Chiara Ruffa
Biographic Data
| ID | 278678 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Chiara Ruffa |
| GIVEN NAMES | Chiara |
| FAMILY NAME | Ruffa |
| SIGNATURE | RUFFA C |
| AFFILIATIONS | Uppsala University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-3474-4281 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 27 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 102 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 27 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2011 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
Master peace: Lebanon's violence and the politics of expertise
Rituals without Rapprochement? Managing Hostility at the Tripartite Meetings in the United Nations Mission in Lebanon
How do rituals function in peace and conflict settings? How do rituals between adversaries contain and sustain emotions? In this article we examine the Tripartite Meetings hosted by the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), which were held regularly from August 2006 until October 2023 along the Blue Line that separates Israel and Lebanon. Mediated by UNIFIL, these meetings brought together representatives of the Lebanese Armed Forces …
Moving away from, moving towards and moving against others: An adaptive multi-strategy approach to defend and build resources in self-protection mode
In the face of extreme and enduring stressors, a self-protection coping mode can be entered to conserve resources (Conservation of Resources (COR) theory principle 4). Self-protection coping is underexplored in COR theory yet may offer insights about how people deal with the significant challenges posed by work today. We investigate this using a large-group collaborative auto-ethnography (CAE) with 15 academic workers during a period when resourc…
The elephant in the med: Postcoloniality and European security assistance practices
This article explores an enormous elephant in the Mediterranean space: European security assistance’s impact on the continuation of a global postcolonial order. We identify three core practices of security assistance that provides for postcolonial readings: externally producing ‘the problem’ and designing ‘the solutions’ to be tackled; linking the ‘provider’ and ‘recipients’ in material dependencies; and contestation as ‘thin’ adjustments rather …
How governance shaped military responses to the Covid-19 pandemic
Most countries deployed their military in some capacity to combat the COVID-19 pandemic. We present original data on early pandemic-related deployments, identifying seven types of deployment: logistic operations, enforcement, international involvement, border protection, information provision, intelligence operations, and domestic protection. We find that military deployments are shaped by capacity and electoral considerations, even after account…
Meaning making in peacekeeping missions: Mandate interpretation and multinational collaboration in the UN mission in Mali
Peacekeeping helps to prevent conflict and to protect civilians. But how does it work to achieve those aims? Notwithstanding a growing recognition that peacekeeping mandates alone do not directly determine what actually happens in the field, we still know little about how—once deployed—military units translate an ambiguous mandate into action. In this paper, we focus on one dimension of peacekeepers’ behavior that has become increasingly importan…
Military Training and Decolonisation in the British Empire
Previous research has shown that military training at the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst was used by the UK in the post-World War II period as a soft foreign policy tool in anticipation of decolonisation. This article builds on this work by first detailing how early attempts to introduce military training for foreign cadets replicated racial hierarchies. Second, it describes how, as the programme was re-conceived to embrace the colonial territ…
Operational experiences, military role conceptions, and their influence on civil-military relations
A considerable amount of research within security studies has explored the military's increasingly diverse and multifaceted tasks. However, this debate has been disconnected from the literature on civil-military relations to the effect that we still lack knowledge about how and why these operational tasks have consequences for the relations between the armed forces, civilian authorities, and society at large. In order to provide for a better unde…
Knocking on the barracks’ door: How role conceptions shape the military's reactions to political demands
Academic research on civil-military relations often assumes that dangers for democracy and civilian control mainly emanate from the military's predisposition of ‘pushing’ its way into politics. Yet, civilian control frequently is a precondition for governments’ moves of ‘pulling’ the military into roles that may potentially be problematic. These can include the military's involvement in political disputes or internal public security missions. Not…
Searching for a middle ground? A spectrum of views of causality in qualitative research
