Grants
American University Translating Research into Action Center (TRAC)
Donor: National Science Foundation
Duration: February 2024 – January 2028
Funds Raised: $5,220,577
Principal Investigators: Diana Burley (PI), Raychelle Burks (Co-PI), Susanna Campbell (Co-PI), Jordan Tama (Co-PI), and Joseph Young (Co-PI)
Increasingly complex societal challenges necessitate that public and private sector leaders leverage fundamental research to make evidence-based decisions. As the demand for consumable knowledge grows, researchers striving to impact society are tasked with both producing sound research and translating that research into actionable, evidence-based ideas upon which decision-makers can act. The need is great. Yet, scholars often lack the skills or capacity needed to translate their knowledge for policymakers and practitioners. Moreover, universities often lack the institutional capacity to support current scholars and develop future scholars who enable the effective use of evidence to benefit society.
Based at American University’s (AU) Office of Research, Translating Research into Action Center (TRAC) will create a translational research and training ecosystem within and beyond the university. TRAC will conduct research on the impact of different translation methods and establish an inter-disciplinary repository of best practices; support Seed Translation Research Projects (STRPs) across multiple scientific disciplines with the potential to have a large impact on society; cultivate a culture of research translation at AU; support a network of translational research units from Institutes of Higher Education (IHEs); and provide training that prepares doctoral students and post-doctoral scholars to engage in research translation through careers within and beyond academia. TRAC will partner with the University of Denver and The Pew Charitable Trusts’ Evidence Project, which have extensive experience building research translation capacity and broad academic, policy, and funder networks.
RIPIL-LPI Post-Doctoral Fellows
Donor: Carnegie Corporation of New York
Duration: October 2023 – September 2026
Funds Raised: $350,000
Principal Investigators: Susanna Campbell (PI) and Aaron Stanley (Co-PI)
Effective international peacebuilding requires the integration of evidence from the local to global levels. Nonetheless, few policymakers and practitioners are able to systematically integrate rigorous evidence into their decision-making processes. The global reach of international peacebuilding policy and practice—and the related number of actors that can influence conflict and peace dynamics—makes the integration of evidence throughout the policy-practice cycle particularly challenging. This project aims to address these challenges via an innovative research-policy-practice partnership. To this end, American University and the Life & Peace Institute (LPI) have developed a joint post-doctoral program and an accompanying research-policy-practice partnership approach that enables the 1) identification of innovative research questions that are important to peacebuilding policymakers, practitioners, and community-members; 2) integration of key policymakers, practitioners, and community-members throughout the research process; and 3) engagement of policymakers, practitioners, and community-members with the research findings in addition to their publication in respected peer-reviewed journals.
Whose Peace? How Local-Global Networks Shape Multilateral Conflict Prevention and Peacebuilding
Donor: United States Institute of Peace (USIP)
Duration: September 2022– August 2024
Funds Raised: $149,721
Principal Investigators: Susanna Campbell (PI), Yolande Bouka (Co-PI), Jessica Maves Braithwaite (Co-PI), Azza Mustafa (Co-PI), Guillaume Ndayikengurutse (Co-PI), Santiago Sosa Noreña (Co-PI), and Hatem Zayed (Co-PI)
In conflict-affected countries, multilateral governance is not confined solely to international actors, but is increasingly dependent on a range of domestic actors within the conflict-affected country, including civil society organizations, local and national government officials, national non-governmental organizations (NNGOs), journalists, and even armed groups. This project examines how a range of domestic actors in conflict-affected countries, often referred to as “local” actors, influence the effectiveness of multilateral conflict prevention and peacebuilding efforts via formal and informal networks. It is undertaken in partnership with collaborators in Burundi, Colombia, and Sudan.
