PRIO Network

Journal of Peace Research

Article of the Year


The second JPR Article of the Year Award goes to Victor Asal & Kyle Beardsley for ‘Proliferation and International Crisis Behavior’, Journal of Peace Research 44(2): 139–155.

 

A jury consisting of Jon Hovi (University of Oslo), Sara McLaughlin Mitchell (University of Iowa) and Gerald Schneider (University of Konstanz) has awarded the second JPR Article of the Year Award to Victor Asal of State University of New York, Albany, and Kyle Beardsley of Emory University. In its assessment of all research articles published in volume 44 of JPR, the jury paid attention to theoretical rigour, methodological sophistication and substantive relevance. According to the jury, the prize-winning article, ‘Proliferation and International Crisis Behavior’, Journal of Peace Research 44(2): 139–155, is one of very few systematic empirical evaluations of the effects of nuclear proliferation on the outcomes of interstate crises. On the basis of a nicely executed empirical analysis, the authors find that crises involving nuclear actors are more likely to end without violence and that the likelihood of war continues to fall as the number of nuclear actors involved increases. Moreover, these results are shown to hold even when controlling for a number of other relevant factors. The authors’ empirical findings are provocative, providing support for Kenneth Waltz’s long-standing claim that a world with nuclear weapons could well be a safer one. Whereas the empirical analysis is likely to be cited widely, the prize-winning article is also innovative in its ability to describe existing theoretical arguments in a particularly succinct and interesting manner.

Victor Asal obtained his doctoral degree from the University of Maryland in 2003 and became an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the State University of New York, Albany in the same year. Kyle Beardsley obtained his doctoral degree from the University of California, San Diego in 2006 and became an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Emory University in the same year.

The award is USD 1,000.

Honourable mention goes to the runners-up: Christopher K. Butler, Tali Gluch & Neil J. Mitchell, ‘Security Forces and Sexual Violence: A Cross-National Analysis of a Principal–Agent Argument, JPR 44(6): 669–687; and Mohammad Zulfan Tadjoeddin & Syed Mansoob Murshed, ‘Socio-Economic Determinants of Everyday Violence in Indonesia: An Empirical Investigation of Javanese Districts, 1994–2003’, JPR 44(6): 689–709.