Hilary Matfess
Biographic Data
| ID | 5791741 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Hilary Matfess |
| GIVEN NAMES | Hilary |
| FAMILY NAME | Matfess |
| SIGNATURE | MATFESS H |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Denver |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 17 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 103 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 17 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2015 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
Convergence and contestation: The Women, Peace and Security agenda in central Mali
Women’s Wings in Rebel Organisations: Prevalence, Purposes and Variations
Women's wings are a common feature of rebellions but we lack a systematic accounting of how women organise themselves or are organised within and across armed groups.In this article we describe the functions of and variation across women's wings globally.We identify significant variation in the types, purposes, and autonomy of women's wings inside and between groups.We also highlight similarities across units, including their role in mobilising w…
From the public to the private: Mapping women’s formal and informal participation in peacebuilding in Mali
How do women navigate traditional and informal governance structures to influence matters of communal peace and security? We leverage focus group discussions with around 180 participants and 10 key informant interviews from five different villages in the Ségou region to provide a case study of women’s contributions to peacebuilding in Central Mali. Our research aims to understand which women are able to influence communal dynamics regarding peace…
Introducing the Women's Activities in Armed Rebellion (Waar) project, 1946-2015
This article introduces the Women's Activities in Armed Rebellion (WAAR) project, a multi-methods project that includes a cross-sectional dataset of women's participation in more than 370 organizations fighting in civil conflicts between 1946 and 2015. The dataset features 22 measures of women's participation in rebel organizations: it includes prevalence and presence measures of women's participation in combat, non-combat and leadership roles; d…
New Frontiers in Rebel Socialisation: Considering Care and Marriage
Non-state armed groups confront myriad challenges, but perhaps primary among them is the issue of how to transform civilians into rebels. The study of socialisation in non-state armed groups has traced the various strategies that rebels have adopted to teach rebels what they are fighting for, their position within the organisation and what behaviour is expected of them. The effects of rebel socialisation do not only affect the dynamics of how war…
Hybrid sovereignty in world politics
Journal Article Hybrid sovereignty in world politics Get access Hybrid sovereignty in world politics. By Swati Srivastava. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. 2022. 280pp. £75.00. Isbn978 1 00920 450 7. Available as e-book. Hilary Matfess Hilary Matfess University of Denver, USA Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar International Affairs, Volume 99, Issue 3, May 2023, Pages 1313–1314, https://doi.org/10.1…
No safety in numbers: Political representation and political violence targeting women in Kenya
Although quotas and other efforts to increase women’s political participation can ensure that the descriptive representation of women changes dramatically over a short period of time, it is not clear that social norms and political interests can shift as quickly as the distribution of legislative seats. Rather than being interpreted as a move toward a more pluralistic and representative form of government, the increased number of women in office …
Alms, Arms, And The Aftermath: The Legacies Of Rebel Provision Of Humanitarian Aid In Ethiopia
The 1983–1985 famine in Ethiopia is perhaps one of the most internationally recognized instances of acute human suffering. Although the international community’s response to the crisis and the ways in which the famine reshaped the nature of humanitarian aid have been probed, less often discussed is that one of the most effective relief organizations delivering assistance—the Relief Society of Tigray (REST)—was the humanitarian wing of an insurgen…
Opportunistic Repression: Civilian Targeting by the State in Response to Covid-19
Across the globe, states have attempted to contain COVID-19 by restricting movement, closing schools and businesses, and banning large gatherings. Such measures have expanded the degree of sanctioned state intervention into civilians' lives. But existing theories of preventive and responsive repression cannot explain why some countries experienced surges in repression after states in Africa initiated COVID-19-related lockdowns. While responsive r…
Tanzania: The Roots of Repression
The flawed 2020 Tanzanian elections are typically blamed on an authoritarian turn instigated by the late President John Magufuli (1959–2021). This articles argues that focusing excessively on Magufuli obscures the authoritarian foundations of CCM rule: The strategies used to maintain political control under his tenure have deep roots, and have not taken CCM off a democratizing path it was never on in the first place. This conclusion underlines th…
Part and Parcel? Examining Al Shabaab and Boko Haram’s Violence Targeting Civilians and Violence Targeting Women
In an effort to produce a more holistic and nuanced understanding of the violence women face in conflict, this article describes al Shabaab and Boko Haram’s respective patterns of political violence targeting women and compares them to one another. This article also describes and compares their respective political violence targeting civilians. This analysis, using data from the the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED), provides t…
