Helga Malmin Binningsbø
Biographic Data
| ID | 308092 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Helga Malmin Binningsbø |
| GIVEN NAMES | Helga Malmin |
| FAMILY NAME | Binningsbø |
| SIGNATURE | BINNINGSBØ H M |
| AFFILIATIONS | Peace Research Institute Oslo |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-3976-2067 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 23 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 176 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 23 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2005 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
Amnesty as a weapon of war: Incentivizing rebel defection during armed conflict
Governments challenged by insurgent groups use a variety of tactics during their fight. In addition to military strategies, governments use non-violent strategies aimed at influencing the course of the conflict and its outcome. An important conflict goal of a government is to increase defections from the rebel group to weaken that group's fighting and mobilization capacity. In this paper, we examine the government use of amnesty offers to accompl…
The Micro-foundations of Peace: Attitudes Towards the Implementation of Colombia's Peace Agreement in war-affected Regions
What explains public support for peace agreements, especially as implementation unfolds? It has been eight years since the Colombian government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) reached a peace accord, among the most comprehensive and ambitious accords ever signed. How has the Colombian public in war-affected communities shifted their opinions about the agreement since its implementation began? We leverage a 12,000-individual …
Beyond Hate Speech: Online Rumors and Out-Group Resentment in Divided Societies
The political consequences of hate speech on social media are the subject of intense research. Studies from Europe and North America have found that online exposure to hate speech affects both attitudes and offline behavior. Moving beyond hate speech, we show how little it takes for online rumors to stoke inter-group tensions in divided societies. In a pre-registered survey experiment with 3075 Hindu social media users in India, we navigate ethic…
How Does Public Opinion Respond to Government Injustices Against Historically Discriminated Minorities? Evidence from Norway
Many countries struggle to heal the wounds caused by past governmental discrimination against minorities, a process sometimes made difficult by continuing instances of injustice. One tool to improve majority-minority relations is Truth and Reconciliation Commissions (TRCs), which document historical injustices. We collect data before and after the release of the Norwegian TRC report on the treatment of the Sámi and other national minorities, whic…
Introducing the Mapping Attitudes, Perceptions and Support (Maps) dataset on the Colombian peace process
This article introduces the Mapping Attitudes, Perceptions and Support (MAPS) dataset, which provides rich survey data from more than 12,000 respondents in Colombia. Our panel survey - carried out in two separate waves in 2019 and 2021 - is representative at the level of each 'Program for Development with a Territorial Focus' (PDET, for its acronym in Spanish), the most war-affected regions and those targeted for peace agreement implementation. W…
Justice Now and Later: How Measures Taken to Address Wrongdoings during Armed Conflict Affect Postconflict Justice
∞ Transitional justice has become a default response when rebuilding postconflict societies. Indeed, to reconcile and move forward, it is argued that societies need to confront the violence of the past. But what factors influence when and how past violence will be addressed? We argue that judicial and quasi-judicial processes initiated while armed conflict is ongoing have a substantial impact on the judicial policies pursued once conflict has end…
Wartime Experiences and Popular Support for Peace Agreements: Comparative Evidence from Three Cases
Peace agreements are negotiated and signed by representatives of the government and the rebels, often after many years of violent conflict, but their ability to transform a war-torn society hinges on the approval of ordinary people. Yet we have little systematic knowledge of what ordinary people think of peace agreements in the long run. This study begins to fill that gap, drawing on a set of comparative public opinion surveys from Guatemala, Nep…
Conflict-Related Sexual Violence and the Perils of Impunity
Ending impunity” is often heralded as the key mechanism for stopping rape in war. Yet, little systematic evidence or analyses exist of the relationship between impunity (or lack thereof) and sexual violence. We argue that amnesties signal impunity and permissiveness for sexual violence, which can perpetuate and instigate more sexual violence by rebels. Trials, on the other hand, signal a nonzero probability of punishment, which could have a deter…
Perceptions of Peace Agreements and Political Trust in Post-War Guatemala, Nepal, and Northern Ireland
(Re)gaining citizens’ trust is a challenge for post-war governments. Political trust is crucial for understanding both the risk of civil war in the first place and the state-society relationships that emerge afterwards. Peace agreements are tools to stop the fighting, address war’s injustices, and provide a blueprint for the state’s future – and they do so to varying degrees. Yet we have little systematic knowledge of how people react to such agr…
