Rebecca Best, Ph.D.
bestrh@umkc.edu
Associate Professor
University of Missouri-Kansas City
Research Interests
Gender and Politics
Terrorism
Conflict Processes & War
Political Violence
Formal Theory
Veteran Reintegration
Civil Conflict Negotiations
Female Combatants
Female Veterans
Conflict Resolution
Publications:
Journal Articles:
Introduction: Traditionally, women have been viewed as having little agency in wars and conflicts. Women were thought neither to cause the wars nor to fight them. When women were considered at all by scholars of war, they were conceived of primarily as victims. As women gained the franchise and ultimately began to be elected into political office in advanced democracies, some scholars began to consider the foreign policy implications of this. That is - do women’s attitudes toward war and defense policy differ from those of men and do these views produce different outcomes at the ballot box? Further, do women behave differently with regard to security issues once in national office? Does their presence change the way their male colleagues vote on these issues? In recent decades, scholarship emerging first from critical feminist theory and later from positivist political scientists has begun to look more explicitly for women’s roles, experiences, and influences on and in conflict. This work has led to the recognition that, even when victimized in war, women have agency, and to the parallel conclusion that men’s agency is not as complete as scholars, practitioners, and the public have often assumed. This bibliography provides an overview of the development of the women and conflict literature as well as several prominent themes and questions within the literature. It is of necessity, incomplete, and interested scholars are encouraged to review related bibliographies in this series (e.g. Feminist Security Studies, Women and Peacemaking/Peacekeeping).
Candidates often highlight military experience on the campaign trail. Do they also govern differently? This study examines whether and how military experience is associated with state lawmaking. We examine legislative productivity, success rates, and the substantive content of legislation with a large original dataset. The data include over 60,000 bills introduced in four state legislatures over a 10-year time span, coded for their substantive focus. It also includes information on characteristics of over 4,000 legislators. Our analysis of these data indicates that veterans do not differ in overall levels of productivity, but do have common legislative agendas. Veterans’ shared legislative agendas are not narrowly confined to defense or security issues, but vary depending on state context. This is, to our knowledge, the most extensive empirical analysis of the legislative behavior of veterans in a single study.
Policy makers and scholars have shown increased interest in gendered approaches to peacemaking, even as evidence of women’s impact on peace processes has remained unclear. In this paper, we explore the influence of gender diversity among decision-making elites on the outcome of ongoing civil conflicts. Specifically, we argue that increased female representation within the national legislature increases the likelihood that a conflict terminates in a negotiated settlement. However, the impact of legislative female representation on conflict termination is conditioned by the power of the legislature vis-à-vis the executive, suggesting that gender diversity exerts a greater impact in states with more authoritative legislatures. We evaluate our hypotheses using data on the manner of conflict termination and the proportion of women in national legislatures between 1945 and 2009. Our results show support for the central argument, suggesting that increasing female representation within legislative bodies increases the likelihood of war termination via negotiated settlement.
Despite the long standing “no concessions” argument, scientific studies now suggest that governments can benefit from negotiating with militant insurgencies. However, despite government efforts, the leaders of insurgent movements often appear fanatical and unwilling to negotiate. This behavior presents a puzzle: If the leaders of insurgencies mobilize to create political change, and a government offers concessions, why do insurgent leaders refuse to negotiate? Using a game-theoretic model, we argue that insurgent leaders may rationally reject negotiation due to an internal commitment problem. Specifically, when leaders cannot credibly share the benefits of peace with their rivals, insurgent leaders may reject offers over fear of an internal conflict, which could leave the entire group vulnerable to government exploitation. However, the model demonstrates that insurgent leaders should negotiate if power in the insurgency is shifting in favor of their rivals, as it could help them maintain control of the movement. We illustrate these hypotheses using evidence from the Nigerian state's conflict with the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) organization and Boko Haram.
Textual Analysis by Augmented Replacement Instructions (TABARI) provides an automated method for coding large amounts of text. Using TABARI to code lead sentences of news stories, the KEDS/Penn State Event Data project has produced event data for several regions. The wide range of events and actors, TABARI’s ability to filter duplicate events and the number of events coded allow users to analyze patterns in conflict and cooperation between state and nonstate actors over time. We evaluate whether coding full stories provides more detailed information on the actors referenced in the lead sentences. Additional actor information would allow researchers interested in the interactions between violent nonstate actors to test hypotheses regarding group cohesiveness and splintering, spoiling behavior, commitment problems between factions and many other issues critical to management of an insurgency. We downloaded Reuters news stories relevant to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and used TABARI to code the lead sentences. We then analyzed the full text of the coded stories to determine the level of actor detail available. Our findings highlight the dynamic relationship among nonstate and state actors during the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, and we find that, contrary to expectations, hand coding full news stories does not lead to significant improvements in the accuracy or depth of actor information compared with machine coding by TABARI using lead sentences. These findings should bolster the confidence of researchers using TABARI coded data, with the caveat that TABARI’s ability to distinguish between actors is dependent upon the detail available in the actor dictionaries.
