Institute for Global and International Studies

IGIS Working Papers

Explaining the Variation in Gender Composition of Personnel Contributions to UN Peacekeeping Operations
by Kerry F. Crawford, James H. Lebovic, Julia M. Macdonald
March 2013

How do we account for the dearth of female contributions to UN peace operations? More specifically, how well do political explanations account for variation in the cross-national contribution of female personnel to UN missions? For answers, this study proceeds as follows. First, it examines the demand-side pull to contribute female personnel to UN operations by assessing the costs of female non-participation. Second, it presents theoretical explanations for the varying contributions of personnel to UNPOs. These explanations include the political and socio-economic character of the contributing states, international reputations and norms, and various demand-side influences exerted by missions. Third, it presents descriptive statistical results that reveal the depth and scope of the under-representation of women in peace operations. Fourth, it specifies and tests a cross-sectional time-series logistic model (with contributor-mission-year as the unit of analysis) that competitively tests various explanations for female personnel contributions to each mission in the 2010-11 period. Although it finds significant support for domestic political explanations, even when controlling for gender equality within a society, it concludes that gender diversity is not a primary goal of most contributors and is largely an unintended by-product of force sizes.

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Defying Strategy: United States Non-Strategic Recognition of Wartime Sexual Violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo
by Kerry F. Crawford
March 2013

Do states devote valuable material resources and political capital to condemning atrocities when armed intervention is not imminent or when the perpetrator is not an adversary? By exploring United States efforts to condemn the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war, this paper seeks to understand state recognition of wartime atrocities abroad. Observing that strategic concerns cannot sufficiently explain a state's rhetorical and material efforts to condemn the use of wartime sexual violence, this paper offers an alternative theory of non-strategic recognition of wartime sexual violence through a case study of United States efforts in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The study finds that the perception, among activists and policymakers, of sexual violence as a weapon of war led the United States government to rhetorically and materially respond to wartime sexual violence in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

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New Trends in Mexican Immigration:
Root Causes and Policy Prescriptions
by Brett Boor, Olivia Burzynska-Hernandez, and Jennifer Windell
December 2012

Migration from Mexico is central to U.S. immigration policy and illegal migration from Mexico has received an increasing amount of attention in domestic policy rhetoric over the last several years. However, over the past decade, the once massive flow of immigrants from the south has come to a standstill and may even be reversing, with increasing numbers of Mexicans leaving the United States to return home. This policy brief analyzes this new trend in Mexican immigration, its causes, how it impacts the United States, and what policies the U.S. government should enact in response.

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Women's Representation in Judiciaries Worldwide:
Arguments in Favor of Increasing Gender Diversity on the Bench
by Joshua Doherty
December 2012

While increasing women's representation in legislatures has been widely promoted as a means for ensuring women's participation in governance, there has not been a parallel movement for increasing gender parity in judiciaries around the globe. Two major theories prevail in support of increasing women's representation on the bench. The first proposes that female judges will render judgments more favorable to realizing broader social gender equality. The second suggests that gender parity in the judiciary is a normatively good end (rather than a means to an end) and that moving towards gender parity increases public confidence in the institution. After presenting these theories, this paper discusses major barriers to increasing female representation in the judiciary. This paper then contextualizes the lack of attention this topic receives from agencies and development organizations that focus on global women's empowerment, highlights significant gaps in the available data on this topic, and presents suggestions for filling these gaps.

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Development Outcomes of World Bank Projects:
Real or Illusory Improvements?
by Inder Sud & Jane Olmstead-Rumsey
November 2012

Since 1995, after the release of an internal report that highlighted deterioration in its project portfolio, the World Bank has reported continuous improvements in the overall performance of the projects it finances. These assessments, summarized in the annual reports on development effectiveness prepared by its Independent Evaluation Group, suggest "satisfactory" project outcomes to have increased from 64% for projects assessed in 1994 to 76% in 2000 and 81% in 2008. However, the reports did not provide the underlying data that was used as the basis of these assessments. In line with its new policy of greater disclosure, it released for the first time in end-2011 its project evaluation database of 9,855 projects financed by the World Bank since 1968. The database contains assessments of project performance in various dimensions. The data from this database wer used to verify the published assessments of the World Bank. The analysis points to significant doubt about the reported improvement in performance and suggests that the reported improvement appears to have been mostly a result of pressures of management targets and less than full independence of the World Bank's evaluation function.

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