Response to Cook and Thies
Suicide Squads: The Logic of Linked Suicide Bombings
What strategic logics underlie terrorist groups’ use of linked suicide attacks? Are the goals that groups seek to achieve when sending linked bombing teams somehow inherently different than when sending individual suicide bombers? To answer these questions, this article introduces three typologies of linked suicide bomber detonation profiles—simultaneous, sequential, and nonproximate—and theorizes why terrorist groups might view each type of link…
Strong NGOs and weak states: Pursuing gender justice in the Democratic Republic of Congo and South Africa
Milli Lake offers an engaging and nuanced depiction of justice for gender-based crimes in both the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and South Africa. The book identifies and unpacks a paradox: gender crimes are often better addressed in conflict-ridden DRC, than in South Africa, where the state is more robust and capable. Lake traces this difference to the role of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in each country; in the DRC, where stat…
Women and the War on Boko Haram: Wives, Weapons, Witnesses
For over a decade, Boko Haram has waged a campaign of terror across northeastern Nigeria. In 2014, the kidnapping of 276 girls in Chibok shocked the world, giving rise to the #BringBackOurGirls movement. Yet Boko Haram’s campaign of violence against women and girls goes far beyond the Chibok abductions. From its inception, the group has systematically exploited women to advance its aims. Perhaps more disturbing still, some Nigerian women have cho…
In Plain Sight: The Neglected Linkage between Brideprice and Violent Conflict
Approximately seventy-five percent of the world's population lives in countries where asset exchange upon marriage is obligatory. Rising brideprice—money or gifts provided to a woman's family by the groom and his family as part of marriage arrangements—is a common if overlooked catalyst of violent conflict. In patrilineal (and some matrilineal) societies where brideprice is practiced, a man's social status is directly connected to his marital sta…
Rwanda and Ethiopia: Developmental Authoritarianism and the New Politics of African Strong Men
Current classification systems create typologies of authoritarian regimes that may overlook the importance of national policies. Rwanda and Ethiopia in particular are perplexing case studies of post-1990s governance. Both nations are characterized by high growth economies with significant state involvement and the formal institutions of democracy, but deeply troubling patterns of domestic governance. This article proposes a new category of author…
Rwanda and Ethiopia: Developmental Authoritarianism and the New Politics of African Strong Men
Current classification systems create typologies of authoritarian regimes that may overlook the importance of national policies. Rwanda and Ethiopia in particular are perplexing case studies of post-1990s governance. Both nations are characterized by high growth economies with significant state involvement and the formal institutions of democracy, but deeply troubling patterns of domestic governance. This article proposes a new category of author…
Opportunistic Repression: Civilian Targeting by the State in Response to Covid-19
Across the globe, states have attempted to contain COVID-19 by restricting movement, closing schools and businesses, and banning large gatherings. Such measures have expanded the degree of sanctioned state intervention into civilians' lives. But existing theories of preventive and responsive repression cannot explain why some countries experienced surges in repression after states in Africa initiated COVID-19-related lockdowns. While responsive r…
Tanzania: The Roots of Repression
The flawed 2020 Tanzanian elections are typically blamed on an authoritarian turn instigated by the late President John Magufuli (1959–2021). This articles argues that focusing excessively on Magufuli obscures the authoritarian foundations of CCM rule: The strategies used to maintain political control under his tenure have deep roots, and have not taken CCM off a democratizing path it was never on in the first place. This conclusion underlines th…
Introducing the Women's Activities in Armed Rebellion (Waar) project, 1946-2015
This article introduces the Women's Activities in Armed Rebellion (WAAR) project, a multi-methods project that includes a cross-sectional dataset of women's participation in more than 370 organizations fighting in civil conflicts between 1946 and 2015. The dataset features 22 measures of women's participation in rebel organizations: it includes prevalence and presence measures of women's participation in combat, non-combat and leadership roles; d…
Suicide Squads: The Logic of Linked Suicide Bombings
What strategic logics underlie terrorist groups’ use of linked suicide attacks? Are the goals that groups seek to achieve when sending linked bombing teams somehow inherently different than when sending individual suicide bombers? To answer these questions, this article introduces three typologies of linked suicide bomber detonation profiles—simultaneous, sequential, and nonproximate—and theorizes why terrorist groups might view each type of link…
In Plain Sight: The Neglected Linkage between Brideprice and Violent Conflict
