Manuel Vogt, Assistant Professor in UCL’s Department of Political Science, taught a short course on social science methodology at the Universidad Nacional Autonóma de Honduras (National Autonomous University of Honduras). The 2-day course introduced participants to the theory and practice of comparativist political science and aimed at furthering the methodological skills of postgraduate students as well as professors in Honduras’ main public university.
Manuel Vogt speaks at Guatemala's Foreign Ministry
On 31 July, 2018, Manuel Vogt, Assistant Professor in UCL’s Department of Political Science, held a talk at the Diplomatic Academy of Guatemala’s Foreign Ministry. Using the mechanisms of power sharing in Switzerland as a concrete example, Manuel’s presentation on “Ethnic Power Relations and Conflict in Multiethnic States” introduced the theory and practice of conflict management to a select group of career diplomats and other Foreign Ministry staff.
Workshop on Conflict and Governance: Working with Informal Institutions during and after War
On June 5, 2018, UCL’s Global Governance Institute (GGI) and Conflict & Change members Kristin M. Bakke and Kit Rickard organized a workshop on “Conflict and Governance: Working with Informal Institutions during and after War.”
Central to the international community’s responses to conflict-ridden states are interventions and recommendations aimed at bolstering state capacity, improving public goods provision, and fostering inclusive institutions. Yet external states and international organizations’ “institutional engineering” does not happen in a governance vacuum. Wars and state fragility often do not destroy pre-existing informal institutions and authority structures. In fact, they frequently give rise to new ones that govern people’s lives and are considered legitimate by the local population. A policy concern for external states and international organizations is how to navigate between cooperating with formal or informal authorities. The workshop to brought together more than 25 scholars and practitioners to explore the politics of cooperation in areas of disputed control. The workshop addressed questions such as, what are ‘informal institutions’, ‘informal sources of authority’, ‘rebel governance’, and ‘wartime institutions’? How do these institutions develop? (How) do they gain legitimacy? What is their relationship to the formal institutions of the state? What are the costs of either including or excluding informal sources of authority from negotiation processes? How do external actors engage with informal sources of authority and de facto states in prolonged conflicts? What is the legacy of wartime institutions in the post-war period? And how do reforms of the formal institutions of the state shape the endurance and legitimacy of informal sources of authority?
Nils Metternich on ‘The Science Behind Why We Fight’ Podcast
Nils Metternich, Reader in International Relations at the Department of Political Science, appeared on the Guardian’s Science Weekly podcast to discuss why humans fight. On the other side of the table was Mike Martin, author of ‘Why We Fight’ and visiting research fellow at the Department of War Studies at Kings College London. Dr Martin argued that conflict is driven by man’s subconscious desires, shaped by millions of years of evolution. Nils, on the contrary, emphasised that conflict is costly and actors prefer to avoid it. He outlined how cutting-edge research methods are used to understand conflict, and increasingly, to predict and prevent its onset. Click here to listen.
Hannah Schmidt wins Dina Zinnes Award
At the 2018 conference of the Internaitonal Studies Association, Hannah Smidt, a former Conflict & Change colleague who now works at the German Institute of Global and Area Studies (GIGA), received the International Studies Association’s Dina Zinnes Award for the best graduate student paper presented at the annual meeting 2017. In the paper, Hannah explores how the presence and activities of UN peacekeepers affect violence around elections in war-torn countries.