Qualitative scholars exhibit a wide range of views on and approaches to causality. While some approaches reject causality from the outset, a large strand of qualitative research in political science and international relations does, however, pursue causal explanation. Qualitative scholars nevertheless disagree about what causality means. Our paper reviews what causality means within different strands of qualitative research and how qualitative sc…
Handbook of Military Sciences
Over the past decades, debates revolving around the role and challenges of military families have developed into an important subfield in military sociology.Throughout history, military families have played an important role for military forces, and in the post-World War II era, the role of the family has shifted as a consequence of military professionalization.Research on military families explores the different demands placed upon service membe…
Composing Peace: Mission Composition in UN Peacekeeping
The book explores how diversity in United Nations’ peace mission composition affects peacekeeping effectiveness. It identifies four key dimensions of composition: Blue Helmets’ field diversity, top mission leadership diversity (between Force Commander and Special Representative of the Secretary General), vertical leadership distance (Leadership-Blue Helmets), and horizontal distance with the local population. Each dimension of diversity of missio…
Organizational Routines and Military Behavior in Nonconventional Operations
Organizational Routines and Military Behavior in Nonconventional Operations Friesendorf Cornelius. How Western Soldiers Fight: Organizational Routines in Multinational Missions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018. 304 pp., $99.99 hardcover (ISBN 978-1108429108). Chiara Ruffa Chiara Ruffa Uppsala Universitet Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar International Studies Review, Volume 23, Issue 1, March 202…
Peacekeeping Prevention: Strengthening Efforts to Preempt Conflict-related Sexual Violence
Part of: Louise Olsson, Angela Muvumba Sellström, Stephen Moncrief, Elisabeth Jean Wood, Karin Johansson, Walter Lotze, Chiara Ruffa, Amelia Hoover Green, Ann Kristin Sjöberg & Roudabeh Kishi (2020) Peacekeeping Prevention: Strengthening Efforts to Preempt Conflict-related Sexual Violence International Peacekeeping, Volume 27, 2020 - Issue 4, Pages 517-585.DOI: 10.1080/13533312.2020.1782752
Beyond coups: Terrorism and Military Involvement in Politics
A wealth of research in comparative politics and international relations examines how the military intervenes in politics via coups. We shift attention to broader forms of military involvement in politics beyond coups and claim that terrorist violence and the threat of terror attacks provide a window of opportunity for military intervention, without taking full control of state institutions. We highlight two mechanisms through which terrorism inf…
Understanding Coherence in UN Peacekeeping: A Conceptual Framework
Coherence is a core objective in most multinational interventions and seems of particular relevance to UN peacekeeping missions with their increasing complexity and multidimensionality. Yet, coherence has rarely been studied empirically. We borrow the concept of ‘fit’ from organizational theory and use it to develop a conceptual framework to study coherence in peacekeeping operations. Fit is the degree of match between what is required by the man…
Military Cultures in Peace and Stability Operations: Afghanistan and Lebanon
L'armée entre menaces intérieures et extérieures ? Enjeux et défis en perspective comparée
Cet essai explore le rôle de l'armée dans les opérations intérieures de lutte contre le terrorisme en analysant ses enjeux et défis dans le cadre plus général et complexe des opérations non conventionnelles, mais extérieures, comme le maintien de la paix et la gestion des flux migratoires. L'essai montre qu'il y a des similarités entre opérations intérieures et extérieures, et qu'il est nécessaire d'extraire les acquis de ces opérations pour mieu…
Breaking the frame: Frame Disputes of War and Peace
Frames guide the way in which organizations and individuals interpret their surrounding contexts and shape avenues for thought, action, and behavior. This paper tests the individual-level effects of experiencing 'frame disputes': the state of holding individual-level frames that are at odds with dominant organizational frames. We hypothesize that on the individual level a frame dispute will be associated with negative effects on outcomes importan…
Military Cultures and Force Employment in Peace Operations
Although hundreds of thousands of soldiers from different national contingents are deployed every year in multinational peace operations, no previous study has examined differences in peacekeeping practices along national lines. This paper first documents systematically differences in the way national contingents behave during peace operations in their respective area of operation. In a second step, it argues that these differences in behavior ar…
Societal beliefs about the use of force in Israël, Italy and France
Societal beliefs about the use of force in Israël, Italy and France Chiara Ruffa (bio) In the Spring 2014, while in Paris, I happened to enter an exhibition about summary executions of French soldiers during World War I.1 The soldiers had mainly been executed for mutiny, although in fact they had rarely contravened orders or rebelled. Rather, these soldiers were deeply traumatised young conscripts, operating in unbearable conditions, and often, h…
