Tanisha M Fazal
Biographic Data
| ID | 365653 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Tanisha M Fazal |
| GIVEN NAMES | Tanisha M |
| FAMILY NAME | Fazal |
| SIGNATURE | FAZAL T M |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Notre Dame |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-3314-5815 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 25 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 174 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 25 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1994 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 8 |
Conceptualizing and Operationalizing the “Interstate System”
Is War in Decline
The claim that war is in decline has gained considerable traction among analysts and policy makers. This review surveys the empirical data as well as the theoretical arguments for a decline of war. It concludes that, while great power wars have declined since 1945, war in general is not necessarily in decline. Critiques of the claim that war is in decline range from the statistical to the anthropological. While war is not necessarily in decline, …
Military Medicine and Military Effectiveness
U.S. Combat Medicine and Military Morale
While a number of studies have argued for a relationship between military morale and military effectiveness, analyses of the sources of morale have overlooked the possible role of military medicine. We suggest that military medicine may be an important predictor of morale. We assess this claim via an observational survey of U.S. military veterans and a survey experiment of active-duty U.S. military personnel. We find a statistically significant r…
SorryNotSorry: Why states neither confirm nor deny responsibility for cyber operations
States accused of perpetrating cyber operations typically do not confirm or deny responsibility. They issue ‘non-denial denials’ or refuse to comment on the accusations. These ambiguous signals are prevalent, but they are largely ignored in the existing cyber literature, which tends to treat credit claiming as a binary choice. The ambiguity of non-denial denials and ‘non-comments’ allows states to accomplish two seemingly opposed goals: maintaini…
Life and Limb: New Estimates of Casualty Aversion in the United States
Dramatic improvements in US military medicine have produced an equally dramatic shift in the kinds of battle casualties the US military has sustained in its most recent wars. Specifically, there has been a notable increase in the ratio of nonfatal to fatal casualties. Most studies of casualty aversion in the United States, however, have focused on fatal casualties. Using a series of survey experiments, I investigate whether respondents are equall…
Lengthening the Shadow of International Law
What will be the consequences of the criminalization of aggression? In 2010, the International Criminal Court made aggression a crime for which individuals can be prosecuted. But questions around what constitutes aggression, who decides, and, most important, how effective this legal change will be in reducing the incidence of war remain. This essay considers these questions in light of two recent books on the criminalization of aggression: Noah W…
Health Diplomacy in Pandemical Times
One likely effect of the COVID-19 pandemic will be an increased focus on health diplomacy, a topic that has rarely been taken up by international relations scholars. After reviewing existing literature on health diplomacy, I argue for the utility of distinguishing states’ aims from their practices of health diplomacy in advancing our understanding of when states engage in health diplomacy with a bilateral, regional, or global scope. The recent hi…
Homelands versus Minelands: Why Do Armed Groups Commit to the Laws of War
Why do some armed groups commit to abide by the laws of war governing belligerent conduct during armed conflict, while others do not? We examine why only half the armed groups approached by the nongovernmental organization Geneva Call have signed a public Deed of Commitment banning the use of antipersonnel land mines. In contrast to recent studies that have tended to focus on the legitimacy concerns of armed groups, we argue that political object…
Response to Rebecca Sanders’s review of Wars of Law: Unintended Consequences in the Regulation of Armed Conflict
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
The Net Cost of the “Western Way of War”: Review of Bugsplat by Bruce Cronin
Religionist Rebels & the Sovereignty of the Divine
Existing categorizations of rebel groups have difficulty classifying some of today's most vexing rebels–those, such as the Islamic State, that reject the Westphalian state system and depend on an almost entirely religious justification for their cause. Such rebel groups often have unlimited war aims and are unwilling to negotiate with the states whose sovereignty they challenge. In this essay, I present the new category of “religionist rebels.” I…
Rebellion, War Aims & the Laws of War
Most wars today are civil wars, but we have little understanding of the conditions under which rebel groups might comply with the laws of war. i ask three questions in this essay: What do the laws of war require of rebels, or armed nonstate actors (ansas)? To what extent are rebels aware of the laws of war? Under what conditions do rebel groups comply with international humanitarian law? i argue that the war aims of rebel groups are key to unders…
An Occult of Irrelevance? Multimethod Research and Engagement with thePolicy World
