The effect of the UN's R2P discourse on the patterns of violence in civil wars. Field: R2P, political violence, civil war.

对于我的哲学硕士研究项目，我希望能够在哲学博士期间扩展，我打算研究国际社会在讨论人道主义干预时使用的语言对内战期间政治暴力模式的影响。“保护责任”的概念及其第三个“支柱”，即制裁国际社会为保护平民而使用强制性武力，在联合国会员国中引起了广泛的争议。国际社会对利比亚和叙利亚最近的冲突反应不一，反映了对第三支柱的原则和运作的分歧。我打算这个研究项目照亮的效果，如果有的话，国际社会的使用术语，如“种族灭绝”，“大规模暴行”和“人道主义危机”的暴力冲突行为者的行动。我的想法是受到斯科特·斯特劳斯在《建立和毁灭国家：现代非洲的战争、领导和种族灭绝》一书中提出的论点的启发。他分析了种族灭绝暴力的核心重要性，他称之为“创始叙事”，他有趣地说，这是“类似于...一张指导决策的认知地图”。从国内到国际的视角，罗杰斯布鲁贝克和大卫D。莱廷在1998年发表在《社会学年度评论》上的一篇文章中主张承认国际社会的种族民族主义语言在增加种族冲突发生率方面的作用。一旦人们赠款话语可以影响政治暴力的模式，我认为，一个重要的问题出现了人道主义干预和保护责任的语言对同期冲突的影响。我希望使用定量和定性研究方法。在初步研究和挑选论文问题之后，我将决定关注的国家数量、冲突和时间段。然后我将确定国际领导人和联合国大使的关键讲话，以及冲突参与者的通信。利用我在政治哲学和安全研究方面的知识，我将能够将关键事件和演讲编码到一个连贯的数据库中。然后，我将使用统计学本科课程开发的定量技能，并通过MPhil的“研究设计和研究方法”部分来寻找数据中的相关性，并将其解释为有用的结果。

For my MPhil research project, which I will hopefully be able to extend during a DPhil, I intend to study the effect of the language used by the international community when discussing humanitarian intervention on the pattern of political violence during civil wars. The concept of the 'Responsibility to Protect' (R2P) and its third 'pillar' which sanctions the use of coercive force by the international community for the purpose of protecting civilian populations has met with wide controversy among United Nations member states. Disagreement on the principle and operationalization of the third pillar is reflected in the international community's mixed responses to the recent conflicts in Libya and Syria. I intend this research project to illuminate the effect, if any, of the international community's use of terms such as 'genocide', 'mass atrocity', and 'humanitarian crisis' on the actions of violent conflict actors. My idea is inspired by, amongst others, the argument made by Scott Straus in Making and Unmaking Nations: War, Leadership and Genocide in Modern Africa. He analyses the central importance to genocidal violence of what he calls 'founding narratives', which he intriguingly says are "akin to...a cognitive map that guides decision making". From a domestic to an international perspective, Rogers Brubaker and David D. Laitin in a 1998 article in the 'Annual Review of Sociology' argue for recognizing the role of the international community's language of ethnic nationalism in increasing the incidence of ethnic conflicts. Once one grants that discourse can influence the pattern of political violence, I suggest that an important question appears about the effect of the language of humanitarian intervention and R2P on contemporaneous conflicts. I expect to use both quantitative and qualitative research methods. After preliminary research and singling out the thesis question, I would decide on the number of countries, conflicts and period of time to focus on. I would then identify key speeches of international leaders and UN ambassadors, as well as communications of the conflict actors. Using my knowledge of political philosophy and security studies, I would be able to code key events and speeches into a coherent database. I would then use the quantitative skills developed by undergraduate courses in statistics and advanced by the 'Research Design andApproaches to Research' component of the MPhil to find correlations in the data and interpret them into a useful result.