Congratulations are in order for our very own Professor Paul Staniland! Professor Staniland’s article, Stabilizing Civil Wars without Peacekeeping: Evidence from South Asia, is featured in International Security journal’s recent 49^th edition (Vol. 49 No. 1, Summer 2024. MIT Press.). The article is a comprehensive analysis of the ways in which civil wars stabilize internally with limited, or no, international intervention. It hones in on the breadth of a government’s political leverage and asks, “How does a government’s bargaining power measure up to the dissenting power of armed groups?”

“In much of the world – including South Asia – the odds of peacekeeping in internal conflicts are quite remote,” says Staniland. “We focus intently on a set of wars in South Asia to explore when they could either stabilize or end through some kind of deal even in the absence of international backing.” Staniland and collaborators, Basil Bastaki and Bryan Popoola, use qualitative and quantitative findings to shed light on the conditions that make stability possible, ultimately limiting the cost of war. “As global geopolitical tensions make peacekeeping more difficult, scholars and policymakers will need to embrace unorthodox and experimental approaches to conflict stabilization,” says Staniland. “We identify a set of implications, which include the need for experimentation and the importance of not pushing for top-down conflict settlements rather than sometimes accepting more tenuous and messy local arrangements.”