Browsing by Author "Myrick, Rachel"
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Item Open Access Conflict Environments and Civil War Onset(Journal of Global Security Studies) Reid, Lindsay; Myrick, Rachel; Kadera, Kelly M; Crescenzi, Mark JCAbstract The spread of civil war poses serious risks and costs. We argue that conflict environments, which vary across time and space, systematically exacerbate the spread of civil war. As conflict in a state’s neighborhood becomes more spatially proximate and as lingering effects of conflict accumulate over time, that state’s risk of civil war onset increases. To theorize and test this argument, we construct the conflict environment (CE) score, a concept that taps into spatial and temporal dimensions of violence in a state’s neighborhood. Using the CE score in established empirical models of civil war onset, we demonstrate that a dangerous conflict environment consistently elevates the risk of civil war, outperforming traditional measures of nearby violence, even when domestic factors are taken into account.Item Open Access Evidence-Based Transitional Justice: Incorporating Public Opinion Into the Field, With New Data From Iraq and Ukraine(Yale Law Journal, 2024) Revkin, Mara; Alrababah, Ala; Myrick, RachelThe field of “transitional justice” refers to a range of processes and mechanisms for accountability, truth-seeking, and reconciliation that governments and communities pursue in the aftermath of major societal traumas, including civil war, mass atrocities, and authoritarianism. This relatively new field emerged in the 1980s as scholars, practitioners, and policymakers looked for guidance to support post-authoritarian and post-communist transitions to democracy in Eastern Europe and Latin America. Since then, the field has grown rapidly—so rapidly that it is outpacing its capacity to learn from past mistakes. Recent methodological advances in the study of public attitudes about transitional justice through quantitative surveys and qualitative interview methods provide unprecedented insights into how different mechanisms—including domestic and international prosecutions, truth commissions, amnesty laws, and compensation—are perceived by their intended beneficiaries. The results have been troubling. Numerous studies in diverse contexts found that some of the most well-known transitional justice mechanisms, including those employed in South Africa, Rwanda, and Cambodia, failed to achieve their objectives of peacebuilding and reconciliation. In some cases, these policies had harmful consequences for their intended beneficiaries, including retraumatization and perceived “justice gaps” between victims’ preferred remedies and their actual outcomes. There is an urgent need for the field of transitional justice to learn from this growing body of empirical research to develop evidence-based policies and programs that achieve their intended objectives. This Feature critically reviews the intellectual development of the field, consolidating empirical findings of relevant studies across disciplines—law, political science, sociology, economics, public health, psychology, and anthropology—and identifying open debates and questions for future research. We focus on research about public attitudes toward transitional justice in the communities directly impacted by conflict. In addition to reviewing previous research, we present new data from original public opinion surveys in Iraq and Ukraine relevant to ongoing transitional justice efforts in those countries. We use this evidence to identify lessons learned, including mistakes, in the design and implementation of previous transitional justice processes. We conclude by discussing the normative and prescriptive implications of our findings for efforts to improve future transitional justice laws and policies.Item Open Access Why So Secretive? Unpacking Public Attitudes toward Secrecy and Success in US Foreign Policy(The Journal of Politics, 2020-07) Myrick, Rachel