Between Punishment and Impunity: Public Support for Reactions against Perpetrators in Guatemala, Nepal and Northern Ireland
A recent development within the study of transitional justice (TJ) has been a move from formal institutions and their effectiveness to an emerging victim-centred approach to TJ mechanisms. This shift makes it more salient to understand the preferences of different groups in the postconflict population. Building on the growing literature about people’s preferences in postconflict contexts, we analyze public support for reactions against perpetrato…
Justice during Armed Conflict: A New Dataset on Government and Rebel Strategies
While armed conflict is ultimately about violent interaction between combatant groups, a variety of policies are pursued in conjunction with violence that contribute to the course of conflict and its outcomes. One underdeveloped area of research is the use of judicial and quasi-judicial processes during armed conflict. These processes, including trials, truth commissions, reparations, amnesties, purges, or exiles, are directly related to the acti…
Power sharing, peace and democracy: Any obvious relationships
Power sharing, mostly understood as including political opponents in a joint executive coalition government, is today a dominant approach to solving conflict. Almost as a panacea it has been introduced in numerous war-affected countries and is often recommended as a political solution to overcome deep divisions between groups. Researchers, mediators and policy-makers applaud such solutions as forward-looking, peace-strengthening and democratic. H…
Sharing the Wealth: A Pathway to Peace or a Trail to Nowhere
This article critically examines the notion that wealth sharing in the aftermath of internal armed conflicts can bring about long-lasting peace. While wealth sharing is increasingly considered a crucial element of peacebuilding, the evidence concerning its success is inconclusive. Previous studies unfortunately suffer from weak theoretical and empirical definitions of wealth sharing and from examining only a subset of postconflict societies. This…
A price worth fighting for? Natural resources and conflict recurrence
While a number of publications show that natural resources are associated with internal armed conflict, surprisingly little research looks at how natural resources affect post-conflict peace. This article therefore investigates the relationship between natural resources and post-conflict peace by analyzing new data on natural resource conflicts. We argue that the effect of natural resources on peace depends on how a country's natural resources ca…
Armed conflict and post-conflict justice, 1946-2006: A dataset
This article introduces a new dataset on post-conflict justice (PCJ) that provides an overview of if, where, and how post-conflict countries address the wrongdoings committed in association with previous armed conflict. Motivated by the literature on post-conflict peacebuilding, we study justice processes during post-conflict transitions. We examine: which countries choose to implement PCJ; where PCJ is implemented; and which measures are taken i…
Book Notes
Book Notes
Using Power-Sharing to Win a War: The Implementation of the Lomé Agreement in Sierra Leone
To end the civil war in Sierra Leone the government and the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) signed a peace agreement guaranteeing power-sharing in July 1999. Such power-sharing is a widely used, often recommended political arrangement to overcome deep divisions between groups. However, scholars disagree on whether power-sharing causes peace, or, on the contrary, causes continuing violence. One reason for this is the literature's tendency to negl…
Book Notes
Post-Conflict Justice And Sustainable Peace
No systematic study has examined the effect of post-conflict justice on the duration of peace on a global basis. This paper attempts to fill that void by building on a newly constructed dataset (Binningsbo, Elster, and Gates 2005), which reports the presence of various forms of post-conflict justice efforts (trials, purges, reparation to victims, and truth commissions) as well as processes associated with abstaining from post-conflict justice (am…
Green giant or straw man? Environmental pressure and civil conflict, 1961–99
Beyond Territory and Scarcity: Exploring Conflicts over Natural Resource Management
The devil's excrement as social cement: Natural Resources and Political Terror, 1980-2002
Using a direct measure of repression of dissent, we find ample evidence to suggest that energy and mineral wealth strongly predict higher levels of political terror, results that are both statistically and substantively large. Oil-rich and mineral-rich countries contain higher levels of political terror regardless of the level of autocracy, the incidence of civil and international war and sundry controls. The results are robust to different measu…
Justice during Armed Conflict: A New Dataset on Government and Rebel Strategies
While armed conflict is ultimately about violent interaction between combatant groups, a variety of policies are pursued in conjunction with violence that contribute to the course of conflict and its outcomes. One underdeveloped area of research is the use of judicial and quasi-judicial processes during armed conflict. These processes, including trials, truth commissions, reparations, amnesties, purges, or exiles, are directly related to the acti…