Approximately seventy-five percent of the world's population lives in countries where asset exchange upon marriage is obligatory. Rising brideprice—money or gifts provided to a woman's family by the groom and his family as part of marriage arrangements—is a common if overlooked catalyst of violent conflict. In patrilineal (and some matrilineal) societies where brideprice is practiced, a man's social status is directly connected to his marital sta…
New Frontiers in Rebel Socialisation: Considering Care and Marriage
Non-state armed groups confront myriad challenges, but perhaps primary among them is the issue of how to transform civilians into rebels. The study of socialisation in non-state armed groups has traced the various strategies that rebels have adopted to teach rebels what they are fighting for, their position within the organisation and what behaviour is expected of them. The effects of rebel socialisation do not only affect the dynamics of how war…
Women’s Wings in Rebel Organisations: Prevalence, Purposes and Variations
Women's wings are a common feature of rebellions but we lack a systematic accounting of how women organise themselves or are organised within and across armed groups.In this article we describe the functions of and variation across women's wings globally.We identify significant variation in the types, purposes, and autonomy of women's wings inside and between groups.We also highlight similarities across units, including their role in mobilising w…
No safety in numbers: Political representation and political violence targeting women in Kenya
Although quotas and other efforts to increase women’s political participation can ensure that the descriptive representation of women changes dramatically over a short period of time, it is not clear that social norms and political interests can shift as quickly as the distribution of legislative seats. Rather than being interpreted as a move toward a more pluralistic and representative form of government, the increased number of women in office …
Alms, Arms, And The Aftermath: The Legacies Of Rebel Provision Of Humanitarian Aid In Ethiopia
The 1983–1985 famine in Ethiopia is perhaps one of the most internationally recognized instances of acute human suffering. Although the international community’s response to the crisis and the ways in which the famine reshaped the nature of humanitarian aid have been probed, less often discussed is that one of the most effective relief organizations delivering assistance—the Relief Society of Tigray (REST)—was the humanitarian wing of an insurgen…
Part and Parcel? Examining Al Shabaab and Boko Haram’s Violence Targeting Civilians and Violence Targeting Women
In an effort to produce a more holistic and nuanced understanding of the violence women face in conflict, this article describes al Shabaab and Boko Haram’s respective patterns of political violence targeting women and compares them to one another. This article also describes and compares their respective political violence targeting civilians. This analysis, using data from the the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED), provides t…
Response to Cook and Thies
Rwanda and Ethiopia: Developmental Authoritarianism and the New Politics of African Strong Men
Current classification systems create typologies of authoritarian regimes that may overlook the importance of national policies. Rwanda and Ethiopia in particular are perplexing case studies of post-1990s governance. Both nations are characterized by high growth economies with significant state involvement and the formal institutions of democracy, but deeply troubling patterns of domestic governance. This article proposes a new category of author…
Women and the War on Boko Haram: Wives, Weapons, Witnesses
For over a decade, Boko Haram has waged a campaign of terror across northeastern Nigeria. In 2014, the kidnapping of 276 girls in Chibok shocked the world, giving rise to the #BringBackOurGirls movement. Yet Boko Haram’s campaign of violence against women and girls goes far beyond the Chibok abductions. From its inception, the group has systematically exploited women to advance its aims. Perhaps more disturbing still, some Nigerian women have cho…
In Plain Sight: The Neglected Linkage between Brideprice and Violent Conflict
Approximately seventy-five percent of the world's population lives in countries where asset exchange upon marriage is obligatory. Rising brideprice—money or gifts provided to a woman's family by the groom and his family as part of marriage arrangements—is a common if overlooked catalyst of violent conflict. In patrilineal (and some matrilineal) societies where brideprice is practiced, a man's social status is directly connected to his marital sta…
Suicide Squads: The Logic of Linked Suicide Bombings
What strategic logics underlie terrorist groups’ use of linked suicide attacks? Are the goals that groups seek to achieve when sending linked bombing teams somehow inherently different than when sending individual suicide bombers? To answer these questions, this article introduces three typologies of linked suicide bomber detonation profiles—simultaneous, sequential, and nonproximate—and theorizes why terrorist groups might view each type of link…
Strong NGOs and weak states: Pursuing gender justice in the Democratic Republic of Congo and South Africa
Milli Lake offers an engaging and nuanced depiction of justice for gender-based crimes in both the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and South Africa. The book identifies and unpacks a paradox: gender crimes are often better addressed in conflict-ridden DRC, than in South Africa, where the state is more robust and capable. Lake traces this difference to the role of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in each country; in the DRC, where stat…
