Nils Petter Gledtisch Article of the Year 2025. JPR

A jury consisting of Melanie Sauter (University of Mannheim), Corinne Bara (ETH Zurich), and Aysegul Aydin (University of Colorado - Boulder), has awarded this year’s Nils Petter Gleditsch Article of the Year to Jason Hartwig for his article entitled “The end of rebel rule: Biased peacekeeping interventions and social order” (JPR 62:6).

All articles published in Volume 62 of the JPR were eligible for the award. The award is worth USD 1,000. Articles were judged based on their theoretical contribution, methodological sophistication, and substantive relevance. The award-winning article studies the effectiveness of biased peacekeeping interventions by IGOs on behalf of governments in reducing conflict and brings together conflict management and rebel governance literatures. He argues that biased interventions that displace rebel control but do not replace rebel governance create a power vacuum in which local conflict increases. He tests this theory in a case study of Somalia. The research impressed the jury with a multimethod design that combines process-tracing - including interviews with government, AMISOM and UN officials - and a difference-in-difference design looking at interclan conflict and violence against civilians before and after AMISOM involvement. Hartwig’s findings reveal that AMISOM’s expulsion of al-Shabaab from control led to a significant spike in intercommunal violence as communities and competing clans sought to establish a new social order. “The end of rebel rule” has significant policy implications in an era where the UN is increasingly sidelined and non-UN interventions with narrow security mandates are the new normal. However, independent of who conducts peacekeeping, the findings show that upending rebel order is no panacea to conflict unless third parties and governments can succeed in establishing and maintaining a new social order.

In addition to the winning article, the jury has identified two runners-up: