Marie-Eve Desrosiers
Biographic Data
| ID | 192964 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Marie-Eve Desrosiers |
| GIVEN NAMES | Marie-Eve |
| FAMILY NAME | Desrosiers |
| SIGNATURE | DESROSIERS M |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Ottawa |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-4917-3300 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 20 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 59 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 20 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2009 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Aid and armed actors
In conflict-affected contexts, the presence of armed actors—including state security forces, international peacekeeping missions, and non-state armed groups—means that aid organisations may need to cooperate with these actors to deliver foreign aid. Yet the conditions under which this cooperation happens remain underspecified. In this article, we use novel mixed methods data from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) to study these condition…
Rethinking Pathways of Autocratisation and Democratic Resilience in Comparative Perspective
This review article examines the rise of democratic resilience as a central concept in the comparative study of regime stability and change. Over the past decade, resilience – understood not simply as institutional survival but as the capacity of democratic systems to adapt, regenerate and deepen democratic norms in the face of crises – has gained prominence in response to accelerating autocratisation. The article situates this shift within the d…
Localization Through Coordination? Implementing the Humanitarian‐Development‐Peace Nexus in the Democratic Republic of the Congo
As a global concept and initiative, the Humanitarian‐Development‐Peace Nexus (HDPN) aims to improve integration across the traditionally siloed humanitarian, development, and security sectors, while foregrounding the involvement of local actors. Using original empirical data on the implementation of the HDPN in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), we show how and why the approach has not delivered substantive localization in the Congolese …
La crise de 2014 au Burkina Faso
L’article se penche sur les formes populaires de rejet du système clientéliste entourant le parti du président Blaise Compaoré, telles que mises de l’avant dans le cadre de la crise politique de 2014 au Burkina Faso. Les citoyens burkinabè sont descendus en masse dans la rue pour contester la volonté de l’appareil politique burkinabè d’amender la constitution, alors qu’ils ne l’avaient relativement pas remis en question précédemment. L’article mo…
Citizen participation during the 2014 protest in Burkina Faso
Analyses of the 2014 protest in Burkina Faso have predominantly focused on some of the movement’s major activists, to the neglect of ordinary citizens. Yet, while citizens’ participation in Burkina Faso in 2014 echoed to some extent the agendas of activists, it built on citizens’ own political subjectivities. Drawing on original interviews and Afrobarometer survey data, we show that Burkinabè citizens were motivated to protest by unmet expectatio…
The Mediation of Autocratic Regimes
Local state officials impact authoritarian systems through the mediation they perform. Desrosiers and Mahé argue that these local functionaries fulfill a number of mediating functions, including translating and representing authoritarian systems at the local level. By enacting these two roles, however, local officials do not straightforwardly reproduce the system. Instead, their interpretations and choices fundamentally influence the imprint auth…
Trajectories of Authoritarianism in Rwanda
Challenging assumptions regarding the strength and control of authoritarian governments in Rwanda in the decades before the 1994 genocide, Marie-Eve Desrosiers uses original archival data and interviews to highlight the complex relations between authorities, opponents, and society. Through careful, detailed analysis Desrosiers offers a nuanced assessment of the functions and evolution of authoritarianism over time, demonstrating how the governmen…
Making Do” with Soft Authoritarianism in Pre-Genocide Rwanda
The article looks at Rwandans’ engagement with authoritarianism prior to the 1994 genocide and, more broadly, at life under “soft authoritarian” settings. It argues that Rwandans did not experience state-society relations under pre-genocide regimes as a vertical chain of authority, as is often contended. Instead, they spoke of a felt gap between national and local levels. Engagement with authority was predominantly local and experienced in an amb…
Histories of authority in the African Great Lakes