Networks of Influence and Support between War and Peace
Donor: National Science Foundation (NSF)
Duration: August 2021–July 2023
Funds Raised: $298,506
Principal Investigators: Susanna Campbell (PI) and Jessica Maves Braithwaite (Co-PI)
This project aims, first, to identify the intervening international actors involved in contemporary UN peace operations, as well as the connections between these actors that are likely shape the success and failure of peace operation objectives. Second, it uses these “networks of influence and support” to examine how the broader set of actors involved in peacebuilding activities affects important outcomes for human security in conflict-affected states. To explore these dynamics, we will create a new dataset on the presence and formal connections between UN entities, INGOs, and bilateral as well as multilateral donors operating in 15 countries that have ongoing or recently terminated UN peace operations. We will augment this network dataset with three detailed case studies in DRC, Colombia, and Sudan, including a survey of donors and INGO staff as well as their domestic partners. We will also conduct semi-structured interviews and analyze secondary source information to validate and extend our understanding of these international-domestic ties and their relationship to peace and conflict outcomes. A mixed methods approach (qualitative case studies, social network and large-N quantitative analysis) will be adopted across a series of work products to explore how actor and network characteristics affect the ability to achieve mission objectives of peace operations. The findings from this research will contribute to the literature on civil war interventions, peacekeeping, and peacebuilding by accounting for the heterogeneity of actors involved in international peacekeeping and peacebuilding efforts and how the networks among them and with domestic actors in the host country influence peace and security outcomes. This fine-grained, actor-focused analysis will enable the peacekeeping and peacebuilding literature to more directly engage with the increasingly actor-centric scholarship on dynamics of civil wars.
The National Science Foundation granted an additional $38,000 towards Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) in relation to this project.
Seed money for this project was granted by the Knowledge Management Fund from May 2020–October 2020. This grant awarded $16,000 to principal investigators Susanna Campbell and Jessica Maves Braithwaite.
Aiding People: Non-State Armed Group Service Delivery and International Aid
Donor: American Political Science Association
Duration: May 2021–December 2022
Funds Raised: $10,000
Principal Investigators: Susanna Campbell (PI) and Hilary Matfess (Co-PI)
This project seeks to address a policy problem that has been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic: the lack of clear guidance about how the US Government, other governments, multilateral organizations, and non-governmental organizations should engage or cooperate with non-state armed groups that are increasingly involved in the provision of public goods and services, particularly related to health and economic needs. The US Global Fragility Act, passed by Congress in December 2020, established the US Government’s commitment to using the tools of diplomacy, peacebuilding, and development to prevent violent extremism and conflict in fragile and conflict-affected states (US Congress 2019). While the Global Fragility Act outlines how the US Government and its partners should engage with local communities and host governments, it does not address how the US Government should engage with non-state armed groups who may be both drivers of extremism and providers of essential goods and services. By analyzing the features of non-state governance and service provision in the COVID-19 pandemic, this project will provide a framework through which policymakers can understand the behaviors of these non-state armed groups and potential strategies for engaging with them. This project will also shed light on the ways in which non-state armed groups’ provision of services challenges partner countries’ legitimacy among local communities, which can inform our stabilization and development efforts.
By examining both the change in the pattern of violence and the nature of non-state governance associated with the 100 most active non-state armed groups, this project will be a critical tool for both the academic study of non-state governance and the legacies of political violence, as well as for policymakers and practitioners concerned with stabilization and peacebuilding efforts. This project is a collaboration between academics and policymakers. We will produce a typology of non-state actors’ response to the crisis and also host roundtables with policymakers and practitioners to share our findings and unpack their implications for policy and development programming. We aim for these roundtable discussions to result in a policy-scholarly network that advances this research agenda and contributes to the academic study of non-state governance.
Peacebuilding in Challenging Contexts
Donor: United Nations Peacebuilding Fund (UN PBF)
Duration: January 2021–June 2021
Funds Raised: $87,500
Principal Investigator: Susanna Campbell
The Research on International Policy Implementation Lab (RIPIL) is studying the UN Peacebuilding Fund’s support to Burundi during a time of increased uncertainty in the country and the COVID-19 pandemic. The study uses a mixed-method design that integrates internal document review, expert interviews, and an embedded survey experiment with UN, government officials, non-governmental organizations, civil society actors, and aid recipients to evaluate the effectiveness of peacebuilding aid in this challenging context.
The Changing Nature of International Aid
Donor: Humanity United
Duration: January 2021–December 2022
Funds Raised: $34,000
Principal Investigator: Susanna Campbell
COVID-19 and the 2020 racial justice movement have simultaneously amplified the need for effective international aid and challenged the ability and legitimacy of international actors to deliver aid effectively, necessitating a widespread “rethink” of international aid policy and practice. The Research on International Policy Implementation Lab (RIPIL) will support this effort through: virtual engaged scholar workshops that identify pressing research questions on the role of international aid today; collaborative research with scholars and universities based in aid recipient countries; and mentoring of new scholars conducting research on these questions.