Armed conflict and post-conflict justice, 1946-2006: A dataset
This article introduces a new dataset on post-conflict justice (PCJ) that provides an overview of if, where, and how post-conflict countries address the wrongdoings committed in association with previous armed conflict. Motivated by the literature on post-conflict peacebuilding, we study justice processes during post-conflict transitions. We examine: which countries choose to implement PCJ; where PCJ is implemented; and which measures are taken i…
A price worth fighting for? Natural resources and conflict recurrence
While a number of publications show that natural resources are associated with internal armed conflict, surprisingly little research looks at how natural resources affect post-conflict peace. This article therefore investigates the relationship between natural resources and post-conflict peace by analyzing new data on natural resource conflicts. We argue that the effect of natural resources on peace depends on how a country's natural resources ca…
Power sharing, peace and democracy: Any obvious relationships
Power sharing, mostly understood as including political opponents in a joint executive coalition government, is today a dominant approach to solving conflict. Almost as a panacea it has been introduced in numerous war-affected countries and is often recommended as a political solution to overcome deep divisions between groups. Researchers, mediators and policy-makers applaud such solutions as forward-looking, peace-strengthening and democratic. H…
Perceptions of Peace Agreements and Political Trust in Post-War Guatemala, Nepal, and Northern Ireland
(Re)gaining citizens’ trust is a challenge for post-war governments. Political trust is crucial for understanding both the risk of civil war in the first place and the state-society relationships that emerge afterwards. Peace agreements are tools to stop the fighting, address war’s injustices, and provide a blueprint for the state’s future – and they do so to varying degrees. Yet we have little systematic knowledge of how people react to such agr…
Sharing the Wealth: A Pathway to Peace or a Trail to Nowhere
This article critically examines the notion that wealth sharing in the aftermath of internal armed conflicts can bring about long-lasting peace. While wealth sharing is increasingly considered a crucial element of peacebuilding, the evidence concerning its success is inconclusive. Previous studies unfortunately suffer from weak theoretical and empirical definitions of wealth sharing and from examining only a subset of postconflict societies. This…
Using Power-Sharing to Win a War: The Implementation of the Lomé Agreement in Sierra Leone
To end the civil war in Sierra Leone the government and the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) signed a peace agreement guaranteeing power-sharing in July 1999. Such power-sharing is a widely used, often recommended political arrangement to overcome deep divisions between groups. However, scholars disagree on whether power-sharing causes peace, or, on the contrary, causes continuing violence. One reason for this is the literature's tendency to negl…
Wartime Experiences and Popular Support for Peace Agreements: Comparative Evidence from Three Cases
Peace agreements are negotiated and signed by representatives of the government and the rebels, often after many years of violent conflict, but their ability to transform a war-torn society hinges on the approval of ordinary people. Yet we have little systematic knowledge of what ordinary people think of peace agreements in the long run. This study begins to fill that gap, drawing on a set of comparative public opinion surveys from Guatemala, Nep…
Between Punishment and Impunity: Public Support for Reactions against Perpetrators in Guatemala, Nepal and Northern Ireland
A recent development within the study of transitional justice (TJ) has been a move from formal institutions and their effectiveness to an emerging victim-centred approach to TJ mechanisms. This shift makes it more salient to understand the preferences of different groups in the postconflict population. Building on the growing literature about people’s preferences in postconflict contexts, we analyze public support for reactions against perpetrato…
Green giant or straw man? Environmental pressure and civil conflict, 1961–99
Introducing the Mapping Attitudes, Perceptions and Support (Maps) dataset on the Colombian peace process
This article introduces the Mapping Attitudes, Perceptions and Support (MAPS) dataset, which provides rich survey data from more than 12,000 respondents in Colombia. Our panel survey - carried out in two separate waves in 2019 and 2021 - is representative at the level of each 'Program for Development with a Territorial Focus' (PDET, for its acronym in Spanish), the most war-affected regions and those targeted for peace agreement implementation. W…
Conflict-Related Sexual Violence and the Perils of Impunity
Ending impunity” is often heralded as the key mechanism for stopping rape in war. Yet, little systematic evidence or analyses exist of the relationship between impunity (or lack thereof) and sexual violence. We argue that amnesties signal impunity and permissiveness for sexual violence, which can perpetuate and instigate more sexual violence by rebels. Trials, on the other hand, signal a nonzero probability of punishment, which could have a deter…