This article reflects on how scholars have engaged with the past and with notions of authority in the African Great Lakes. A dominant 'presentist' perspective on the region mobilizes historical knowledge in an uncritical fashion, reducing authority to a set of historical clichés and building on a familiar focus on crises and the state. Bridging history and political science, we propose two concepts to analyse histories of political authority to u…
Rwanda’s post-genocide foreign aid relations
This article studies donor–government relations in Rwanda since the end of the 1994 genocide. The notion that Rwanda enjoyed or enjoys exceptional relations with donors because of guilt regarding their inaction during the genocide is widespread in the literature and in policy circles. To assess this myth, the article first looks at aid trends for Rwanda and comparable countries, and then takes an in-depth look at aid relations with two average-si…
Causal Claims and the Study of Ethnic Conflict
What does causation mean in conflict studies? Using a sample of published qualitative, article-length studies on the Rwandan and Yugoslav wars, this article finds a lack of reflexivity over causal claims in scholarship on conflict. Causal language is not as pervasive as expected, asserted cause-effect relationships are rarely fully explicated, and scholars under-explore their causal assumptions. Considering that ideas on causation necessarily con…
Military frames and Canada’s Conservative government
This article looks at framing strategies behind the recent Canadian Conservative government’s rhetoric on the military. Critics argue that Conservative rhetoric has politicised Canadian history and overemphasised the armed forces. Few scholars, however, have looked at the specific forms this rhetoric took and the strategies it suggested. The article presents the results of a systematic analysis of Conservative rhetoric between 2005 and 2015. It a…
A sociological look at the evolution of recent scholarship on ethnic conflicts
Tackling Puzzles of Identity-Based Conflict
This article assesses explanations of identity-based violence, evaluating in particular framing theory's strengths. It argues that framing specifies some of the key mechanisms and processes between factors too often studied in vacuum: the purposefulness of human beings, social structures, as well as environmental factors and opportunities. Framing therefore suggests answers to the main puzzles in conflict studies and enjoys a broader explanatory …
Rethinking Political Rhetoric and Authority During Rwanda's First and Second Republics
Drawing on rarely analysed primary sources obtained during multi-site archival research, this article examines and proposes to reassesses the political rhetoric deployed in pre-genocide Rwanda (First and Second Republics). The article contends that the First and Second Republics' rhetoric was not as ethnocentric as often contended. It argues instead that this rhetoric, cautious and moderate, should be understood as part of regime resilience strat…
Development cooperation in fragile states
(2012). Development cooperation in fragile states: filling or perpetuating gaps? Conflict, Security & Development: Vol. 12, The challenges of effective development cooperation in fragile states, pp. 443-459
Effectiveness under fragile conditions
While undeniable progress has been made in Burundi in the last decade, aid and development cooperation continue to face significant challenges. A number of the most daunting challenges stem from Burundi's fragility. The article maintains that general norms of aid effectiveness have guided cooperation in Burundi over the last years. But while aid effectiveness has been a modus operandi, actors have failed to heed the Paris Declaration on Aid Effec…
Reframing Frame Analysis
This article focuses on framing theory, an approach studying strategic communication, and its contribution to conflict studies. The article's aims are twofold: to demonstrate how framing bridges the divide between instrumental and social-psychological approaches in conflict studies and to illustrate how it is accordingly better able to shed light on the mobilization of ethnic violence. Drawing on the work of American framing theorists, the articl…
Rhetorical legacies of leadership
Comparing pre- and post-genocide Rwanda, this article argues that clear continuities exist between the regimes of Juvénal Habyarimana and Paul Kagame. Both have projected a remarkably similar image of 'benevolent leadership'. Presenting themselves as harbingers of an 'improved' or 'new' Rwanda, both leaderships have claimed to be best able and willing to guide Rwanda along the right path to peace, security, ethnic unity and development. 'Benevole…
Canada and the Bureaucratic Politics of State Fragility
Canada's 2005 International Policy Statement announced that the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade and the Department of National Defence and the Canadian Forces were committed to “whole of government” interventions in failed and fragile states. This led both the Canadian government and outside observers to declare that Canada was successfully harmonising the aims and practices of its internationally focused departments and cra…
