to ensure land rights and protection in a regime of statutory …

Combining Grievance And Feasibility: Improving Our Understanding Of Civil Conflict Onset, Kimberly Fletcher

Doctor of International Conflict Management Dissertations

This study seeks to improve our understanding of the drivers of civil conflict through a synthesis of the grievance and feasibility approaches. It begins with two premises. The first is that the proponents of the feasibility explanation of conflict onset—who suggest that civil conflict will occur where it can happen—did not use theoretically justified measures of grievance in making their determination that motives have little bearing as drivers of conflict. The second premise is that the grievance literature that improved upon those measures did not fully consider feasibility in their models, leaving questions remaining regarding whether and to what degree …

Mergers In Higher Education: A Case Study Of Organizational Culture, Communication, And Conflict Management Strategies In The University System Of Georgia, Jia Min

Doctor of International Conflict Management Dissertations

Abstract

By 2018, the University System of Georgia will have 18 institutions merged with each other. This qualitative case study focuses on how organizational culture, communication strategies, and conflict management strategies affect a merger in higher education in the state of Georgia. This study attempts to answer the following questions: How is organizational culture preserved and/or changed in the process of consolidation? How was information about consolidation communicated to various group of people? How do various groups of people make sense of the information provided regarding consolidation? What aspects of consolidation generated the most conflicts? What conflict management strategies were …