Where the bombs fell: Measuring compliance with humanitarian treaties.

Compliance with international treaties is the bedrock of the international order. When it comes to international humanitarian treaties, which regulate war-making, the issue of compliance gains urgency as people's lives are on the line. At the same time, measuring states' actions during an armed conflict is known to be exceedingly challenging. Current measures for states' compliance with their international obligations during armed conflict has been incomplete, offering a broad generalization that does not necessarily capture reality on the ground or alternatively based on proxy measurements, which produce a distorted portray of events in relation to obligations. This study suggests geospatial analysis as a gauging tool for states' compliance with international treaties during armed conflict. Examining the 2014 Gaza War as an instrumental case study, this paper underscores the efficacy of this measure and informs current debates on the success of humanitarian treaties and variation in compliance.

The Critical Masses: The Rise of Contemporary Populism and Its Relation to Solidarity, Systems, and Lifeworlds.

This paper examines the contemporary spread of populism across the globe. We argue that populist movements worldwide are responses to the colonization of lifeworlds by increasingly opaque knowledge and regulatory systems. The complexity of the systems that regulate and control the day-to-day life of individuals from afar makes these systems alien and incomprehensible, and consequently perceived as illogical and oppressive. To regain a sense of autonomy, actors have reasserted a way of thinking and acting contrary to the organic web of global interdependence, seeking independence from communities outside the known lifeworld via revitalized community control and an emphasis upon qualities resembling mechanical solidarity. We evidence this claim by comparing two contemporary phenomena which seem to be distinct events until interpreted in this way: movements against international humanitarian law and the French Gilets Jaunes. We conclude by discussing the implications for those interested in contemporary populist events in the USA and abroad and the role of scientists in communicating our findings.

Promoting human rights under fire: INGOs' mitigating effect on human rights violations during armed conflict.

Can international nongovernmental organizations (INGO) mitigate human rights violations when armed conflict ensues? There is a reason to believe that the harsh conditions of war, which destabilize society and incite nationalist and militarist notions, would prevent the work of INGO from being effective. However, world polity scholarship suggests that regardless of these conditions INGOs can improve human rights standards. INGOs are one of the principal and most effective vehicles for the diffusion of international human rights norms. In this paper, we highlight the part INGOs play in monitoring human rights violations and its potential effect on states' human rights violations during war. Examining a global sample of countries that experienced war on their soil between 1977 and 2003, this paper studies the association between INGOs count per country per year with four human rights indexes. Results show an association between the presence of INGOs and improvement of human rights conditions.

Military westernization and state repression in the post-Cold War era.

The waves of unrest that have shaken the Arab world since December 2010 have highlighted significant differences in the readiness of the military to intervene in political unrest by forcefully suppressing dissent. We suggest that in the post-Cold War period, this readiness is inversely associated with the level of military westernization, which is a product of the acquisition of arms from western countries. We identify two mechanisms linking the acquisition of arms from western countries to less repressive responses: dependence and conditionality; and a longer-term diffusion of ideologies regarding the proper form of civil-military relations. Empirical support for our hypothesis is found in an analysis of 2523 cases of government response to political unrest in 138 countries in the 1996-2005 period. We find that military westernization mitigates state repression in general, with more pronounced effects in the poorest countries. However, we also identify substantial differences between the pre- and post-9/11 periods.