Reframing Frame Analysis
This article focuses on framing theory, an approach studying strategic communication, and its contribution to conflict studies. The article's aims are twofold: to demonstrate how framing bridges the divide between instrumental and social-psychological approaches in conflict studies and to illustrate how it is accordingly better able to shed light on the mobilization of ethnic violence. Drawing on the work of American framing theorists, the articl…
Rhetorical legacies of leadership
Comparing pre- and post-genocide Rwanda, this article argues that clear continuities exist between the regimes of Juvénal Habyarimana and Paul Kagame. Both have projected a remarkably similar image of 'benevolent leadership'. Presenting themselves as harbingers of an 'improved' or 'new' Rwanda, both leaderships have claimed to be best able and willing to guide Rwanda along the right path to peace, security, ethnic unity and development. 'Benevole…
Rethinking Political Rhetoric and Authority During Rwanda's First and Second Republics
Drawing on rarely analysed primary sources obtained during multi-site archival research, this article examines and proposes to reassesses the political rhetoric deployed in pre-genocide Rwanda (First and Second Republics). The article contends that the First and Second Republics' rhetoric was not as ethnocentric as often contended. It argues instead that this rhetoric, cautious and moderate, should be understood as part of regime resilience strat…
Development cooperation in fragile states
(2012). Development cooperation in fragile states: filling or perpetuating gaps? Conflict, Security & Development: Vol. 12, The challenges of effective development cooperation in fragile states, pp. 443-459
Canada and the Bureaucratic Politics of State Fragility
Canada's 2005 International Policy Statement announced that the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade and the Department of National Defence and the Canadian Forces were committed to “whole of government” interventions in failed and fragile states. This led both the Canadian government and outside observers to declare that Canada was successfully harmonising the aims and practices of its internationally focused departments and cra…
Making Do” with Soft Authoritarianism in Pre-Genocide Rwanda
The article looks at Rwandans’ engagement with authoritarianism prior to the 1994 genocide and, more broadly, at life under “soft authoritarian” settings. It argues that Rwandans did not experience state-society relations under pre-genocide regimes as a vertical chain of authority, as is often contended. Instead, they spoke of a felt gap between national and local levels. Engagement with authority was predominantly local and experienced in an amb…
Rwanda’s post-genocide foreign aid relations
This article studies donor–government relations in Rwanda since the end of the 1994 genocide. The notion that Rwanda enjoyed or enjoys exceptional relations with donors because of guilt regarding their inaction during the genocide is widespread in the literature and in policy circles. To assess this myth, the article first looks at aid trends for Rwanda and comparable countries, and then takes an in-depth look at aid relations with two average-si…
A sociological look at the evolution of recent scholarship on ethnic conflicts
Effectiveness under fragile conditions
While undeniable progress has been made in Burundi in the last decade, aid and development cooperation continue to face significant challenges. A number of the most daunting challenges stem from Burundi's fragility. The article maintains that general norms of aid effectiveness have guided cooperation in Burundi over the last years. But while aid effectiveness has been a modus operandi, actors have failed to heed the Paris Declaration on Aid Effec…
Causal Claims and the Study of Ethnic Conflict
What does causation mean in conflict studies? Using a sample of published qualitative, article-length studies on the Rwandan and Yugoslav wars, this article finds a lack of reflexivity over causal claims in scholarship on conflict. Causal language is not as pervasive as expected, asserted cause-effect relationships are rarely fully explicated, and scholars under-explore their causal assumptions. Considering that ideas on causation necessarily con…
Tackling Puzzles of Identity-Based Conflict
This article assesses explanations of identity-based violence, evaluating in particular framing theory's strengths. It argues that framing specifies some of the key mechanisms and processes between factors too often studied in vacuum: the purposefulness of human beings, social structures, as well as environmental factors and opportunities. Framing therefore suggests answers to the main puzzles in conflict studies and enjoys a broader explanatory …