Many security studies scholars concerned with the policy relevance of the field have argued that the use of quantitative methods impairs policy relevance. I investigate this claim by looking at the relationship between research methods on the one hand and the supply of and demand for policy-relevant research on the other. I argue that scholars using quantitative methods, either on their own or in tandem with qualitative methods, appear to be incr…
International Organizations and their Offspring
A Particular Difference: European Identity and Civilian Targeting
Recent scholarship has found identity variables to be insignificant predictors of civilian targeting in war. Drawing on the European origins of the law of war, this article argues that previous scholarship has neglected the one specification of ‘identity’ that is most theoretically justified for understanding civilian targeting: whether a European state is fighting a non-European state. This article replicates and extends three recent statistical…
Dead Wrong: Battle Deaths, Military Medicine, and Exaggerated Reports of War's Demise
Is war in decline? Recent scholarship suggests that it is. The empirical basis for this argument is a decline in battle deaths over the past several centuries, a standard metric for counting wars and armed conflicts. Dramatic improvements in medical care in conflict zones—in preventive medicine, battlefield medicine, evacuation, and protective equipment—have raised the likelihood of surviving battle wounds today compared with past eras. Thus the …
A Scrap of Paper: Breaking and Making International Law during the Great War
Journal Article A Scrap of Paper: Breaking and Making International Law during the Great War Get access A Scrap of Paper: Breaking and Making International Law during the Great War by Isabel V. Hull. Ithaca, NY, Cornell University Press, 2014. 384 pp. $45.00. Tanisha M. Fazal Tanisha M. Fazal University of Notre Dame Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Political Science Quarterly, Volume 129, Issue 4, Winter 2…
The Fall and Rise of Peace Treaties
When the United States terminated its seven-year occupation of Japan in 1954, it did so having signed a peace treaty. By contrast, the United States tried, unsuccessfully, to persuade Hamid Karzai to sign a Bilateral Security Agreement to accompany the drawdown of U.S. forces in Afghanistan. Even if Karzai had agreed to sign, the draft agreement bears much stronger resemblance to an alliance than to a peace treaty; it does not reference hostiliti…
The Demise of Peace Treaties in Interstate War
The conclusion of peace treaties following war was a norm of international politics for millennia. Since approximately 1950, however, the rate at which interstate wars have ended with a formal peace treaty has declined dramatically. I argue that the costs of concluding peace treaties have risen with the development of the modern canon of the law of war. Using an original data set, I find that states today prefer to avoid admitting to a state of w…
Why States No Longer Declare War
Why have states stopped issuing declarations of war? Declaring war was a norm of international politics for millennia, but now appears to have exited states' behavioral repertoires. I argue that the proliferation of codified jus in bello, the law of war governing belligerent conduct, has created disincentives for states to issue formal declarations of war. The increasing number of codified international laws that govern belligerent conduct during…
State Death: The Politics and Geography of Conquest, Occupation, and Annexation
If you were to examine an 1816 map of the world, you would discover that half the countries represented there no longer exist. Yet since 1945, the disappearance of individual states from the world stage has become rare. State Death is the first book to systematically examine the reasons why some states die while others survive, and the remarkable decline of state death since the end of World War II. Grappling with what is a core issue of internat…
Producing Security: Multinational Corporations, Globalization, and the Changing Calculus of Conflict by Stephen G. Brooks
Journal Article Producing Security: Multinational Corporations, Globalization, and the Changing Calculus of Conflict by Stephen G. Brooks Get access Producing Security: Multinational Corporations, Globalization, and the Changing Calculus of Conflict by Stephen G. Brooks. Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 2005. 336 pp. $35.00. Tanisha M. Fazal Tanisha M. Fazal Columbia University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic G…
State Death in the International System
Under what conditions do states die? Survival is often assumed to be the primary goal of states. Yet international relations scholars have not previously examined the rate or the causes of state death in a systematic way. I argue that buffer states—states caught between two rivals—are particularly vulnerable to being coerced out of existence. Each rival is afraid that its opponent will conquer the buffer that lies between them, gaining strength a…
Apsa Minority Fellows Selected
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. As you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button
State Death in the International System
Under what conditions do states die? Survival is often assumed to be the primary goal of states. Yet international relations scholars have not previously examined the rate or the causes of state death in a systematic way. I argue that buffer states—states caught between two rivals—are particularly vulnerable to being coerced out of existence. Each rival is afraid that its opponent will conquer the buffer that lies between them, gaining strength a…
