Bruce Russett Award for Article of the Year in JCR for 2020

DOI10.1177/00220027211060562
Published date01 November 2021
Date01 November 2021
Subject MatterAward Announcement
Award Announcement
Journal of Conf‌lict Resolution
2021, Vol. 65(10) 16391640
© The Author(s) 2021
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/00220027211060562
journals.sagepub.com/home/jcr
Bruce Russett Award for
Article of the Year in JCR for
2020
Devorah Manekin and Reed M. Wood have been awarded the annual Bruce Russett
Award for the Article of the Year published in Journal of Conf‌lict Resolution during
2020. The winning article, Framing the Narrative: Female Fighters, External Audience
Attitudes, and Transnational Support for Armed Rebellionswas published in the
October 2020 issue (JCR 64:9).
Members of the editorial board of JCR participated in a two-stage process in order to
determine the winner of the award. The f‌irst step was for a nominating committee to
recommend their top four articles for consideration. In the second step the four articles
that received the most nominations were given to a voting committee who were asked
to rank-order each of the articles. The winner received the highest overall rankings
among all the votes cast. In casting their votes for the article of the year, the committee
was asked to judge the strength of each article in terms of new and important con-
tributions to basic research based on considerations of theoretical quality, methodo-
logical rigor, and substantive relevance to the f‌ield of conf‌lict studies.
In the award-winning article, Manekin and Wood examine rebel group efforts to use
narratives and images of female combatants to cultivate favorable attitudes among
international audiences and foreign states regarding their political goals and military
tactics. They develop a novel theory about the channels by which narratives and images
of female combatants advance rebel goals by focusing on how such efforts increase the
perceived legitimacy of their political goals and use of violence. They argue that rebel
groups can secure direct and indirect benef‌its through their efforts at empathizing the
role and importance of female combatants in their conf‌lict strategy. They test their
arguments through a compelling combination of online survey experiments and large-N
statistical analyses of cross-national data. The survey experiments in the Unites States
and Indonesia provide micro-level support for their theory that gender framing can
positively affect individual attitudes towards rebel groups. The large-N analyses of over
260 active armed rebel groups from 1964-2009 provides cross-national support for
their claims that a greater role for female combatants in rebel groups increases support
among transnational non-state actors such as NGOs and diaspora groups. This increase
in support among these non-state actors, in turn, bolsters state support for rebel groups.
Overall, Manekin and Wood f‌ind that use of female combatant images and narratives by
rebel groups are most likely to be successful when targeted at less conservative,

To continue reading

Request your trial

VLEX uses login cookies to provide you with a better browsing experience. If you click on 'Accept' or continue browsing this site we consider that you accept our cookie policy. ACCEPT