Canada and the Bureaucratic Politics of State Fragility
Canada's 2005 International Policy Statement announced that the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade and the Department of National Defence and the Canadian Forces were committed to “whole of government” interventions in failed and fragile states. This led both the Canadian government and outside observers to declare that Canada was successfully harmonising the aims and practices of its internationally focused departments and cra…
Reframing Frame Analysis
This article focuses on framing theory, an approach studying strategic communication, and its contribution to conflict studies. The article's aims are twofold: to demonstrate how framing bridges the divide between instrumental and social-psychological approaches in conflict studies and to illustrate how it is accordingly better able to shed light on the mobilization of ethnic violence. Drawing on the work of American framing theorists, the articl…
Rhetorical legacies of leadership
Comparing pre- and post-genocide Rwanda, this article argues that clear continuities exist between the regimes of Juvénal Habyarimana and Paul Kagame. Both have projected a remarkably similar image of 'benevolent leadership'. Presenting themselves as harbingers of an 'improved' or 'new' Rwanda, both leaderships have claimed to be best able and willing to guide Rwanda along the right path to peace, security, ethnic unity and development. 'Benevole…
Development cooperation in fragile states
(2012). Development cooperation in fragile states: filling or perpetuating gaps? Conflict, Security & Development: Vol. 12, The challenges of effective development cooperation in fragile states, pp. 443-459
Effectiveness under fragile conditions
While undeniable progress has been made in Burundi in the last decade, aid and development cooperation continue to face significant challenges. A number of the most daunting challenges stem from Burundi's fragility. The article maintains that general norms of aid effectiveness have guided cooperation in Burundi over the last years. But while aid effectiveness has been a modus operandi, actors have failed to heed the Paris Declaration on Aid Effec…
Rethinking Political Rhetoric and Authority During Rwanda's First and Second Republics
Drawing on rarely analysed primary sources obtained during multi-site archival research, this article examines and proposes to reassesses the political rhetoric deployed in pre-genocide Rwanda (First and Second Republics). The article contends that the First and Second Republics' rhetoric was not as ethnocentric as often contended. It argues instead that this rhetoric, cautious and moderate, should be understood as part of regime resilience strat…
Tackling Puzzles of Identity-Based Conflict
This article assesses explanations of identity-based violence, evaluating in particular framing theory's strengths. It argues that framing specifies some of the key mechanisms and processes between factors too often studied in vacuum: the purposefulness of human beings, social structures, as well as environmental factors and opportunities. Framing therefore suggests answers to the main puzzles in conflict studies and enjoys a broader explanatory …
Military frames and Canada’s Conservative government
This article looks at framing strategies behind the recent Canadian Conservative government’s rhetoric on the military. Critics argue that Conservative rhetoric has politicised Canadian history and overemphasised the armed forces. Few scholars, however, have looked at the specific forms this rhetoric took and the strategies it suggested. The article presents the results of a systematic analysis of Conservative rhetoric between 2005 and 2015. It a…
A sociological look at the evolution of recent scholarship on ethnic conflicts
Causal Claims and the Study of Ethnic Conflict
What does causation mean in conflict studies? Using a sample of published qualitative, article-length studies on the Rwandan and Yugoslav wars, this article finds a lack of reflexivity over causal claims in scholarship on conflict. Causal language is not as pervasive as expected, asserted cause-effect relationships are rarely fully explicated, and scholars under-explore their causal assumptions. Considering that ideas on causation necessarily con…
Rwanda’s post-genocide foreign aid relations
This article studies donor–government relations in Rwanda since the end of the 1994 genocide. The notion that Rwanda enjoyed or enjoys exceptional relations with donors because of guilt regarding their inaction during the genocide is widespread in the literature and in policy circles. To assess this myth, the article first looks at aid trends for Rwanda and comparable countries, and then takes an in-depth look at aid relations with two average-si…