The devil's excrement as social cement: Natural Resources and Political Terror, 1980-2002
Using a direct measure of repression of dissent, we find ample evidence to suggest that energy and mineral wealth strongly predict higher levels of political terror, results that are both statistically and substantively large. Oil-rich and mineral-rich countries contain higher levels of political terror regardless of the level of autocracy, the incidence of civil and international war and sundry controls. The results are robust to different measu…
Beyond Territory and Scarcity: Exploring Conflicts over Natural Resource Management
The devil's excrement as social cement: Natural Resources and Political Terror, 1980-2002
Using a direct measure of repression of dissent, we find ample evidence to suggest that energy and mineral wealth strongly predict higher levels of political terror, results that are both statistically and substantively large. Oil-rich and mineral-rich countries contain higher levels of political terror regardless of the level of autocracy, the incidence of civil and international war and sundry controls. The results are robust to different measu…
Beyond Territory and Scarcity: Exploring Conflicts over Natural Resource Management
Post-Conflict Justice And Sustainable Peace
No systematic study has examined the effect of post-conflict justice on the duration of peace on a global basis. This paper attempts to fill that void by building on a newly constructed dataset (Binningsbo, Elster, and Gates 2005), which reports the presence of various forms of post-conflict justice efforts (trials, purges, reparation to victims, and truth commissions) as well as processes associated with abstaining from post-conflict justice (am…
Green giant or straw man? Environmental pressure and civil conflict, 1961–99
Book Notes
Using Power-Sharing to Win a War: The Implementation of the Lomé Agreement in Sierra Leone
To end the civil war in Sierra Leone the government and the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) signed a peace agreement guaranteeing power-sharing in July 1999. Such power-sharing is a widely used, often recommended political arrangement to overcome deep divisions between groups. However, scholars disagree on whether power-sharing causes peace, or, on the contrary, causes continuing violence. One reason for this is the literature's tendency to negl…
Book Notes
Book Notes
Sharing the Wealth: A Pathway to Peace or a Trail to Nowhere
This article critically examines the notion that wealth sharing in the aftermath of internal armed conflicts can bring about long-lasting peace. While wealth sharing is increasingly considered a crucial element of peacebuilding, the evidence concerning its success is inconclusive. Previous studies unfortunately suffer from weak theoretical and empirical definitions of wealth sharing and from examining only a subset of postconflict societies. This…
A price worth fighting for? Natural resources and conflict recurrence
While a number of publications show that natural resources are associated with internal armed conflict, surprisingly little research looks at how natural resources affect post-conflict peace. This article therefore investigates the relationship between natural resources and post-conflict peace by analyzing new data on natural resource conflicts. We argue that the effect of natural resources on peace depends on how a country's natural resources ca…
Armed conflict and post-conflict justice, 1946-2006: A dataset
This article introduces a new dataset on post-conflict justice (PCJ) that provides an overview of if, where, and how post-conflict countries address the wrongdoings committed in association with previous armed conflict. Motivated by the literature on post-conflict peacebuilding, we study justice processes during post-conflict transitions. We examine: which countries choose to implement PCJ; where PCJ is implemented; and which measures are taken i…
Power sharing, peace and democracy: Any obvious relationships
Power sharing, mostly understood as including political opponents in a joint executive coalition government, is today a dominant approach to solving conflict. Almost as a panacea it has been introduced in numerous war-affected countries and is often recommended as a political solution to overcome deep divisions between groups. Researchers, mediators and policy-makers applaud such solutions as forward-looking, peace-strengthening and democratic. H…
Between Punishment and Impunity: Public Support for Reactions against Perpetrators in Guatemala, Nepal and Northern Ireland
A recent development within the study of transitional justice (TJ) has been a move from formal institutions and their effectiveness to an emerging victim-centred approach to TJ mechanisms. This shift makes it more salient to understand the preferences of different groups in the postconflict population. Building on the growing literature about people’s preferences in postconflict contexts, we analyze public support for reactions against perpetrato…
Justice during Armed Conflict: A New Dataset on Government and Rebel Strategies