Fighting and Helping? A Historical-Institutionalist Explanation of NGO-Military Relations
Published online: 01 Aug 2014
What Peacekeepers Think and Do: An Exploratory Study of French, Ghanaian, Italian, and South Korean Armies in the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon
This exploratory article points out how armies differ in the performance of their daily military activities during a peacekeeping mission and analyses the role of contrasting perceptions of the mission operational environment in explaining this variation. As a first step, this article documents systematic variations in the way French, Ghanaian, Italian, and Korean units implement the mandate of the UN mission in Lebanon in their daily military ac…
Introduction: Coordinating actors in complex operations
International responses to conflicts and humanitarian emergencies have become more crowded. Not only do traditional actors intervene on a greater scale, such as non-governmental organizations and the military, but new actors such as Private Military Security Companies also play an increasingly important role. These actors often differ in their precise objective and the constituencies they are accountable to. Yet, the practices of these actors in …
Soldiers drawn into politics? The influence of tactics in civil-military relations
The tactical level has become increasingly important in the conduct of contemporary complex military operations. Yet, the potential impact that this tactical level may have on domestic civil–military relations has been neglected. In this article, we focus on mechanisms by which low-level soldiers have acquired an increasing importance in tactical operations and we suggest that this may influence civil–military relations in the future. We argue th…
Beyond coups: Terrorism and Military Involvement in Politics
A wealth of research in comparative politics and international relations examines how the military intervenes in politics via coups. We shift attention to broader forms of military involvement in politics beyond coups and claim that terrorist violence and the threat of terror attacks provide a window of opportunity for military intervention, without taking full control of state institutions. We highlight two mechanisms through which terrorism inf…
Understanding Coherence in UN Peacekeeping: A Conceptual Framework
Coherence is a core objective in most multinational interventions and seems of particular relevance to UN peacekeeping missions with their increasing complexity and multidimensionality. Yet, coherence has rarely been studied empirically. We borrow the concept of ‘fit’ from organizational theory and use it to develop a conceptual framework to study coherence in peacekeeping operations. Fit is the degree of match between what is required by the man…
What Peacekeepers Think and Do: An Exploratory Study of French, Ghanaian, Italian, and South Korean Armies in the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon
This exploratory article points out how armies differ in the performance of their daily military activities during a peacekeeping mission and analyses the role of contrasting perceptions of the mission operational environment in explaining this variation. As a first step, this article documents systematic variations in the way French, Ghanaian, Italian, and Korean units implement the mandate of the UN mission in Lebanon in their daily military ac…
Military Cultures and Force Employment in Peace Operations
Although hundreds of thousands of soldiers from different national contingents are deployed every year in multinational peace operations, no previous study has examined differences in peacekeeping practices along national lines. This paper first documents systematically differences in the way national contingents behave during peace operations in their respective area of operation. In a second step, it argues that these differences in behavior ar…
Soldiers drawn into politics? The influence of tactics in civil-military relations
The tactical level has become increasingly important in the conduct of contemporary complex military operations. Yet, the potential impact that this tactical level may have on domestic civil–military relations has been neglected. In this article, we focus on mechanisms by which low-level soldiers have acquired an increasing importance in tactical operations and we suggest that this may influence civil–military relations in the future. We argue th…
Peacekeeping Prevention: Strengthening Efforts to Preempt Conflict-related Sexual Violence
Part of: Louise Olsson, Angela Muvumba Sellström, Stephen Moncrief, Elisabeth Jean Wood, Karin Johansson, Walter Lotze, Chiara Ruffa, Amelia Hoover Green, Ann Kristin Sjöberg & Roudabeh Kishi (2020) Peacekeeping Prevention: Strengthening Efforts to Preempt Conflict-related Sexual Violence International Peacekeeping, Volume 27, 2020 - Issue 4, Pages 517-585.DOI: 10.1080/13533312.2020.1782752
Meaning making in peacekeeping missions: Mandate interpretation and multinational collaboration in the UN mission in Mali
