LOW — Professor Charli Carpenter

Laws of War

This set of research projects examines the origins, impact and evolution of the laws of war as they interconnect to politics and society.

POLS 391E/791S 'Rules of War'

Civilian Protection

Weapons Norms

Norm Dynamics

This set of research projects examines the origins, impact and evolution of the laws of war as they interconnect to politics and society. Why has the international community outlawed chemical weapons but not flamethrowers? Why do women and children get evacuated first from conflict zones, though adult men and teenage boys are the most vulnerable to armed attack? Would Americans approve if the US government targeted civilians in war? (Spoiler alert: no.) Why is it considered perfectly fine to kill civilians, as long as you do it by accident? And how are norm advocates working to change this? How do killer robot movies impact the efforts of norm advocates to ban fully autonomous weapons? Under what conditions are they likeliest to succeed? My three books and many research articles examine why war law looks as it does, how it is changing, how the law impacts public and elite opinion, weapons-bearers and human security practitioners, and the ways in which it can subtly backfire with adverse consequences for noncomabatants.

"Is Canada Doing Enough to Promote Human Rights?" Presented at University of Toronto's Davey Forum, October 2015.

"Gender, Security and Civilian Protection," Presented at the Center for the Study of Women and Society, University of Oregon, November 2013.

Books

Examining the influence of gender constructs on the international regime protecting war-affected civilians, R. Charli Carpenter examines how in practice belligerents, advocates and humanitarian players interpret civilian immunity so as to leave adult civilian men and older boys at grave risk in conflict zones. Providing a wealth of ground-breaking case studies, the author argues that in order to understand the way in which laws of war are implemented and promoted in international society we must understand how gender ideas affect the principle of civilian immunity.

"The essays selected for this volume provide an overview of the range of issues confronting scholars interested in the complex and multiple relationships between war and criminality, and map the many connections between war, security, governmentality, punishment, gender and crime. The collection draws on the recent theoretical advances made by both criminologists and scholars from cognate disciplines such as law, politics, anthropology and gender studies, in order to open out criminological thinking about what war is, how it is related to crime and how these war/crime relationships reach into peace. The volume features contributions from key thinkers in the field and serves as a valuable resource for academics and students with an interest in the criminology of war."

Research Papers

Nylen, A., & Carpenter, C. (2019). Questions of life and death: (De)constructing human rights norms through US public opinion surveys. European Journal of International Security, 4(2), 142-162

Public opinion polls on national security issues are often seen as indicators of the strength of international human rights norms. By contrast, we hypothesise that the very act of answering poll questions can weaken citizens’ understandings of important international human rights laws and norms in the very moment they are being measured. We ground this discussion empirically by analysing a new dataset of post-9/11 survey questions on two US national security policies at odds with international human rights norms: ‘enhanced interrogations’ and ‘targeted killing’. In so doing, we encourage a widened research agenda on how international legal and normative understandings are transmitted to the public through surveys. We conclude by highlighting substantive implications for norm scholars and policy implications for norm advocates.

Carpenter, R. (2011). Vetting the Advocacy Agenda: Network Centrality and the Paradox of Weapons Norms. International Organization, 65(1), 69-102

While a number of significant campaigns since the early 1990s have resulted in bans of particular weapons, at least as many equivalent systems have gone unscrutinized and uncondemned by transnational campaigners. How can this variation be explained? Focusing on the issue area of arms control advocacy, this article argues that an important influence on the advocacy agenda within transnational networks is the decision-making process not of norm entrepreneurs nor of states but of highly connected organizations within a given network. The argument is illustrated through a comparison between existing norms against landmines and blinding laser weapons, and the absence of serious current consideration of such norms against depleted uranium and autonomous weapons. Thus, the process of organizational issue selection within nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and international organizations (IOs) most central to particular advocacy networks, rather than the existence of transnational networks around an issue per se, should be a closer focus of attention for scholars interested in norm creation in world politics.

Carpenter, R. C. (2006). Recognizing Gender-Based Violence Against Civilian Men and Boys in Conflict Situations. Security Dialogue, 37(1), 83–103

While gender-based violence has recently emerged as a salient topic in the human security community, it has been framed principally with respect to violence against women and girls, particularly sexual violence. In this article, I argue that gender-based violence against men (including sexual violence, forced conscription, and sex-selective massacre) must be recognized as such, condemned, and addressed by civilian protection agencies and proponents of a ‘human security’ agenda in international relations. Men deserve protection against these abuses in their own right; moreover, addressing gender-based violence against women and girls in conflict situations is inseparable from addressing the forms of violence to which civilian men are specifically vulnerable.