Making Do” with Soft Authoritarianism in Pre-Genocide Rwanda
The article looks at Rwandans’ engagement with authoritarianism prior to the 1994 genocide and, more broadly, at life under “soft authoritarian” settings. It argues that Rwandans did not experience state-society relations under pre-genocide regimes as a vertical chain of authority, as is often contended. Instead, they spoke of a felt gap between national and local levels. Engagement with authority was predominantly local and experienced in an amb…
Histories of authority in the African Great Lakes
This article reflects on how scholars have engaged with the past and with notions of authority in the African Great Lakes. A dominant 'presentist' perspective on the region mobilizes historical knowledge in an uncritical fashion, reducing authority to a set of historical clichés and building on a familiar focus on crises and the state. Bridging history and political science, we propose two concepts to analyse histories of political authority to u…
Trajectories of Authoritarianism in Rwanda
Challenging assumptions regarding the strength and control of authoritarian governments in Rwanda in the decades before the 1994 genocide, Marie-Eve Desrosiers uses original archival data and interviews to highlight the complex relations between authorities, opponents, and society. Through careful, detailed analysis Desrosiers offers a nuanced assessment of the functions and evolution of authoritarianism over time, demonstrating how the governmen…
Citizen participation during the 2014 protest in Burkina Faso
Analyses of the 2014 protest in Burkina Faso have predominantly focused on some of the movement’s major activists, to the neglect of ordinary citizens. Yet, while citizens’ participation in Burkina Faso in 2014 echoed to some extent the agendas of activists, it built on citizens’ own political subjectivities. Drawing on original interviews and Afrobarometer survey data, we show that Burkinabè citizens were motivated to protest by unmet expectatio…
The Mediation of Autocratic Regimes
Local state officials impact authoritarian systems through the mediation they perform. Desrosiers and Mahé argue that these local functionaries fulfill a number of mediating functions, including translating and representing authoritarian systems at the local level. By enacting these two roles, however, local officials do not straightforwardly reproduce the system. Instead, their interpretations and choices fundamentally influence the imprint auth…
Localization Through Coordination? Implementing the Humanitarian‐Development‐Peace Nexus in the Democratic Republic of the Congo
As a global concept and initiative, the Humanitarian‐Development‐Peace Nexus (HDPN) aims to improve integration across the traditionally siloed humanitarian, development, and security sectors, while foregrounding the involvement of local actors. Using original empirical data on the implementation of the HDPN in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), we show how and why the approach has not delivered substantive localization in the Congolese …
La crise de 2014 au Burkina Faso
L’article se penche sur les formes populaires de rejet du système clientéliste entourant le parti du président Blaise Compaoré, telles que mises de l’avant dans le cadre de la crise politique de 2014 au Burkina Faso. Les citoyens burkinabè sont descendus en masse dans la rue pour contester la volonté de l’appareil politique burkinabè d’amender la constitution, alors qu’ils ne l’avaient relativement pas remis en question précédemment. L’article mo…
Aid and armed actors
In conflict-affected contexts, the presence of armed actors—including state security forces, international peacekeeping missions, and non-state armed groups—means that aid organisations may need to cooperate with these actors to deliver foreign aid. Yet the conditions under which this cooperation happens remain underspecified. In this article, we use novel mixed methods data from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) to study these condition…
Rethinking Pathways of Autocratisation and Democratic Resilience in Comparative Perspective
This review article examines the rise of democratic resilience as a central concept in the comparative study of regime stability and change. Over the past decade, resilience – understood not simply as institutional survival but as the capacity of democratic systems to adapt, regenerate and deepen democratic norms in the face of crises – has gained prominence in response to accelerating autocratisation. The article situates this shift within the d…
Political science (18 works) · Sociology (15 works) · Law (13 works) · Peacebuilding and International Security (13 works) · Politics (12 works) · Political Conflict and Governance (10 works) · Law (8 works) · Political economy (7 works) · Democracy (6 works) · Genocide (6 works)