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

在我的哲学硕士研究项目中，我希望能够在哲学博士期间进行扩展，我打算研究国际社会在讨论人道主义干预时对内战期间政治暴力模式使用的语言的影响。“保护责任”（R2P）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武力，在联合国成员国中引起了广泛的争议。国际社会对最近利比亚和叙利亚冲突的反应不一，反映了对第三支柱原则和运作的分歧。我打算这个研究项目阐明国际社会使用诸如“种族灭绝”、“大规模暴行”和“人道主义危机”等术语对暴力冲突行为者的行为的影响（如果有的话）。我的想法受到斯科特·斯特劳斯（Scott strauss）在《建立与毁灭国家：现代非洲的战争、领导和种族灭绝》一书中提出的观点的启发。他分析了他所谓的“创始叙事”对种族灭绝暴力的核心重要性，他有趣地说，这些叙事“类似于……指导决策的认知地图”。罗杰斯·布鲁贝克（Rogers Brubaker）和大卫·d·莱廷（David D. Laitin）在1998年发表在《社会学年度评论》（Annual Review of Sociology）上的一篇文章中，从国内视角到国际视角，主张承认国际社会的民族主义语言在增加种族冲突发生率方面所起的作用。一旦人们承认话语可以影响政治暴力的模式，我建议出现一个关于人道主义干预和R2P语言对当代冲突的影响的重要问题。我希望同时使用定量和定性研究方法。在初步研究和挑选出论文问题后，我会决定要关注的国家数量，冲突和时间段。然后，我将列出国际领导人和联合国大使的重要讲话，以及冲突各方的沟通。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成一个连贯的数据库。然后，我将使用统计学本科课程培养的定量技能，以及哲学硕士课程中“研究设计和研究方法”部分的高级技能，找到数据中的相关性，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.