1 / 11

“Cherry-Picked” Humanitarian Interventions: A Complexity Approach to Explaining Libya 2011

“Cherry-Picked” Humanitarian Interventions: A Complexity Approach to Explaining Libya 2011 . By Sarah Wilbanks Senior Thesis, International Relations Brown University, 2012 . Research Puzzle. Long history of selectivity in military humanitarian interventions Libya intervention

doris
Télécharger la présentation

“Cherry-Picked” Humanitarian Interventions: A Complexity Approach to Explaining Libya 2011

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. “Cherry-Picked” Humanitarian Interventions:A Complexity Approach to Explaining Libya 2011 By Sarah Wilbanks Senior Thesis, International Relations Brown University, 2012

  2. Research Puzzle • Long history of selectivity in military humanitarian interventions • Libya intervention • Resolution 1973 passed one month after the outbreak of violence • Why Libya and not Rwanda, Darfur, DRC, Syria?

  3. Research Question Given the selectivity of military humanitarian interventions in the post-Cold War era, what explains the swift and multilateral intervention in Libya in March 2011?

  4. Intellectual Context

  5. My Argument A comprehensive and realistic understanding of why the international community intervened in Libya in 2011 can only be obtained through the adoption of a complexity approach to the study of international politics.

  6. What is a complexity? • “An interdisciplinary field of research that seeks to explain how large numbers of relatively simple entities organize themselves without the benefit of any central controller into a collective whole that creates patterns, uses information, and in some cases, evolves and learns.” – Melanie Mitchell, Complexity: A Guided Tour • Examines the humanitarian intervention in Libya as a complex system made up of intertwined actors and components that interact, respond to, and evolve with one another and their environment • Complex system characteristics: • Self-organization • Non-linearity • Emergence Source: R. Lewin, Complexity: Life at the Edge of Chaos (New York, NY: MacMillan Publishing Company), 1992.

  7. Research Design • Methods: • Single case study approach • Process tracing/Counterfactual analysis • John Holland’s framework of complexity: • Focuses on the interactions, adaptations, evolution, and emergences of system components • Describes the processes of the complex system

  8. Findings • 4 emergences of unique international orders • Significantly narrowed the path of available options, and drove the international community towards a military intervention • International order = behavior, norms, structures • 5 essential system variables • Catalyzed emergences

  9. The International Community’s Path to Military Intervention in Libya 2011 Adapted from: Jörg Sydow, Georg Schreyögg, and Jochen Koch. “Organizational Path Dependence: Opening the Black Box,” Academy of Management Review 34, no. 4 (2009): 689-709, 692.

  10. Implications and Future Research • Implications • Can help actors realize the most efficient path of action for the situation at hand • Future research must incorporate factors and actor interactions outside of conventional theories • Future Research • Cross-case comparison • May reveal patterns prevalent throughout previous interventions

More Related