Jason Hartwig (Yale University) has been awarded the 2025 Nils Petter Gleditsch Article of the Year Award for his journal article entitled 'The end of rebel rule: Biased peacekeeping interventions and social order'. The winner of the 20th Nils Petter Gleditsch Article of the Year Award was selected by an independent jury out of over 150 articles in the journal's 2025 volume and was announced on 4 March.
The award-winning article examines how biased peacekeeping interventions by intergovernmental organisations, such as the United Nations, affect local conflict dynamics. Hartwig focuses on the case of Somalia and argues that interventions that displace rebel control without replacing rebel governance create a power vacuum in which political violence flourishes.
The jury highlighted the article's impressive multimethod design, which combines process-tracing and interviews with governments, the African Union Mission to Somlia (AMISOM), and UN officials with a difference-in-difference analysis. The findings show that after AMISOM had removed al-Shabaab from control, intercommunal violence increased as competing clans sought to establish a new social order. The jury further noted that Hartwig's article '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'.
The award is named after Nils Petter Gleditsch, who was JPR's editor-in-chief for almost 30 years (1983-2010). It has been awarded annually since 2006, based on all articles published in the Journal of Peace Research's previous full volume.
PRIO and the JPR's Co-Editors-in-Chief, Gudrun Østby and Sebastian Schutte, warmly congratulate Jason Hartwig on the award.