Carpenter, R. (2003). ‘Women and Children First’: Gender, Norms, and Humanitarian Evacuation in the Balkans 1991–95. International Organization, 57(4), 661-694

Of all noncombatants in the former Yugoslavia, adult civilian men were most likely to be massacred by enemy forces. Why, therefore, did international agencies mandated with the “protection of civilians” evacuate women and children, but not military-age men, from besieged areas? This article reviews the operational dilemmas faced by protection workers in the former Yugoslavia when negotiating access to civilian populations. I argue that a social constructivist approach incorporating gender analysis is required to explain both the civilian protection community's discourse and its operational behavior. First, gender beliefs constitute the discursive strategies on which civilian protection advocacy is based. Second, gender norms operate in practice to constrain the options available to protection workers in assisting civilians. These two causal pathways converged in the former Yugoslavia to produce effects disastrous to civilians, particularly adult men and male adolescents.

Working Papers

Manufacturing Complicity: How Survey Experiments Prime Americans for War Crimes,” with Alexander Montgomery and Alexandria Nylen. Forthcoming in Perspectives on Politics.

What explains American sensitivity to international laws and norms on the use of force? A wealth of recent IR literature tackles this question through experimental surveys using fictional scenarios and treatments to explore precisely when Americans would approve of government policies that would violate the laws of war. We test whether such survey experiments may themselves be impacting public sensitivity to these norms – or even Americans’ understanding of the content of the norms themselves. We show not only that certain survey questions can inflate American expressed preference for war crimes, but also that merely being permitted to express a preference for war crimes in survey settings has a negative impact on Americans’ understanding of US legal and ethical obligations in war. We conclude by discussing the value of a reflective approach in experimental IR and with suggestions for future experimental survey design in international law.

The Stopping Power of Norms: Saturation Bombing and US Public Opinion on the Laws of War” with Alexander Montgomery. Forthcoming in International Security.

A path-breaking survey of attitudes towards the laws of war found that Americans are relatively insensitive to the targeting of civilian populations as well as international norms and taboos against the use of nuclear weapons. We replicated a key question on this study, where respondents were asked if they would support saturation bombing an Iranian city to end a war. We also introduced some variations into the experiment to directly measure any potential influence of international norms and laws. Overall, our quantitative and qualitative findings are less pessimistic: Americans do strongly believe it is wrong to target civilians, and in a real-life scenario such as this a majority would likely oppose such a bombing. Our findings suggest, however, that much depends on how survey questions are structured to measure those preferences and whether legal or ethical considerations are part of any national conversation about war policy. 

“Whence the Nuclear Taboo?” with Alexander Montgomery. Forthcoming in International Studies Perspectives.

Several recent survey experiments cast doubt on the strength of the nuclear taboo. Does this mean it is truly in decline? We answer these questions through an analysis of the assumptions and framing strategies baked into the vignettes provided to survey respondents in three famous experiments. We suggest that while these experiments tell us about how Americans respond to a few specific scenarios framed in specific ways, it is premature to conclude from them that the taboo is in decline.

“Bombs Away? Assessing the Impact of the New Nuclear Ban,” with Alexander Montgomery. Being prepared for submission to International Organization

Does codification of normative taboos in multi-lateral treaties strengthen or weaken the taboos themselves? We test the added impact of a non-binding treaty on top of a pre-existing normative taboo by measuring US public opinion toward the use of nuclear weapons in a fictional war with Iran. We found that there is a positive moderating effect, though smaller than that of the Geneva Conventions, for the majority of respondents; but it depends, importantly, on their original estimations of the legality of nuclear strikes.

Other Writings

Accountability for American War Crimes

Charli Carpenter details several significant U.S. violations of international law in recent history, ways in which the United States is able to escape accountability for such actions, as well as possible venues for achieving justice in the future.

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Assassination, Extrajudicial Execution, Targeted Killing: What's the Difference?

Successive presidents have tried to shape new terminology for political killings. But they’re still mostly illegal.

Trump's Asylum Policies Are Breaking the Law

Under U.S. domestic and international law, public servants locking up immigrants at the border could be prosecuted.

Americans Want Their Leaders to Obey the Laws of War

New research claims that the U.S. public doesn’t care about protecting enemy civilians. It is wrong—and dangerous.

Don’t Call This a Humanitarian Intervention

Whether you support or disapprove of the coming strike on Syria, don't say it's about saving civilians. History proves otherwise.

Responsibility to Protect Or to Punish

Punishing norm violations is not the same as protecting civilians.

Don’t Fear the Reaper

Killer robots. Video-game warfare. Unlawful weapons. Terminators. Drone-attack commentary has become synonymous with reports of civilian carnage, claims of international-law violations, and worries about whether high-tech robotic wars have become too easy and fun to be effectively prevented. But the debate over drones is misleading the public about the nature of the weaponry and the law.