Dr. Michael Hendricks, assistant professor in the Department of Politics and Government, published his coauthored manuscript, All Peacekeeping is Local: Measuring Subnational Variation in Peacekeeping Effectiveness, in International Studies Quarterly.
Hendricks and his coauthors (Bryce W. Reeder, University of Missouri and Edward Goldring, York University) explore how commonly used modeling techniques cannot easily test peacekeepers’ local effectiveness. Coefficients from methods such as linear regression, logit, and count models provide average estimates of peacekeepers’ effects on violence. They argue that a solution lies in geographically weighted regression (GWR). GWR can more clearly reveal subnational spatial heterogeneity in peacekeepers’ (in)effectiveness at reducing violence.
They conduct an illustrative test of their argument using data on the Democratic Republic of the Congo between 2001 and 2014 and replicate an existing study to show that GWR can also help resolve seemingly contradictory findings of whether peacekeepers are better at reducing violence by government or rebel actors. By improving measures of subnational peacekeeping effectiveness, scholars can have greater confidence in tests of theories about why peacekeepers are effective at the subnational level. The article can be found here.