Peacekeeping helps to prevent conflict and to protect civilians. But how does it work to achieve those aims? Notwithstanding a growing recognition that peacekeeping mandates alone do not directly determine what actually happens in the field, we still know little about how—once deployed—military units translate an ambiguous mandate into action. In this paper, we focus on one dimension of peacekeepers’ behavior that has become increasingly importan…
Operational experiences, military role conceptions, and their influence on civil-military relations
A considerable amount of research within security studies has explored the military's increasingly diverse and multifaceted tasks. However, this debate has been disconnected from the literature on civil-military relations to the effect that we still lack knowledge about how and why these operational tasks have consequences for the relations between the armed forces, civilian authorities, and society at large. In order to provide for a better unde…
Knocking on the barracks’ door: How role conceptions shape the military's reactions to political demands
Academic research on civil-military relations often assumes that dangers for democracy and civilian control mainly emanate from the military's predisposition of ‘pushing’ its way into politics. Yet, civilian control frequently is a precondition for governments’ moves of ‘pulling’ the military into roles that may potentially be problematic. These can include the military's involvement in political disputes or internal public security missions. Not…
Breaking the frame: Frame Disputes of War and Peace
Frames guide the way in which organizations and individuals interpret their surrounding contexts and shape avenues for thought, action, and behavior. This paper tests the individual-level effects of experiencing 'frame disputes': the state of holding individual-level frames that are at odds with dominant organizational frames. We hypothesize that on the individual level a frame dispute will be associated with negative effects on outcomes importan…
Fighting and Helping? A Historical-Institutionalist Explanation of NGO-Military Relations
Published online: 01 Aug 2014
How governance shaped military responses to the Covid-19 pandemic
Most countries deployed their military in some capacity to combat the COVID-19 pandemic. We present original data on early pandemic-related deployments, identifying seven types of deployment: logistic operations, enforcement, international involvement, border protection, information provision, intelligence operations, and domestic protection. We find that military deployments are shaped by capacity and electoral considerations, even after account…
Searching for a middle ground? A spectrum of views of causality in qualitative research
Qualitative scholars exhibit a wide range of views on and approaches to causality. While some approaches reject causality from the outset, a large strand of qualitative research in political science and international relations does, however, pursue causal explanation. Qualitative scholars nevertheless disagree about what causality means. Our paper reviews what causality means within different strands of qualitative research and how qualitative sc…
The elephant in the med: Postcoloniality and European security assistance practices
This article explores an enormous elephant in the Mediterranean space: European security assistance’s impact on the continuation of a global postcolonial order. We identify three core practices of security assistance that provides for postcolonial readings: externally producing ‘the problem’ and designing ‘the solutions’ to be tackled; linking the ‘provider’ and ‘recipients’ in material dependencies; and contestation as ‘thin’ adjustments rather …
Realist-normative power Europe? Explaining EU policies toward Lebanon from an IR perspective
Military Training and Decolonisation in the British Empire
Previous research has shown that military training at the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst was used by the UK in the post-World War II period as a soft foreign policy tool in anticipation of decolonisation. This article builds on this work by first detailing how early attempts to introduce military training for foreign cadets replicated racial hierarchies. Second, it describes how, as the programme was re-conceived to embrace the colonial territ…
Realist-normative power Europe? Explaining EU policies toward Lebanon from an IR perspective
South East and Eastern European countries EU accession quandary
Introduction: Coordinating actors in complex operations
International responses to conflicts and humanitarian emergencies have become more crowded. Not only do traditional actors intervene on a greater scale, such as non-governmental organizations and the military, but new actors such as Private Military Security Companies also play an increasingly important role. These actors often differ in their precise objective and the constituencies they are accountable to. Yet, the practices of these actors in …
Soldiers drawn into politics? The influence of tactics in civil-military relations
The tactical level has become increasingly important in the conduct of contemporary complex military operations. Yet, the potential impact that this tactical level may have on domestic civil–military relations has been neglected. In this article, we focus on mechanisms by which low-level soldiers have acquired an increasing importance in tactical operations and we suggest that this may influence civil–military relations in the future. We argue th…