UN Peace Operation Data, Analytics, and Action
Donor: Folke Bernadotte Academy (FBA)
Duration: January 2021–December 2022
Funds Raised: $42,000
Principal Investigators: Susanna Campbell (PI), Paige Arthur (Co-PI), and Andrea Ruggeri (Co-PI)
United Nations (UN) peace operations are deployed to some of the most difficult environments in the world, charged with transforming war-torn states into countries that can sustain peace. Over the past two decades, international peacekeeping scholarship has produced relatively consistent findings: the deployment of international peacekeepers, particularly in contexts where there is a comprehensive peace agreement, reduces the likelihood of civil war recurrence. These analyses have focused primarily on the effect of military peacekeepers, overlooking the civilian and policing capacities of UN peace operations, the activities of the dozens of additional UN entities that operate within and alongside UN peace operations, and the myriad International Non-Governmental Organizations (INGOs), other International Organizations (IOs), and bilateral aid donors that also collaborate with these UN missions. In reality, in any single fragile or conflict-affected country – whether Iraq, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Colombia, or Nepal – there are dozens, if not hundreds, of international actors operating there with the aim of building peace, preventing violent extremism, reducing poverty, saving lives, and rebuilding infrastructure destroyed by war. They are connected to each other and to domestic state and non-state actors via formal contracts, informal relationships, and regular coordination meetings. To examine the effect of this organizational diversity within peacebuilding operations on peace and security outcomes, this project involves creating a new dataset of peacebuilding actors and their networks with one another. We will also complement this dataset with in-depth case studies in Colombia, the DRC, and Sudan. The project will have several broader impacts. First, it will contribute to an improved understanding of the aid-conflict relationship, supporting better aid policy and having an important impact on US national security policy, which increasingly uses aid as one of its core tools of conflict mitigation in fragile and conflict-affected states, as indicated in the 2019 Global Fragility Act passed by the US Congress. Second, the project will increase diversity in international relations scholarship in a variety of ways. The project team will facilitate additional broader impacts by creating initial buy-in through stakeholder workshops and disseminating the findings directly to policymakers, building on Professor Campbell’s strong networks with international donors and intergovernmental organizations and the newly-established research lab at American University—Research on International Policy Implementation Lab (RIPIL).
Rule Breakers or Innovators? Bureaucratic Effectiveness in Global Governance
Donor: Folke Bernadotte Academy (FBA)
Duration: January 2020–December 2021
Funds Raised: $26,000
Principal Investigator: Susanna Campbell
This project aims to identify the conditions under which staff working for international peacebuilding and development organizations exhibit innovative behavior that contributes to more effective peacebuilding. Existing scholarship on international peacebuilding, peacekeeping, and development has established the importance of making international peace and development agencies responsive to the local contexts in which they intervene (Campbell 2018; Honig 2018; Howard 2008). This local accountability, however, is hindered by the fact that International Organizations (IOs), bilateral donors, and international non-governmental organizations (INGOs) are primarily accountable to their donors and headquarters outside of the country, not to local stakeholders (Cooley and Ron 2002; Martens et al. 2012). For these organizations to be accountable to local stakeholders, individual staff in their country offices often have to break or bend rules set up to make the organization accountable only to its headquarters. What leads to constructive rule-breaking or rule-bending in IOs, INGOs, and bilateral donors? Which bureaucrats are able to engage in this type of behavior and which ones are not? How might IOs, INGOs, and bilateral donors increase the space for bureaucratic innovation and reduce the need for rule-breaking or rule-bending? To answer these questions, this project will conduct a survey-embedded experiment with staff of IOs, INGOs, and bilateral donors engaged in international peacebuilding and conflict prevention.
Ontology of Peace: Measuring Peace in War
Donor: Folke Bernadotte Academy (FBA)
Duration: January 2019–December 2021
Funds Raised: $40,000
Principal Investigators: Susanna Campbell (PI) and Jessica Maves Braithwaite (Co-PI)
What causes peace in the midst or aftermath of civil war? In spite of the breadth of research on conflict-affected countries, we still do not have answers to this fundamental question. In fact, most research on peacekeeping and peace processes measures peace as the absence of violence, rather than the presence of peaceful cooperation. As a result, it identifies the factors that lead to the absence of violence, not those that sustain peace. Building on their previous work in this area (Campbell, Findley, and Kikuta 2017), this project team will develop a theory and measure of peace in the midst and aftermath of civil war. The project will result in a final paper and blog post that will outline how researchers and evaluators can more effectively assess the causes of “peace”.
