The Nils Petter Gleditsch JPR Article of the Year Award, 2017, goes to Kentaro Hirose, Kosuke Imai and Jason Lyall
| Published date | 01 March 2018 |
| Date | 01 March 2018 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/0022343318759516 |
The Nils Petter Gleditsch
JPR Article of the Year Award, 2017,
goes to
Kentaro Hirose, Kosuke Imai
and Jason Lyall
A jury consisting of Indra de Soysa (Norwegian University of Science and Technology), Emilie Hafner-Burton
(University of California, San Diego) and Vally Koubi (ETH, Zurich) has awarded the 2017 Journal of Peace Research
‘Nils Petter Gleditsch Article of the Year Award’ to Kentaro Hirose (Waseda University), Kosuke Imai (Princeton
University) and Jason Lyall (Yale University). The jury was faced with the very difficult task of selecting one winner
among several exceptionally good articles. In its assessment of all research articles published in JPR’s 54th volume, the
jury paid attention to theoretical rigour, methodological sophistication and substantive relevance. According to the
jury, the prize-winning article, ‘Can civilian attitudes predict insurgent violence? Ideology and insurgent tactical
choice in civil war’, Journal of Peace Research 54(1): 47–63, offers a novel insight into the longstanding debate on
whether civilian attitudes are a useful predictor of violence in civil wars. In particular, the authors examine the role of
the winning civilian ‘hearts and minds’ strategy in counterinsurgency wars. The authors argue that insurgents use
civilian pro-counterinsurgent attitudes as cues to select their targets and tactics. Using an original survey experiment
in 204 Afghan villages, the authors identify a positive link between support for international forces and future
Taliban attacks. Furthermore, they extend the analysis to 14,606 non-surveyed villages and show that civilian pro-
counterinsurgent attitudes improve out-of-sample predictive performance by 20–30% over a forecasting model that
relies on past violence to predict future attacks. The article studies an important question in the academic and policy
worlds, advances the understanding of wartime dynamics, shows a high degree of methodological sophistication and
rigour, and has important policy implications regarding the ‘hearts and minds’ approach in counterinsurgency.
The award is USD 1,000.
Honourable mention goes to the runners-up:
Anita R Gohdes (University of Zurich) and Sabine C Carey (University of Mannheim), ‘Canaries in a coal-mine?
What the killings of journalists tell us about future repression’, Journal of Peace Research 54(2): 157–174.
And
Reed M Wood (ArizonaState University) and JakanaL Thomas (MichiganState University), ‘Womenon the frontline:
Rebel group ideology and women’s participation in violent rebellion’, Journal of Peace Research 54(1): 31–46.
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