Societal beliefs about the use of force in Israël, Italy and France
Societal beliefs about the use of force in Israël, Italy and France Chiara Ruffa (bio) In the Spring 2014, while in Paris, I happened to enter an exhibition about summary executions of French soldiers during World War I.1 The soldiers had mainly been executed for mutiny, although in fact they had rarely contravened orders or rebelled. Rather, these soldiers were deeply traumatised young conscripts, operating in unbearable conditions, and often, h…
Fighting and Helping? A Historical-Institutionalist Explanation of NGO-Military Relations
Published online: 01 Aug 2014
What Peacekeepers Think and Do: An Exploratory Study of French, Ghanaian, Italian, and South Korean Armies in the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon
This exploratory article points out how armies differ in the performance of their daily military activities during a peacekeeping mission and analyses the role of contrasting perceptions of the mission operational environment in explaining this variation. As a first step, this article documents systematic variations in the way French, Ghanaian, Italian, and Korean units implement the mandate of the UN mission in Lebanon in their daily military ac…
Military Cultures and Force Employment in Peace Operations
Although hundreds of thousands of soldiers from different national contingents are deployed every year in multinational peace operations, no previous study has examined differences in peacekeeping practices along national lines. This paper first documents systematically differences in the way national contingents behave during peace operations in their respective area of operation. In a second step, it argues that these differences in behavior ar…
Military Cultures in Peace and Stability Operations: Afghanistan and Lebanon
L'armée entre menaces intérieures et extérieures ? Enjeux et défis en perspective comparée
Cet essai explore le rôle de l'armée dans les opérations intérieures de lutte contre le terrorisme en analysant ses enjeux et défis dans le cadre plus général et complexe des opérations non conventionnelles, mais extérieures, comme le maintien de la paix et la gestion des flux migratoires. L'essai montre qu'il y a des similarités entre opérations intérieures et extérieures, et qu'il est nécessaire d'extraire les acquis de ces opérations pour mieu…
Breaking the frame: Frame Disputes of War and Peace
Frames guide the way in which organizations and individuals interpret their surrounding contexts and shape avenues for thought, action, and behavior. This paper tests the individual-level effects of experiencing 'frame disputes': the state of holding individual-level frames that are at odds with dominant organizational frames. We hypothesize that on the individual level a frame dispute will be associated with negative effects on outcomes importan…
Understanding Coherence in UN Peacekeeping: A Conceptual Framework
Coherence is a core objective in most multinational interventions and seems of particular relevance to UN peacekeeping missions with their increasing complexity and multidimensionality. Yet, coherence has rarely been studied empirically. We borrow the concept of ‘fit’ from organizational theory and use it to develop a conceptual framework to study coherence in peacekeeping operations. Fit is the degree of match between what is required by the man…
Handbook of Military Sciences
Over the past decades, debates revolving around the role and challenges of military families have developed into an important subfield in military sociology.Throughout history, military families have played an important role for military forces, and in the post-World War II era, the role of the family has shifted as a consequence of military professionalization.Research on military families explores the different demands placed upon service membe…
Composing Peace: Mission Composition in UN Peacekeeping
The book explores how diversity in United Nations’ peace mission composition affects peacekeeping effectiveness. It identifies four key dimensions of composition: Blue Helmets’ field diversity, top mission leadership diversity (between Force Commander and Special Representative of the Secretary General), vertical leadership distance (Leadership-Blue Helmets), and horizontal distance with the local population. Each dimension of diversity of missio…
Organizational Routines and Military Behavior in Nonconventional Operations
Organizational Routines and Military Behavior in Nonconventional Operations Friesendorf Cornelius. How Western Soldiers Fight: Organizational Routines in Multinational Missions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018. 304 pp., $99.99 hardcover (ISBN 978-1108429108). Chiara Ruffa Chiara Ruffa Uppsala Universitet Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar International Studies Review, Volume 23, Issue 1, March 202…
Peacekeeping Prevention: Strengthening Efforts to Preempt Conflict-related Sexual Violence
Part of: Louise Olsson, Angela Muvumba Sellström, Stephen Moncrief, Elisabeth Jean Wood, Karin Johansson, Walter Lotze, Chiara Ruffa, Amelia Hoover Green, Ann Kristin Sjöberg & Roudabeh Kishi (2020) Peacekeeping Prevention: Strengthening Efforts to Preempt Conflict-related Sexual Violence International Peacekeeping, Volume 27, 2020 - Issue 4, Pages 517-585.DOI: 10.1080/13533312.2020.1782752