The team will use the case of Colombia to develop this measure of peace, harmonizing existing data sources. Colombia provides unique analytical opportunities to investigate the relationship between violent conflict and peaceful cooperation. The Colombian civil war has been ongoing for over half a century, with a great deal of variation in episodes of violent conflict and peaceful cooperation. As a middle-income country that has made significant investment in its own statistics infrastructure and national research institutions, Colombia has significantly better sub-national data than most countries affected by ongoing civil war.
Deterring Atrocities: Identifying the Logic of Credible Prevention
Donor: International Studies Association (ISA) Catalytic Workshop Grant
Duration: January 2019–June 2019
Funds Raised: $9,080
Principal Investigators: Susanna Campbell (PI) and Kate Cronin-Furman (Co-PI)
A better understanding of the conditions under which preventive actions take place and the effect of these actions is highly valuable for both policymakers and scholars, particularly given the increased prioritization of prevention by the United Nations and its member states. Since the inception of the liberal world order, the prevention of mass atrocities has been one of its core aims. The basic assumption underlying the atrocity-prevention norm, and the liberal international order itself, is that the prevention of mass atrocities should supersede state interest and sovereignty. But if the global commitment to mass atrocity prevention is so strong, grounded in international law and operationalized in multilateral institutions, why has it failed so abysmally in Burma, Syria, Central African Republic, South Sudan, and Burundi, to name only the most recent examples? By convening scholars and drawing on insights from a variety of academic disciplines, we hope to advance a new research agenda that examines how, why, and when states and multilateral organizations take preventive actions to deter mass atrocities.
Strengthening the Unlikely Sources of Peacebuilding Success
Donor: United States Institute of Peace (USIP)
Duration: October 2017–August 2019
Funds Raised: $78,948
Principal Investigators: Susanna Campbell (PI) and Chuck Call (Co-PI)
Over the past two decades, international peacebuilding has become mainstream and is now part of the repertoire of most United Nations entities, OECD donors, and many INGOs. The liberal international order that is central to many of these peacebuilding efforts has also been the subject of much criticism. As a result, improved peacebuilding success is not likely to result from ‘business as usual.’ Instead, we need to identify the unlikely sources of peacebuilding success and strengthen them. Over the course of three workshops, this project will convene key individuals around three of these unlikely sources of peacebuilding success: 1) Rule-Breaking Bureaucrats; 2) Emerging Powers and International Peacebuilding; and 3) Non-violent Peace and Resistance Movements. By convening key actors who have the capacity and will to strengthen emergent peacebuilding capacities, the project hopes to contribute to the future growth of effective peacebuilding.
Aiding Peace? Donor Behavior in Conflict Affected Countries
Donor: Swiss Network for International Studies (SNIS)
Duration: January 2014–June 2016
Funds Raised: $240,000
Principal Investigators: Susanna Campbell (PI), Jean-Louis Arcand (Co-PI), and Michael Findley (Co-PI)
The objective of this research project is to understand the causes of donor behavior at the sub-national level during a peace process. Do donors respond to the ebbs and flows of a peace process or is their behavior motivated by other factors that are exogenous to events within the conflict-torn country? The literatures on international aid, peacebuilding, and peace processes have thus far failed to answer this question. The project employs an innovative multi-method research design to answer these questions. It uses a nested case study approach, which allows us to compare the behavior of different types of donors (i.e., bilateral, multilateral, OECD and non-OECD, Regional Development Banks, etc.) in three relatively contemporaneous peace processes (i.e., Liberia, Nepal, and Sudan). The research team, made up of political scientists and economists, has a very strong background in international aid, conflict-affected countries, peace processes, sub-national comparative analyses, and rigorous quantitative and qualitative methods. The dissemination events and discussions that the team will hold with its project partners and contacts will ensure that the research findings are made available to help improve donor behavior in conflict-affected countries.
Bad Behavior? Explaining Performance in International Peacebuilding
Donor: Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF)
Duration: November 2013–October 2015
Funds Raised: $270,000
Principal Investigators: Susanna Campbell (Co-PI) and Stephanie Hofmann (PI)
The project has two concrete objectives. First, it will test and refine a theory developed by Dr. Susanna Campbell that explains IO, INGO and bilateral donor performance in war-to-peace transitions, with the ultimate aim of creating a generalizable theory. Second, it will expand on her work undertaken so far to cover different regional organizations engaged in peacebuilding. In order to achieve their research objectives, Dr. Susanna Campbell and Prof. Stephanie Hofmann will combine their extensive academic knowledge and field research experience, and jointly study various case study organizations over a ten to fifteen year period in two countries: Haiti and Liberia. The focal point of analysis will therefore be country-level offices of IOs, INGOs, and government aid agencies that have a clearly specified peacebuilding aims, within these two countries.
