Humanitarian Disarmament
This research initiative focuses on efforts to ban or regulate weapons of war in the service of a more peaceful, humane world.
Cluster Munitions
How resilient are humanitarian disarmament norms codified in treaties like the Convention on Cluster Munitions and the Mine Ban Treaty? A faculty-student team at Human Security Lab is coding NGO reports from the Cluster Munitions Monitor to develop answers to this question, examining shifts in both behavior and rhetoric by both state parties and non-state parties to test the hypothesis that treaties have impacts beyond the effects on legally binding signatories.
Nuclear Non-Use Norms
The landmark Nuclear Ban Treaty came into force in January 2021, but no nuclear powers have signed. Will the treaty nonetheless affect the norms binding nuclear powers not to use nuclear weapons? Professors Charli Carpenter, Bernhard Leidner, Eleonora Mattiacci and Alexander Montgomery are analyzing public opinion data from two experimental surveys with team of undergraduate coders, to test the impact of the new nuclear ban treaty on the strength of nuclear non-use norms.
View Toplines from July 24 US General Population Survey Here
View Toplines from the July 25 US Military Sample Here
View Charli Carpenter’s Remarks at TPNW 3MSP Here
Read Preliminary Findings in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Foreign Policy Magazine and World Politics Review.
Drones
Human Security Lab Doctoral Researcher Alexandria Nylen completed her dissertation entitled Targeting Drones: Framing and Connectivity in Transnational Issue Networks. Her work explores how actors with differing levels of geopolitical power navigate transnational advocacy networks opposing the use of armed drones. Nylen’s dissertation draws on interviews with key informants, fieldwork in Islamabad, and an original text and picture dataset of over 100 advocacy documents.
Landmines
Doctoral Affiliate Catie Fowler, research assistant Isha Mahajan, and Professor Charli Carpenter are building a new dataset by coding Landmine Monitor reports, to track landmine usage by non-state armed groups. This data will contribute to a larger project on humanitarian norm-conforming behavior by armed groups.