The International Relations Department is very pleased to announce the MSc dissertation prizewinners for the 2021/22 session (see below for summaries of each dissertation):
for the best 10,000 word MSc IR Dissertation
This was awarded to:
Elvire Olmos
for the dissertation entitled
“Exploring Sexual Violence Faced by North Korean Women at the China-DPRK Border: A Feminist Analysis of Sexual Violence”
for the best 10,000 word MSc IPE Dissertation
This was awarded to
Emma Lynn
for the dissertation entitled
“Migration on the Chessboard: Political Violence as a Decisive Factor in Coercive Migration Diplomacy”
for the best 10,000 word MSc IR(R) Dissertation
This was awarded to
Yancy Villarroel
for the dissertation entitled
“The Influence of Credible Commitments on Economic Sanctions Cooperation: An Analysis Considering the Domestic Systems of Primary Senders”.
This was awarded to
Alicia Joho
for the highest mark in the IR410 International Politics examination.
See below for summaries of the above dissertations:
MSc International Relations Philip Windsor Dissertation Prize
Elvire Olmos
“Exploring Sexual Violence Faced by North Korean Women at the China-DPRK Border: A Feminist Analysis of Sexual Violence”
International Relations has adopted a security lens in perceiving North Korea, framing it as a rogue and dysfunctioning country needing to be dealt with carefully. The ‘International’, that is, the dominant Western understanding manages to reify itself over the conceptual ‘Other’, that are North Korea’s people, ideas, and spatialities, and is consequently able to produce a hierarchy between itself over North Korea. Far from being gender-neutral and a symmetrical positioning of the self, this IR’s production of knowledge about North Korea has been driven by male-centric and Eurocentric characteristics, altogether leaving out North Korean women. Taking a feminist perspective, I argue that the story of North Korea is the story of North Korean women’s lives. By activating women’s voices on their experiences of sexual violence at the China-DPRK border, this thesis aims to bring newness into the world, not for the sake of the ‘New York’ end production but to surpass the ‘International’, so as to bring ambiguity, complexity, and ambivalence in decentering the self and making sense of the locality powers within the spaces. As such, studying North Korean women’s lives means deconstructing IR’s dominant male production of knowledge to disentangle the patriarchal power structures of the locality through women’s embodied experiences.
Through an analysis of cross-border trading and sex trafficking, I argue that a feminist analysis of North Korean women’s experiences of sexual violence enables to shed light on the complex webs of patriarchal powers, enabled and reproduced by the bordering processes. From the materiality to the psychological spheres of the body, the body becomes the way to understand and make sense of these experiences. The processes of shifting identities, using spatialities, and negotiating places, establishes the creation of new spaces, where women are simultaneously controlled and restricted but also exert agency. As such, more than a dividing line, the border is also a psychological, sexual, and spiritual place made of different meanings and subjectivities in constant transition. Analysing women’s embodied experiences and the complex and multi-layered power webs embedded within these experiences reveals that neither agency nor exploitation should be conceived as absolute, but rather that these experiences should be activated to decode the localities of powers within this space. Fitting into Millett’s (1972) endeavour to map patriarchy within the local and understand these mechanisms as cultural and historical processes, I argue that sexual violence needs to be understood as a complex multidimensional phenomenon through which women are both subject to restriction and subjugation but also shape these oppressive structures through negotiation, resistance, and agency. As such, this reflection directly leads to a questioning of IR’s imaginary of both North Korea and sexual violence to decentre the analysis from a male-dominated production of knowledge towards a feminist analysis of the power structures within North Korea.
MSc International Political Economy Susan Strange Dissertation Prize
Emma Lynn
“Migration on the Chessboard: Political Violence as a Decisive Factor in Coercive Migration Diplomacy”
International relations scholarship on migration varies widely in subtopics and theoretical approaches. Despite such variety, migration-sending and transit states are underemphasized compared to migration-receiving states. One important phenomenon originating largely in sending or transit states is coercive migration diplomacy (CMD). Coercive migration diplomacy describes a strategy in which a challenger state instrumentalises migration flows to coerce a target state. The challenger directly or implicitly demands concessions in exchange for stopping the migration flow in question. Thus, through coercive migration diplomacy, the challenger state coerces a target state by exploiting migrant flows, hoping to achieve some foreign policy objective.
Kelly Greenhill’s 2010 book, Weapons of Mass Migration: Forced Displacement, Coercion, and Foreign Policy is the most comprehensive empirical work on CMD. Building on Greenhill’s work, I address the research question, “Do political instability, economic, or institutional factors in the challenger country increase the probability that its leader pursues CMD?” I first introduce a theory on leader decision-making during times of political instability. This theory, called the Instability-Coercion Theory (ICT), generates three hypotheses. I test these hypotheses first through a case study on Belarus and the European Union in 2021. Then, I perform regression analysis on cases of CMD from 1975 – 2006 using political violence to approximate political instability. The mixed methods analysis of CMD incidents identifies a positive and potentially causal relationship between political violence in the challenger country and CMD usage. The analysis uncovers mixed evidence on the role of institutional weakness in CMD incidents.
At the intersection of security, diplomacy, the global economy, and human rights, insights on CMD provided by this dissertation could inform target countries’ future responses in terms of efficiency, safety, and humanitarian consideration. Finally, my results raise new questions surrounding a potentially important relationship between political violence and the coercive strategies employed by state leaders, which could be further explored using Instability-Coercion Theory.
MSc International Relations Research Martin Wight Dissertation Prize
Yancy Villarroel
“The Influence of Credible Commitments on Economic Sanctions Cooperation: An Analysis Considering the Domestic Systems of Primary Senders”
The relationship between credible commitments and international cooperation on economic sanctions was introduced by Lisa Martin in 1992. By understanding credible commitments in terms of bearing domestic and international audience costs, Martin proves that high-cost credible commitment strategies by primary senders would increase sanctions cooperation and low-cost strategies would have the opposite effect. Martin’s theory, however, parts from the intrinsic idea that all primary senders have the same credible commitment strategies. Indeed, she does not distinguish the domestic systems of primary senders. Considering that not all states can produce domestic audience costs, there is a necessity to re-evaluate the Martin’s argument. This article seeks to contribute to the field by positing: Do primary senders have different credible commitment strategies? And: Do credible commitments by primary senders influence sanctions cooperation? By classifying primary senders as capable and incapable of generating domestic audience costs, I contend that primary sanctioners possess different credible commitment strategies. I also follow the Martin’s claim to suggest that credible commitments influence sanctions cooperation. I employ a Negative Binomial Regression on 738 episodes of economic sanctions imposed between 1945 and 2005 to test my theoretical model. My findings firmly support the need to condition each primary sender’s credible commitment strategies on its domestic system, and that credible commitments do influence sanctions cooperation.
