Two graduate students in the department received the Raymond E. Lombra and Roberta Lombra Outstanding Graduate Research Award for outstanding research from the College of the Liberal Arts in recognition of their recent publications.
Brandon Bolte won for his recent International Studies Quarterly article, “The Puzzle of Militia Containment in Civil War.” Relying on original data collection on pro-government militia weapons containment and case illustrations of the Janjaweed in Sudan and Civil Defense Patrols in Guatemala, Bolte argues that variation in militia containment during a civil war depends on bargaining power between security or profit-seeking militias and governments with time-inconsistent preferences. The article is available here: https://academic.oup.com/isq/article-abstract/65/1/250/6105769
Christopher Willis won for his recent International Studies Quarterly article, “Sexual Violence by the State.” Christopher’s research demonstrates that that political and social factors such as the type of governing regime, corruption and the quality of women’s empowerment in society play a substantive role in determining whether state forces will engage in sexual victimization. States qualified by personalistic authoritarianism – nondemocratic regimes with strongman rule and where the state is constructed through personal connections to the leader – are particularly prone to sexual violence because their political institutions are much less accountable to the public, according to Christopher. Compounding this effect is the presence of regime corruption and a low level of women’s empowerment, which are prevalent within and reinforce the abusive nature of personalistic dictatorships. You can read the article here: https://academic.oup.com/isq/article-abstract/65/3/768/6309154?redirectedFrom=fulltext.
