The Nils Petter Gleditsch JPR article of the Year Award, 2020, goes to Jana Krause
| Date | 01 March 2021 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0022343321992437 |
| Published date | 01 March 2021 |
The Nils Petter Gleditsch
JPR article of the Year Award, 2020,
goes to
Jana Krause
A jury consisting of Anja Shortland (King’s College London), Zeynep Taydas (Clemson University) and Charles
Butcher (Norwegian University of Science and Technology) have awarded this year’s Nils Petter Gleditsch Article of
the Year to Jana Krause for her article titled “Restrained or constrained? Elections, communal conflicts, and variation
in sexual violence”.
All articles published in JPR’s 57th volume were eligible for the award. Articles were judged on their theoretical
contribution, methodological sophistication and substantive relevance. As ever, the jury was faced with the tricky task
of adjudicating between many outstanding articles.
According to the jury, the prize-winning article addresses an important and overlooked research question and makes
an impressive contribution to the communal conflict literature by systematically examining the variation in sexual
violence across cases of election violence. To understand the conditions under which sexual violence takes place, the
author draws on theories in civil war literature and comparatively analyses two prominent cases of post-election
violence, Kenya (2007/8) and Nigeria (2008). Krause argues that the nature of communal conflict triggered by
electoral mobilization explains the divergent patterns of sexual violence in which both men and women may be
targeted. Drawing on extensive fieldwork in both countries, human rights reporting and secondary resources, the
author shows that communal conflicts that polarize a majority group against a minority on the local level are more
likely to experience widespread sexual violence than communal conflicts that pit two similarly strong groups against
each other. While post-election violence in Nigeria generated intense dyadic clashes and violent battles between
similarly strong groups, sexual violence was limited due to the characteristics of the fighting and presen ce of
situational constraints, such as the risk of exposure and fear of imminent attack by the opposing side. By contrast,
in Kenya’s case, one-sided nature of electoral violence and the absence of situational constraints made widespread
rape and other types of sexual violence possible during post- election clashes. This article’s plausibility probe pushes
researchers in new directions by showing that fatal and sexual violence do not necessarily co-occur and the impor-
tance of territorial dominance or control for this type of atrocity.
The article studies an importantquestion in the academic and policyworlds, offers a strong theory,provides convincing
qualitative evidence in support of an interesting propositionand advances our understandingof post-election dynamics
and sexual violence. The jury hopes that Krause’s article will raise awareness and stimulate further research in this area.
The award is USD 1,000.
Honourable mention goes to the runners-up:
Matthew Nanes (2020) Police Integration and support for anti-government violence in divided societies: Evidence
from Iraq. JPR 57(2): 329–343.
Cyanne E Loyle and Christian Davenport (2020) Some left to tell the tale: Finding perpetrators and understanding
violence in Rwanda. JPR 57(4): 507–520.
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