The findings from this project have significance for the theoretical debates within International Relations on the performance of IOs, INGOs, and donor aid agencies and the role of accountability, legitimacy, informal institutions, and institutional change therein. It will also shed light on the effectiveness of current policies and tools intended to improve peacebuilding performance, and provide a potentially important framework for peacebuilding organizations to assess and improve their positive contribution to post-war transitions.
Crowdsourcing Peace: Closing the Feedback Loop in War-to-Peace Transitions
Donor: Center on Conflict and Development, Texas A&M University
Duration: August 2014–November 2014
Funds Raised: $24,600
Principal Investigators: Susanna Campbell (Co-PI) and Michael Findley (PI)
How can donors close the feedback loop between themselves and local institutions in war-to-peace transitions? Donors often do not understand how their behavior positively or negatively affects the dynamics within countries emerging from civil war. They often lack real relationships with the communities that they aim to serve, failing to receive regular feedback from them about the evolution of the country’s local level dynamics. Instead, donors monitor conflict and cooperation among elites without engaging local institutions and the diverse perspectives of the country’s population.
The lack of direct feedback from conflict-affected populations undermines donors’ understanding of the relationship between their aid allocation strategies and the evolution of a country’s war-to-peace transition. We argue that geocoded aid data and information communications technologies, such as crowdsourcing, can help donor agencies to keep on top of a dynamic political context, engage with community members and local institutions, and respond quickly to information that is presented in clear maps. Geocoding of the aid given by donors, crowdsourcing that enables populations to ‘speak’ directly to donors, and the visualization of this data through maps together create a powerful approach to enable donors to better understand the relationship between their aid and the evolution of a country’s war-to-peace transition. Better informed donors will, hopefully, be better able have a more positive influence on these dynamics.
Quasi-Experimental Evaluation of the UN Peacebuilding Fund in Burundi (2007-2013)
Donor: UN Peacebuilding Support Office (PBSO) and the PBF Joint Steering Committee (JSC) in Burundi
Duration: October 2013–January 2014
Funds Raised: $52,000
Principal Investigator: Susanna Campbell
Between 2007 and 2013, the UN Peacebuilding Fund (PBF) allocated US$ 44 million from their Peacebuilding and Recovery Facility (PRF) and US$ 5 million from their Immediate Response Facility (IRF) to help consolidate peace in Burundi. This makes Burundi the top recipient of PBF funds out of the 23 countries that the PBF has supported. Burundi was also one of the first two countries, along with Sierra Leone, to receive PBF funding and be included on the agenda of the UN Peacebuilding Commission (PBC). The duration and magnitude of the PBF’s support to Burundi make it an important case to study and understand.
This evaluation is different from the other evaluations that the PBF has commissioned because it assesses the contribution of the PBF support to Burundi’s post-war transition for the entire period of PBF support to Burundi (2007–2013), which included two tranches of PBF funding (PBF I and PBF II) and the preparation of a third one (PBF III), and draws lessons for the PBF based on its support over this entire period. The same lead evaluator that evaluated the first PBF tranche in 2010 also led this evaluation, enabling the evaluation team to conduct an in-depth comparison of PBF support in different sectors, with different staff, and to different configurations of the UN at the country level. To do this, the evaluation employed an innovative research design that is grounded in a household-level survey of over 250 households from randomly sampled towns with and without PBF involvement, and over 165 semi-structured interviews, 90 of which are drawn from the randomly sampled towns, as well as a detailed document review. This evaluation was conducted by a team of thirteen researchers and research assistants.
Evaluation of UN Peacebuilding Fund in Burundi (2007-2009)
Donor: UN Peacebuilding Support Office (PBSO)
Duration: October 2009–December 2009
Funds Raised: $52,000
Principal Investigator: Susanna Campbell
Independent external evaluation of the relevance, efficiency, and effectiveness of $35 million provided by the UN Peacebuilding Fund to the United Nations System in Burundi, between 2007 and 2009.
Evaluation of Burundi Leadership Training Program (BLTP)
Donor: World Bank Post-Conflict Fund
Duration: May 2004–August 2004
Funds Raised: $40,000
Principal Investigators: Susanna Campbell (Co-PI) and Peter Uvin (PI)
Independent external evaluation of the Burundi Leadership Training Program (BLTP), a training and dialogue project run by Dr. Howard Wolpe of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (WWICS).