While armed conflict is ultimately about violent interaction between combatant groups, a variety of policies are pursued in conjunction with violence that contribute to the course of conflict and its outcomes. One underdeveloped area of research is the use of judicial and quasi-judicial processes during armed conflict. These processes, including trials, truth commissions, reparations, amnesties, purges, or exiles, are directly related to the acti…
Perceptions of Peace Agreements and Political Trust in Post-War Guatemala, Nepal, and Northern Ireland
(Re)gaining citizens’ trust is a challenge for post-war governments. Political trust is crucial for understanding both the risk of civil war in the first place and the state-society relationships that emerge afterwards. Peace agreements are tools to stop the fighting, address war’s injustices, and provide a blueprint for the state’s future – and they do so to varying degrees. Yet we have little systematic knowledge of how people react to such agr…
Wartime Experiences and Popular Support for Peace Agreements: Comparative Evidence from Three Cases
Peace agreements are negotiated and signed by representatives of the government and the rebels, often after many years of violent conflict, but their ability to transform a war-torn society hinges on the approval of ordinary people. Yet we have little systematic knowledge of what ordinary people think of peace agreements in the long run. This study begins to fill that gap, drawing on a set of comparative public opinion surveys from Guatemala, Nep…
Conflict-Related Sexual Violence and the Perils of Impunity
Ending impunity” is often heralded as the key mechanism for stopping rape in war. Yet, little systematic evidence or analyses exist of the relationship between impunity (or lack thereof) and sexual violence. We argue that amnesties signal impunity and permissiveness for sexual violence, which can perpetuate and instigate more sexual violence by rebels. Trials, on the other hand, signal a nonzero probability of punishment, which could have a deter…
Justice Now and Later: How Measures Taken to Address Wrongdoings during Armed Conflict Affect Postconflict Justice
∞ Transitional justice has become a default response when rebuilding postconflict societies. Indeed, to reconcile and move forward, it is argued that societies need to confront the violence of the past. But what factors influence when and how past violence will be addressed? We argue that judicial and quasi-judicial processes initiated while armed conflict is ongoing have a substantial impact on the judicial policies pursued once conflict has end…
Introducing the Mapping Attitudes, Perceptions and Support (Maps) dataset on the Colombian peace process
This article introduces the Mapping Attitudes, Perceptions and Support (MAPS) dataset, which provides rich survey data from more than 12,000 respondents in Colombia. Our panel survey - carried out in two separate waves in 2019 and 2021 - is representative at the level of each 'Program for Development with a Territorial Focus' (PDET, for its acronym in Spanish), the most war-affected regions and those targeted for peace agreement implementation. W…
The Micro-foundations of Peace: Attitudes Towards the Implementation of Colombia's Peace Agreement in war-affected Regions
What explains public support for peace agreements, especially as implementation unfolds? It has been eight years since the Colombian government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) reached a peace accord, among the most comprehensive and ambitious accords ever signed. How has the Colombian public in war-affected communities shifted their opinions about the agreement since its implementation began? We leverage a 12,000-individual …
Beyond Hate Speech: Online Rumors and Out-Group Resentment in Divided Societies
The political consequences of hate speech on social media are the subject of intense research. Studies from Europe and North America have found that online exposure to hate speech affects both attitudes and offline behavior. Moving beyond hate speech, we show how little it takes for online rumors to stoke inter-group tensions in divided societies. In a pre-registered survey experiment with 3075 Hindu social media users in India, we navigate ethic…
How Does Public Opinion Respond to Government Injustices Against Historically Discriminated Minorities? Evidence from Norway
Many countries struggle to heal the wounds caused by past governmental discrimination against minorities, a process sometimes made difficult by continuing instances of injustice. One tool to improve majority-minority relations is Truth and Reconciliation Commissions (TRCs), which document historical injustices. We collect data before and after the release of the Norwegian TRC report on the treatment of the Sámi and other national minorities, whic…
Amnesty as a weapon of war: Incentivizing rebel defection during armed conflict
Governments challenged by insurgent groups use a variety of tactics during their fight. In addition to military strategies, governments use non-violent strategies aimed at influencing the course of the conflict and its outcome. An important conflict goal of a government is to increase defections from the rebel group to weaken that group's fighting and mobilization capacity. In this paper, we examine the government use of amnesty offers to accompl…
Political science (18 works) · Law (15 works) · Political Conflict and Governance (15 works) · Law (13 works) · Sociology (11 works) · Computer Science (10 works) · Peacebuilding and International Security (10 works) · Politics (7 works) · Psychology (7 works) · Criminology (6 works)