Health Diplomacy in Pandemical Times
One likely effect of the COVID-19 pandemic will be an increased focus on health diplomacy, a topic that has rarely been taken up by international relations scholars. After reviewing existing literature on health diplomacy, I argue for the utility of distinguishing states’ aims from their practices of health diplomacy in advancing our understanding of when states engage in health diplomacy with a bilateral, regional, or global scope. The recent hi…
Dead Wrong: Battle Deaths, Military Medicine, and Exaggerated Reports of War's Demise
Is war in decline? Recent scholarship suggests that it is. The empirical basis for this argument is a decline in battle deaths over the past several centuries, a standard metric for counting wars and armed conflicts. Dramatic improvements in medical care in conflict zones—in preventive medicine, battlefield medicine, evacuation, and protective equipment—have raised the likelihood of surviving battle wounds today compared with past eras. Thus the …
Why States No Longer Declare War
Why have states stopped issuing declarations of war? Declaring war was a norm of international politics for millennia, but now appears to have exited states' behavioral repertoires. I argue that the proliferation of codified jus in bello, the law of war governing belligerent conduct, has created disincentives for states to issue formal declarations of war. The increasing number of codified international laws that govern belligerent conduct during…
Rebellion, War Aims & the Laws of War
Most wars today are civil wars, but we have little understanding of the conditions under which rebel groups might comply with the laws of war. i ask three questions in this essay: What do the laws of war require of rebels, or armed nonstate actors (ansas)? To what extent are rebels aware of the laws of war? Under what conditions do rebel groups comply with international humanitarian law? i argue that the war aims of rebel groups are key to unders…
The Demise of Peace Treaties in Interstate War
The conclusion of peace treaties following war was a norm of international politics for millennia. Since approximately 1950, however, the rate at which interstate wars have ended with a formal peace treaty has declined dramatically. I argue that the costs of concluding peace treaties have risen with the development of the modern canon of the law of war. Using an original data set, I find that states today prefer to avoid admitting to a state of w…
Life and Limb: New Estimates of Casualty Aversion in the United States
Dramatic improvements in US military medicine have produced an equally dramatic shift in the kinds of battle casualties the US military has sustained in its most recent wars. Specifically, there has been a notable increase in the ratio of nonfatal to fatal casualties. Most studies of casualty aversion in the United States, however, have focused on fatal casualties. Using a series of survey experiments, I investigate whether respondents are equall…
A Particular Difference: European Identity and Civilian Targeting
Recent scholarship has found identity variables to be insignificant predictors of civilian targeting in war. Drawing on the European origins of the law of war, this article argues that previous scholarship has neglected the one specification of ‘identity’ that is most theoretically justified for understanding civilian targeting: whether a European state is fighting a non-European state. This article replicates and extends three recent statistical…
Homelands versus Minelands: Why Do Armed Groups Commit to the Laws of War
Why do some armed groups commit to abide by the laws of war governing belligerent conduct during armed conflict, while others do not? We examine why only half the armed groups approached by the nongovernmental organization Geneva Call have signed a public Deed of Commitment banning the use of antipersonnel land mines. In contrast to recent studies that have tended to focus on the legitimacy concerns of armed groups, we argue that political object…
SorryNotSorry: Why states neither confirm nor deny responsibility for cyber operations
States accused of perpetrating cyber operations typically do not confirm or deny responsibility. They issue ‘non-denial denials’ or refuse to comment on the accusations. These ambiguous signals are prevalent, but they are largely ignored in the existing cyber literature, which tends to treat credit claiming as a binary choice. The ambiguity of non-denial denials and ‘non-comments’ allows states to accomplish two seemingly opposed goals: maintaini…
An Occult of Irrelevance? Multimethod Research and Engagement with thePolicy World
Many security studies scholars concerned with the policy relevance of the field have argued that the use of quantitative methods impairs policy relevance. I investigate this claim by looking at the relationship between research methods on the one hand and the supply of and demand for policy-relevant research on the other. I argue that scholars using quantitative methods, either on their own or in tandem with qualitative methods, appear to be incr…
A Scrap of Paper: Breaking and Making International Law during the Great War
Journal Article A Scrap of Paper: Breaking and Making International Law during the Great War Get access A Scrap of Paper: Breaking and Making International Law during the Great War by Isabel V. Hull. Ithaca, NY, Cornell University Press, 2014. 384 pp. $45.00. Tanisha M. Fazal Tanisha M. Fazal University of Notre Dame Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Political Science Quarterly, Volume 129, Issue 4, Winter 2…