Beyond coups: Terrorism and Military Involvement in Politics
A wealth of research in comparative politics and international relations examines how the military intervenes in politics via coups. We shift attention to broader forms of military involvement in politics beyond coups and claim that terrorist violence and the threat of terror attacks provide a window of opportunity for military intervention, without taking full control of state institutions. We highlight two mechanisms through which terrorism inf…
Operational experiences, military role conceptions, and their influence on civil-military relations
A considerable amount of research within security studies has explored the military's increasingly diverse and multifaceted tasks. However, this debate has been disconnected from the literature on civil-military relations to the effect that we still lack knowledge about how and why these operational tasks have consequences for the relations between the armed forces, civilian authorities, and society at large. In order to provide for a better unde…
Knocking on the barracks’ door: How role conceptions shape the military's reactions to political demands
Academic research on civil-military relations often assumes that dangers for democracy and civilian control mainly emanate from the military's predisposition of ‘pushing’ its way into politics. Yet, civilian control frequently is a precondition for governments’ moves of ‘pulling’ the military into roles that may potentially be problematic. These can include the military's involvement in political disputes or internal public security missions. Not…
Searching for a middle ground? A spectrum of views of causality in qualitative research
Qualitative scholars exhibit a wide range of views on and approaches to causality. While some approaches reject causality from the outset, a large strand of qualitative research in political science and international relations does, however, pursue causal explanation. Qualitative scholars nevertheless disagree about what causality means. Our paper reviews what causality means within different strands of qualitative research and how qualitative sc…
Military Training and Decolonisation in the British Empire
Previous research has shown that military training at the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst was used by the UK in the post-World War II period as a soft foreign policy tool in anticipation of decolonisation. This article builds on this work by first detailing how early attempts to introduce military training for foreign cadets replicated racial hierarchies. Second, it describes how, as the programme was re-conceived to embrace the colonial territ…
The elephant in the med: Postcoloniality and European security assistance practices
This article explores an enormous elephant in the Mediterranean space: European security assistance’s impact on the continuation of a global postcolonial order. We identify three core practices of security assistance that provides for postcolonial readings: externally producing ‘the problem’ and designing ‘the solutions’ to be tackled; linking the ‘provider’ and ‘recipients’ in material dependencies; and contestation as ‘thin’ adjustments rather …
How governance shaped military responses to the Covid-19 pandemic
Most countries deployed their military in some capacity to combat the COVID-19 pandemic. We present original data on early pandemic-related deployments, identifying seven types of deployment: logistic operations, enforcement, international involvement, border protection, information provision, intelligence operations, and domestic protection. We find that military deployments are shaped by capacity and electoral considerations, even after account…
Meaning making in peacekeeping missions: Mandate interpretation and multinational collaboration in the UN mission in Mali
Peacekeeping helps to prevent conflict and to protect civilians. But how does it work to achieve those aims? Notwithstanding a growing recognition that peacekeeping mandates alone do not directly determine what actually happens in the field, we still know little about how—once deployed—military units translate an ambiguous mandate into action. In this paper, we focus on one dimension of peacekeepers’ behavior that has become increasingly importan…
Moving away from, moving towards and moving against others: An adaptive multi-strategy approach to defend and build resources in self-protection mode
In the face of extreme and enduring stressors, a self-protection coping mode can be entered to conserve resources (Conservation of Resources (COR) theory principle 4). Self-protection coping is underexplored in COR theory yet may offer insights about how people deal with the significant challenges posed by work today. We investigate this using a large-group collaborative auto-ethnography (CAE) with 15 academic workers during a period when resourc…
Political science (22 works) · Peacebuilding and International Security (17 works) · Law (16 works) · Sociology (16 works) · Politics (11 works) · Law (10 works) · Computer Science (9 works) · Global Peace and Security Dynamics (7 works) · Military History and Strategy (7 works) · Psychology (7 works)