Research

International courts in an era of smartphones and social media – improving human rights accountability?

Videos shared on social media have become important evidence to hold perpetrators of human rights violations accountable. What does this increased use of digital open source evidence mean for the quality of international human rights accountability? Does it make international courts more efficient in ensuring human rights accountability, as many assume? And what can be done to mitigate potential downsides, such as deep fakes and implicit biases in legal judgments? Through an innovative experimental design, this project will help us understand how digitalization is changing the way how perpetrators of war crimes and crimes against humanity are held accountable.

Funding: Dutch Research Council/ NWO

Resilience of International Organizations

In this project, I analyze international organizations' (IOs) responses to contestation by member states. How do IOs react to budgetary measures, membership withdrawals or systematic non-compliance with core values by member states? And what factors explain the different ways in which IOs respond to these challenges? Integrating the insights from organization theory into research on multilateralism, this project analyzes three types of responses of IO bureaucracies: inertia, i.e. no immediate response; adaptation, i.e. institutional changes to maintain the support of the challenging member state(s); and resilience-building, i.e. developing organizational capacities to limit contestation.

2021 in International Affairs 97: 6
2022 in The Duck of Minerva Blog
2023 in Cambridge Review of International Affairs (online first)

Funding: Fritz Thyssen Foundation (project: "Multilateralism under attack")

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Deliberation in the United Nations Security Council

While deliberation is a core feature of democratic debates, international negotiations are regarded as an unlikely environment for the reasoned exchange of arguments. The United Nations (UN) Security Council is a very special IO and it is obviously far from an ideal deliberative setting. To date, however, we know little about the extent to which Council members, when speaking in the Council, actually listen to each other and are responsive to their fellow Council members’ claims. Nor do we know much about the extent to which Security Council members are open to persuasion and in search of reasoned consensus when they exchange arguments in the Council. In this project, we develop a dictionary to investigate systematically to what extent Council members a) listen to each other and are responsive to each other’s claims and b) are open to persuasion and display consensus seeking attitudes. We further examine how 1) certain debate characteristics as well as 2) speaker-related factors shape listening and consensus-seeking behaviour of state representatives.

Co-authors: Monika Heupel (University of Bamberg), Evi Kroeker (University of Potsdam)

Sovereignty and International Authority

In recent years, a number of states have withdrawn from international organizations (IOs) with the argument that they want to regain their sovereignty. In this understanding, participation in IOs seems to inhibit the sovereignty of states. States therefore want to limit IO authority or decide to withdraw their membership. However, this understanding of sovereignty has not always been so prevalent: especially in the early years of the United Nations (UN), active participation in IOs used to be considered a sign of sovereignty, symbolizing the recognition as a sovereign state by the community of states. In this project, we investigate this evolving understanding of sovereignty. Through a combination of qualitative and automated content analysis of member states’ speeches during the annual meetings of the UN General Assembly between 1950 and 2020, we analyze how states perceive the relationship between sovereignty and international authority, with a specific view on the UN.

Co-author: Claire Vergerio

Accountability in Global Governance

In this book, published by Oxford University Press, I study how international organizations and their implementing partners can be held accountable if they violate human rights. I introduce the concept of pluralist accountability, whereby third parties hold IOs and their implementing partners accountable for human rights violations. Based on a study of UN-mandated operations in Afghanistan, Bosnia and Kosovo, the EU Troika's austerity policy, and Global Public-Private Health Partnerships in India, this book analyzes how competition and human rights vulnerability shape the evolution of pluralist accountability in response to diverse human rights violations, such as human trafficking, the violation of the rights of detainees, economic rights, and the right to consent in clinical trials. While highlighting the importance of alternative accountability mechanisms for legitimacy of IOs, this book also argues that pluralist accountability should not be regarded as a panacea for IOs' legitimacy problems, as it is often less legalized and might cause multiple accountability disorder.

Music and Peacebuilding

Violent conflicts between states or within states have a strong impact on the identity and the mutual perception of individuals and groups. A society’s youth is particularly affected as its identity formation is still in process and heavily shaped by conflict. Therefore, peacebuilding activities increasingly engage with youth through musical activities in order to support a peace-oriented and reconciliatory identity development. Music-based peacebuilding is expected to enhance prosocial behavior particularly well. Playing together in an orchestra requires listening to each other while working towards a joint performance without competing. This pilot study investigates the impact of such arts-based peacebuilding activities in youth orchestras in which members from conflict areas perform together.
Cooperating with youth orchestras from four current or past conflict settings, we study how the participation in these projects changes the perceptions of young musicians. What are the conditions under which these musical peacebuilding activities enhance prosocial behavior among participants during the activity and upon their return in their home environments? By studying different types of peacebuilding activities, this inter-disciplinary project will provide first evidence-based insights into best practices of effective musical peacebuilding for scholars and practitioners alike.

Investigators: Dr. Gisela Hirschmann (Political Science), Dr. Niels van Doesum (Social Psychology)
Both investigators are assistant professors at Leiden University with professional careers as musicians (violin and opera singing).