The Fall and Rise of Peace Treaties
When the United States terminated its seven-year occupation of Japan in 1954, it did so having signed a peace treaty. By contrast, the United States tried, unsuccessfully, to persuade Hamid Karzai to sign a Bilateral Security Agreement to accompany the drawdown of U.S. forces in Afghanistan. Even if Karzai had agreed to sign, the draft agreement bears much stronger resemblance to an alliance than to a peace treaty; it does not reference hostiliti…
Apsa Minority Fellows Selected
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. As you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button
State Death in the International System
Under what conditions do states die? Survival is often assumed to be the primary goal of states. Yet international relations scholars have not previously examined the rate or the causes of state death in a systematic way. I argue that buffer states—states caught between two rivals—are particularly vulnerable to being coerced out of existence. Each rival is afraid that its opponent will conquer the buffer that lies between them, gaining strength a…
Producing Security: Multinational Corporations, Globalization, and the Changing Calculus of Conflict by Stephen G. Brooks
Journal Article Producing Security: Multinational Corporations, Globalization, and the Changing Calculus of Conflict by Stephen G. Brooks Get access Producing Security: Multinational Corporations, Globalization, and the Changing Calculus of Conflict by Stephen G. Brooks. Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 2005. 336 pp. $35.00. Tanisha M. Fazal Tanisha M. Fazal Columbia University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic G…
State Death: The Politics and Geography of Conquest, Occupation, and Annexation
If you were to examine an 1816 map of the world, you would discover that half the countries represented there no longer exist. Yet since 1945, the disappearance of individual states from the world stage has become rare. State Death is the first book to systematically examine the reasons why some states die while others survive, and the remarkable decline of state death since the end of World War II. Grappling with what is a core issue of internat…
Why States No Longer Declare War
Why have states stopped issuing declarations of war? Declaring war was a norm of international politics for millennia, but now appears to have exited states' behavioral repertoires. I argue that the proliferation of codified jus in bello, the law of war governing belligerent conduct, has created disincentives for states to issue formal declarations of war. The increasing number of codified international laws that govern belligerent conduct during…
The Demise of Peace Treaties in Interstate War
The conclusion of peace treaties following war was a norm of international politics for millennia. Since approximately 1950, however, the rate at which interstate wars have ended with a formal peace treaty has declined dramatically. I argue that the costs of concluding peace treaties have risen with the development of the modern canon of the law of war. Using an original data set, I find that states today prefer to avoid admitting to a state of w…
Dead Wrong: Battle Deaths, Military Medicine, and Exaggerated Reports of War's Demise
Is war in decline? Recent scholarship suggests that it is. The empirical basis for this argument is a decline in battle deaths over the past several centuries, a standard metric for counting wars and armed conflicts. Dramatic improvements in medical care in conflict zones—in preventive medicine, battlefield medicine, evacuation, and protective equipment—have raised the likelihood of surviving battle wounds today compared with past eras. Thus the …
A Scrap of Paper: Breaking and Making International Law during the Great War
Journal Article A Scrap of Paper: Breaking and Making International Law during the Great War Get access A Scrap of Paper: Breaking and Making International Law during the Great War by Isabel V. Hull. Ithaca, NY, Cornell University Press, 2014. 384 pp. $45.00. Tanisha M. Fazal Tanisha M. Fazal University of Notre Dame Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Political Science Quarterly, Volume 129, Issue 4, Winter 2…
The Fall and Rise of Peace Treaties
When the United States terminated its seven-year occupation of Japan in 1954, it did so having signed a peace treaty. By contrast, the United States tried, unsuccessfully, to persuade Hamid Karzai to sign a Bilateral Security Agreement to accompany the drawdown of U.S. forces in Afghanistan. Even if Karzai had agreed to sign, the draft agreement bears much stronger resemblance to an alliance than to a peace treaty; it does not reference hostiliti…
International Organizations and their Offspring
A Particular Difference: European Identity and Civilian Targeting
Recent scholarship has found identity variables to be insignificant predictors of civilian targeting in war. Drawing on the European origins of the law of war, this article argues that previous scholarship has neglected the one specification of ‘identity’ that is most theoretically justified for understanding civilian targeting: whether a European state is fighting a non-European state. This article replicates and extends three recent statistical…
An Occult of Irrelevance? Multimethod Research and Engagement with thePolicy World
