• Lead Author: Laura Huber

• Co-Authors: Lindsey Pruett and Sabrina Karim

Under what conditions do individual security personnel abuse their authority? Individual security forces are trained and professionalized to follow and obey rules, but they sometimes engage in misconduct. Using novel survey experiments, we show that soldiers' and police officers' when personnel’s hyper masculinity is primed, they are more likely to find misconduct acceptable. Using survey experiments with over four thousand personnel from ten countries, we find support for our hypotheses. The results imply understanding how masculine identity shifts and changes depending on context is important for reducing violence by individual security force members.

• Lead Author: Priscilla Torres

• Co-Authors: Sara Fox, Laura Huber, Camerin Mailhot, Mike Kriner, Lindsey Pruett, Roya Izadi, and Sabrina Karim

The gendered protection norm refers to the stereotypical belief – explicit or implicit – that men are the natural protectors of women and children, and that women and children should not be put in harm’s way. It is often the reason that women are kept away from combat and other violent situations despite their willingness and capability to use violence. In the context of peacekeeping operations, prior research finds that women are often deployed to missions where there is less risk of sexual violence and gender inequity is less pervasive (Karim and Beardsley 2013, 2017). Using a novel conjoint experiment, this paper examines how the gendered protection norm manifests in security forces’ decision-making by asking the question: under what conditions do individuals prefer to deploy female peacekeepers? Through the use of survey data from members of security forces (members of the armed forces, police and gendarmerie) from a cross-national sample, we test several arguments by varying the level of sexual violence and peacekeeper deaths that an operation has experienced, the sex of a hypothetical peacekeeper, their years of experience, and the type of experience they have. The results of this paper have implications for peacekeeping effectiveness as well as for the exclusion of women in security more generally.

• Lead Author: Roya Izadi

• Co-Authors: Cameron Mailhot, Mike Kriner, Lindsey Pruett, Laura Huber, Sara Fox, Priscilla Torres, Sabrina Karim

Under what conditions do security force personnel change their attitudes towards misconduct? Current individual-level explanations for security force violence is oriented on the principal-agent problem. But this explanation does not consider the security forces as socializing organizations themselves. We posit that the culture of the security forces affects the propensity to find misconduct acceptable. First, we look at the effects of training and deployments on misconduct. Second, we look at vertical and horizontal cohesion among security force personnel. Third, we explore how security forces with high numbers of individuals who have experienced trauma affect the propensity to accept misconduct. Using original surveys of over 4000 personnel from ten countries, we find that all three factors shape how security force personnel view misconduct. Our results have implications for reducing state violence.

• Lead Author: Sara Fox

• Co-Authors: Laura Huber, Roya Izadi, Cameron Mailhot, Mike Kriner, Lindsey Pruett, Sabrina Karim

All over the world, individual police officers and military personnel engage in violence as a part of their mandate to maintain security. Yet, often times this violence is illegitimate and other times the violence is legitimate but unnecessarily escalates a situation. Starting from the premise that prior beliefs about violence shape the actions of individual security personnel, we explore the gendered conditions that shapes individual security force personnel's beliefs about violence. We posit that while women are less likely to escalate when the violence is legitimate, they are no more likely than men to find illegitimate violence (misconduct) inappropriate. Instead, beliefs about gender equality are better predictors of reduced tolerance for misconduct. We test our hypotheses using original survey data from 10 security forces worldwide, with an N=4,449, and find support for our hypotheses. The results demonstrate the importance of a gendered analysis of security force violence.

• Lead Authors: Mike Kriner and Cameron Mailhot

• Co-authors: Priscilla Torres, Roya Izadi, Sara Fox, Laura Huber, Sabrina Karim

Under what conditions do security force personnel develop a preference to protect civilians from violence? In this paper, we develop a theory of socialization to explain variation in beliefs civilian protection. We theorize that deployment with UN peacekeeping operations socializes personnel to value civilian protection because participation in peacekeeping introduces security personnel to an array of new practices, procedures, training, and experiences. Deployment is a significant stage in many security force personnel's professional careers, and has a pacifying effect, by reducing preference for engaging in violence towards civilians. We use original, novel data of over 4000 surveys with police and military personnel in ten countries and find that peacekeeping does have a socializing effect, particularly for civilian protection. Our study contributes to the literature on violence committed by security institutions and the impact of international peacekeeping beyond the host country.

• Lead Authors: Emily Jackson, Angie Torres-Beltran, and Taylor Vincent

• Co-authors: Zinab Attai and Sabrina Karim

The literature on peacekeeping largely finds that peacekeeping deployment protects civilians. At the same time, peacekeepers increasingly deploy to host countries that are affected by climate change. How does climate change affect peacekeeping effectiveness? Using interview and survey data of armed forces and police personnel from several peacekeeping troop contributing countries, we find that peacekeepers are affected by rising temperatures and water crises, and that they attribute undesirable weather conditions to climate change. These challenges affect their ability to engage in civilian protection.