2021 in the Journal of Peace Psychology

Funding: Leiden University Fund/ Gratama Foundation (project: "Playing with the enemy. The impact of collaborative musical performance as arts-based peacebuilding")

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List of publications

Peer-reviewed articles

2023: Crisis management in international organisations: the League of Nations’ response to early challenges, in: Cambridge Review of International Affairs, Online first, doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/09557571.2023.2271984.
2021: International organizations’ responses to member state contestation: from inertia to resilience, in: International Affairs 97(6): 1963–1981.
2021: The Reassertion of National Sovereignty A Challenge to International Organizations’ Survival?, in: Journal of Security and Human Rights 31: 60–67.
2021: Playing with the enemy: Investigating the impact of musical peacebuilding, in: Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology 27(2): 324–328, with Niels van Doesum.
2021: Criminal accountability at what cost? Norm conflict, UN peace operations and the International Criminal Court, in: European Journal of International Relations 27(2): 548–571, with Tom Buitelaar.
2020: To be or not to be? Lebensdynamiken internationaler Organisationen im Spannungsfeld von internationaler Autorität und nationalstaatlicher Souveränität, in: Zeitschrift für Internationale Beziehungen 27(1): 71–95.
2020: Cooperating with evil? Accountability in global security governance and the evolution of the Human Rights Due Diligence Policy, in: Cooperation and Conflict, 55(1): 22–40.
2019: Guarding the guards: pluralist accountability for human rights violations in global governance, in: Review of International Studies 45(1): 20–38.
2018: International organisations and human rights: What direct authority needs for its legitimation, in: Review of International Studies 44(2): 343–366, with Monika Heupel and Michael Zürn.
2015: International organizations and the protection of human rights, in: da Conceição-Heldt, Eugénia/Koch, Martin/Liese, Andrea (Hrsg.): Internationale Organisationen: Autonomie, Politisierung, interorganisationale Beziehungen und Wandel, Politische Vierteljahresschrift, Special Issue 49, 423–451, with Monika Heupel and Michael Zürn.
2012: Peacebuilding in UN Peacekeeping Exit Strategies: Organized Hypocrisy and Institutional Reform, in: International Peacekeeping 19(2), 170–185.
2012: Organizational learning in United Nations' peacekeeping exit strategies, in: Cooperation and Conflict 47(3): 368–385.

Monograph and contributions to edited volumes

2020: Pluralist Accountability in Global Governance, Oxford University Press.
2017: When protectors become perpetrators: United Nations Peacekeeping and the protection of physical integrity, in: Heupel, Monika and Michael Zürn (eds.): Protecting the Individual from International Authority. Human Rights in International Organizations, Cambridge University Press, 157–185.
2017: United Nations peacekeeping and the protection of due process rights in detentions, in: Heupel, Monika and Zürn, Michael (eds.): Protecting the Individual from International Authority. Human Rights in International Organizations, Cambridge University Press, 186–202.
2017: NATO peacekeeping and the protection from sexual exploitation and human trafficking, in: Heupel, Monika and Michael Zürn (eds.): Protecting the Individual from International Authority. Human Rights in International Organizations, Cambridge University Press, 203–219.
2017: NATO peacekeeping and the protection of the right to due process in detentions, in: Heupel, Monika and Michael Zürn (eds.): Protecting the Individual from International Authority. Human Rights in International Organizations, Cambridge University Press, 220–235.
2017: Conceptual framework for the analysis of human rights protection provisions, in: Heupel, Monika and Michael Zürn (eds.): Protecting the Individual from International Authority. Human Rights in International Organizations, Cambridge University Press, 40–64 (with Monika Heupel).
2016: Accountability dynamics and the emergence of an international rule of law for detentions in multilateral peace operations, in: Heupel, Monika and Theresa Reinold (eds.): The rule of law in global governance, Palgrave Macmillan, 123–147.

Other publications

Multilateralismus. Staatslexikon Online, 1 March 2023.
How International Organizations can resist political shocks. Blogpost: The Duck of Minerva, 4 Februar 2022.
Mit UN-Sicherheitsrat und WHO ein integriertes Regime für globale Gesundheitssicherheit schaffen, Global Public Policy Institute (GPPI) PeaceLab Blog, with Christian Kreuder-Sonnen, 11 Mai 2020.
Coronavirus: A Global Crisis Waiting for a Global Response, E-International Relations Blog, 2 April 2020.
Shaping Multilateralism. Principles and Opportunities for multilateral cooperation in the UN, SEF Spotlight 5/2019, with Cornelia Ulbert.
Norm collisions in UN Peace Operations. Paper presented at the conference of IR section of the German Political Science Association, 4-6 October 2017, Bremen University (available at: hirschmann_2017_norm_collisions_conf_paper.pdf).
Blauhelmsoldaten. Nicht wegschauen, nicht vertuschen, ZEIT online, 15 June 2015.
Regieren jenseits des Nationalstaats: Menschenrechte, Informationen zur politischen Bildung, 2015: 325, 50–55.
Practice What You Preach. Die UN und der Schutz von Menschenrechten in Friedensoperationen und Sanktionspolitik, Vereinte Nationen 62(1): 9–14, 2014, with Monika Heupel.