Many security studies scholars concerned with the policy relevance of the field have argued that the use of quantitative methods impairs policy relevance. I investigate this claim by looking at the relationship between research methods on the one hand and the supply of and demand for policy-relevant research on the other. I argue that scholars using quantitative methods, either on their own or in tandem with qualitative methods, appear to be incr…
Rebellion, War Aims & the Laws of War
Most wars today are civil wars, but we have little understanding of the conditions under which rebel groups might comply with the laws of war. i ask three questions in this essay: What do the laws of war require of rebels, or armed nonstate actors (ansas)? To what extent are rebels aware of the laws of war? Under what conditions do rebel groups comply with international humanitarian law? i argue that the war aims of rebel groups are key to unders…
Religionist Rebels & the Sovereignty of the Divine
Existing categorizations of rebel groups have difficulty classifying some of today's most vexing rebels–those, such as the Islamic State, that reject the Westphalian state system and depend on an almost entirely religious justification for their cause. Such rebel groups often have unlimited war aims and are unwilling to negotiate with the states whose sovereignty they challenge. In this essay, I present the new category of “religionist rebels.” I…
Homelands versus Minelands: Why Do Armed Groups Commit to the Laws of War
Why do some armed groups commit to abide by the laws of war governing belligerent conduct during armed conflict, while others do not? We examine why only half the armed groups approached by the nongovernmental organization Geneva Call have signed a public Deed of Commitment banning the use of antipersonnel land mines. In contrast to recent studies that have tended to focus on the legitimacy concerns of armed groups, we argue that political object…
Response to Rebecca Sanders’s review of Wars of Law: Unintended Consequences in the Regulation of Armed Conflict
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
The Net Cost of the “Western Way of War”: Review of Bugsplat by Bruce Cronin
Lengthening the Shadow of International Law
What will be the consequences of the criminalization of aggression? In 2010, the International Criminal Court made aggression a crime for which individuals can be prosecuted. But questions around what constitutes aggression, who decides, and, most important, how effective this legal change will be in reducing the incidence of war remain. This essay considers these questions in light of two recent books on the criminalization of aggression: Noah W…
Health Diplomacy in Pandemical Times
One likely effect of the COVID-19 pandemic will be an increased focus on health diplomacy, a topic that has rarely been taken up by international relations scholars. After reviewing existing literature on health diplomacy, I argue for the utility of distinguishing states’ aims from their practices of health diplomacy in advancing our understanding of when states engage in health diplomacy with a bilateral, regional, or global scope. The recent hi…
SorryNotSorry: Why states neither confirm nor deny responsibility for cyber operations
States accused of perpetrating cyber operations typically do not confirm or deny responsibility. They issue ‘non-denial denials’ or refuse to comment on the accusations. These ambiguous signals are prevalent, but they are largely ignored in the existing cyber literature, which tends to treat credit claiming as a binary choice. The ambiguity of non-denial denials and ‘non-comments’ allows states to accomplish two seemingly opposed goals: maintaini…
Life and Limb: New Estimates of Casualty Aversion in the United States
Dramatic improvements in US military medicine have produced an equally dramatic shift in the kinds of battle casualties the US military has sustained in its most recent wars. Specifically, there has been a notable increase in the ratio of nonfatal to fatal casualties. Most studies of casualty aversion in the United States, however, have focused on fatal casualties. Using a series of survey experiments, I investigate whether respondents are equall…
Conceptualizing and Operationalizing the “Interstate System”
Is War in Decline
The claim that war is in decline has gained considerable traction among analysts and policy makers. This review surveys the empirical data as well as the theoretical arguments for a decline of war. It concludes that, while great power wars have declined since 1945, war in general is not necessarily in decline. Critiques of the claim that war is in decline range from the statistical to the anthropological. While war is not necessarily in decline, …
Military Medicine and Military Effectiveness
U.S. Combat Medicine and Military Morale
While a number of studies have argued for a relationship between military morale and military effectiveness, analyses of the sources of morale have overlooked the possible role of military medicine. We suggest that military medicine may be an important predictor of morale. We assess this claim via an observational survey of U.S. military veterans and a survey experiment of active-duty U.S. military personnel. We find a statistically significant r…
Political science (20 works) · Law (17 works) · Law (15 works) · Politics (10 works) · Sociology (9 works) · Computer Science (7 works) · Global Peace and Security Dynamics (7 works) · Spanish Civil War (7 works) · Economics (6 works) · History (6 works)