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“Cherry-Picked” Humanitarian Interventions: A Complexity Approach to Explaining Libya 2011

“Cherry-Picked” Humanitarian Interventions: A Complexity Approach to Explaining Libya 2011 . By Sarah Wilbanks Senior Thesis, International Relations Brown University, 2012 . Research Puzzle. Long history of selectivity in military humanitarian interventions Libya intervention

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“Cherry-Picked” Humanitarian Interventions: A Complexity Approach to Explaining Libya 2011

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  1. “Cherry-Picked” Humanitarian Interventions:A Complexity Approach to Explaining Libya 2011 By Sarah Wilbanks Senior Thesis, International Relations Brown University, 2012

  2. Research Puzzle • Long history of selectivity in military humanitarian interventions • Libya intervention • Resolution 1973 passed one month after the outbreak of violence • Why Libya and not Rwanda, Darfur, DRC, Syria?

  3. Research Question Given the selectivity of military humanitarian interventions in the post-Cold War era, what explains the swift and multilateral intervention in Libya in March 2011?

  4. Intellectual Context

  5. My Argument A comprehensive and realistic understanding of why the international community intervened in Libya in 2011 can only be obtained through the adoption of a complexity approach to the study of international politics.

  6. What is a complexity? • “An interdisciplinary field of research that seeks to explain how large numbers of relatively simple entities organize themselves without the benefit of any central controller into a collective whole that creates patterns, uses information, and in some cases, evolves and learns.” – Melanie Mitchell, Complexity: A Guided Tour • Examines the humanitarian intervention in Libya as a complex system made up of intertwined actors and components that interact, respond to, and evolve with one another and their environment • Complex system characteristics: • Self-organization • Non-linearity • Emergence Source: R. Lewin, Complexity: Life at the Edge of Chaos (New York, NY: MacMillan Publishing Company), 1992.

  7. Research Design • Methods: • Single case study approach • Process tracing/Counterfactual analysis • John Holland’s framework of complexity: • Focuses on the interactions, adaptations, evolution, and emergences of system components • Describes the processes of the complex system

  8. Findings • 4 emergences of unique international orders • Significantly narrowed the path of available options, and drove the international community towards a military intervention • International order = behavior, norms, structures • 5 essential system variables • Catalyzed emergences

  9. The International Community’s Path to Military Intervention in Libya 2011 Adapted from: Jörg Sydow, Georg Schreyögg, and Jochen Koch. “Organizational Path Dependence: Opening the Black Box,” Academy of Management Review 34, no. 4 (2009): 689-709, 692.

  10. Implications and Future Research • Implications • Can help actors realize the most efficient path of action for the situation at hand • Future research must incorporate factors and actor interactions outside of conventional theories • Future Research • Cross-case comparison • May reveal patterns prevalent throughout previous interventions

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