ONE OF THE CENTRAL THEMES IN HARPER LEE'S TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD is the quest to understand the relationships among people and groups of people. This paper examines the search for identity and the obstacles to it through the framework of the Panopticon and the Other that Michel Foucault sets forth in Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. In To Kill a Mockingbird: Threatening Boundaries, Claudia Durst Johnson explores the "Other" in Lee's novel: the work "invites the conclusion that we reach some sense of self-identity by our encounters with other forces, that is, with forces alien to our commonplace Uves. As a result of these encounters, we break the cultural and psychological barriers that imprison us and come to embrace a larger world" (72). The children, still learning the rules of society and their own places in it, find their alien forces in social outcasts and people of other classes. The sense of the Other is apparent in the social development of Scout and Jem, in class, race, and gender prejudices and even in the children's fascination with Arthur "Boo" Radley. Z. D. Gurevitch argues that the awareness of others and their differences from us awakens our realization of our own uniqueness (1180). To Kill a Mockingbird is a coming-of-age novel in which Jem and Scout Finch begin to understand themselves. To gain this self-awareness, however. Scout and Jem must first understand the community around them and the Others within it. But Lee's novel might be read not only as a coming-of-age tale but also as an illustration of Foucault's Panopticon as a model for today's society. Such a reading ultimately challenges the concept that the Panopticon is an infallible design of repression from which no one can escape, at least not without severe repercussions.
Book Chapters:
To be a citizen of a state means not only to be subject to the laws of that state, but to have the rights and responsibilities associated in that state with citizenship. In a democracy, such rights generally include the rights to vote and hold elected office, to own property, to have equal access to government services such as education and law enforcement and equal access to government protections, such as protection from employment discrimination. While voting is perhaps the most visible political right, citizenship may be said to include the opportunity to participate in government office – that is to stand for and have fair consideration for elected office. For women, as for other minorities, these rights and protections have not come quickly or easily. The cultural view that women are the protected while men are the protectors has worked to exclude women from the full benefits of citizenship as they have not been viewed as making sacrifices for their countries or as having the capacity to contribute to its defense and maintenance (see e.g. Hudson et al 2012; Tir & Bailey 2018; Best, Hunter, & Thomas 2019). Women and sexual minorities, perhaps more than any other class with restricted citizenship rights are characterized by their cross-cutting cleavages; they are present in all races and nationalities, complicating in certain ways the fight for their recognition as citizens. This chapter explores and develops the argument that military service is a route to renegotiating citizenship rights for women and sexual minorities.
Other:
One of the fundamental processes we observe in international politics is the process of reciprocity. Reciprocity is both a concept representing behavior and a representation of norms in political interaction. At its core, the study of reciprocity in international politics is concerned with the extent to which nations return behavior in kind. While some focus on ethical considerations and the propagation of norms such as the Golden Rule, others focus on the empirical examination of patterns of reciprocity. This empirical research searches for answer to questions about the existence, predictability, and diffusion of reciprocity. Scholars have investigated the conditions that produce reciprocity versus the conditions that make it more difficult. In addition, scholars have examined the way states engage in reciprocity across policy dimensions, answering questions about when governments link economic, diplomatic, and even military arenas. In this essay, we seek to present the key findings about reciprocity within the body of research that is representative of the Scientific Study of International Processes. The study of reciprocity has generally occurred within two veins: formal/experimental and empirical research. The two veins have intertwined productively over the last half-century, and a significant proportion of this research draws from both approaches. For the purposes of exposition our essay mirrors the specialization often found in this research. We begin, however, with a discussion of the concept of reciprocity as it has been applied to the field of international relations. We then continue by summarizing the key findings generated within the formal/experimental literature and then move to the findings generated by empirical research. Our understanding of reciprocity cannot be fully represented within either of these approaches, however, so the reader is cautioned to consider the interplay and complementation of the research discussed below.
Media Appearances:
Blog Posts:
"Can the Taliban trust Trump?" with Navin Bapat
"The Democrats are running more female veterans for office than ever before - but can they win?” with Theresa Schroeder and Jeremy Teigen
“Here’s why the Taliban might still want to negotiate with the U.S.” with Navin Bapat
“Military service was once a fast track to U.S. citizenship. The Trump administration keeps narrowing that possibility.” with Kyleanne Hunter, Theresa Schroeder, and Jeremy Teigen
“An unprecedented number of female military veterans ran as Democrats this year. Here’s why they were unusually successful.” with Jeremy Teigen