Part and Parcel? Examining Al Shabaab and Boko Haram’s Violence Targeting Civilians and Violence Targeting Women
In an effort to produce a more holistic and nuanced understanding of the violence women face in conflict, this article describes al Shabaab and Boko Haram’s respective patterns of political violence targeting women and compares them to one another. This article also describes and compares their respective political violence targeting civilians. This analysis, using data from the the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED), provides t…
Response to Cook and Thies
Opportunistic Repression: Civilian Targeting by the State in Response to Covid-19
Across the globe, states have attempted to contain COVID-19 by restricting movement, closing schools and businesses, and banning large gatherings. Such measures have expanded the degree of sanctioned state intervention into civilians' lives. But existing theories of preventive and responsive repression cannot explain why some countries experienced surges in repression after states in Africa initiated COVID-19-related lockdowns. While responsive r…
Tanzania: The Roots of Repression
The flawed 2020 Tanzanian elections are typically blamed on an authoritarian turn instigated by the late President John Magufuli (1959–2021). This articles argues that focusing excessively on Magufuli obscures the authoritarian foundations of CCM rule: The strategies used to maintain political control under his tenure have deep roots, and have not taken CCM off a democratizing path it was never on in the first place. This conclusion underlines th…
No safety in numbers: Political representation and political violence targeting women in Kenya
Although quotas and other efforts to increase women’s political participation can ensure that the descriptive representation of women changes dramatically over a short period of time, it is not clear that social norms and political interests can shift as quickly as the distribution of legislative seats. Rather than being interpreted as a move toward a more pluralistic and representative form of government, the increased number of women in office …
Alms, Arms, And The Aftermath: The Legacies Of Rebel Provision Of Humanitarian Aid In Ethiopia
The 1983–1985 famine in Ethiopia is perhaps one of the most internationally recognized instances of acute human suffering. Although the international community’s response to the crisis and the ways in which the famine reshaped the nature of humanitarian aid have been probed, less often discussed is that one of the most effective relief organizations delivering assistance—the Relief Society of Tigray (REST)—was the humanitarian wing of an insurgen…
New Frontiers in Rebel Socialisation: Considering Care and Marriage
Non-state armed groups confront myriad challenges, but perhaps primary among them is the issue of how to transform civilians into rebels. The study of socialisation in non-state armed groups has traced the various strategies that rebels have adopted to teach rebels what they are fighting for, their position within the organisation and what behaviour is expected of them. The effects of rebel socialisation do not only affect the dynamics of how war…
Hybrid sovereignty in world politics
Journal Article Hybrid sovereignty in world politics Get access Hybrid sovereignty in world politics. By Swati Srivastava. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. 2022. 280pp. £75.00. Isbn978 1 00920 450 7. Available as e-book. Hilary Matfess Hilary Matfess University of Denver, USA Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar International Affairs, Volume 99, Issue 3, May 2023, Pages 1313–1314, https://doi.org/10.1…
Women’s Wings in Rebel Organisations: Prevalence, Purposes and Variations
Women's wings are a common feature of rebellions but we lack a systematic accounting of how women organise themselves or are organised within and across armed groups.In this article we describe the functions of and variation across women's wings globally.We identify significant variation in the types, purposes, and autonomy of women's wings inside and between groups.We also highlight similarities across units, including their role in mobilising w…
From the public to the private: Mapping women’s formal and informal participation in peacebuilding in Mali
How do women navigate traditional and informal governance structures to influence matters of communal peace and security? We leverage focus group discussions with around 180 participants and 10 key informant interviews from five different villages in the Ségou region to provide a case study of women’s contributions to peacebuilding in Central Mali. Our research aims to understand which women are able to influence communal dynamics regarding peace…
Introducing the Women's Activities in Armed Rebellion (Waar) project, 1946-2015
This article introduces the Women's Activities in Armed Rebellion (WAAR) project, a multi-methods project that includes a cross-sectional dataset of women's participation in more than 370 organizations fighting in civil conflicts between 1946 and 2015. The dataset features 22 measures of women's participation in rebel organizations: it includes prevalence and presence measures of women's participation in combat, non-combat and leadership roles; d…
Convergence and contestation: The Women, Peace and Security agenda in central Mali
Political science (16 works) · Law (12 works) · Sociology (12 works) · Political economy (9 works) · Politics (9 works) · Gender, Security, and Conflict (7 works) · Law (7 works) · Democracy (5 works) · Economics (5 works) · Political Conflict and Governance (5 works)