On 12 February 2016 Evelyne Tauchnitz defended her PhD thesis in International Studies, entitled “When States Employ Lethal Force against Their Own Citizens : Human Life Protection Norms on a Crossroad”, at the Graduate Institute. Associate Professor Stephanie Hofmann  presided the committee, which included the thesis co-directors, Professor Keith Krause, from the Institute, and Professor Walter Kälin, from the University of Bern, as well as Professor Karin Fierke, from the University of St Andrews, UK. Ms Tauchnitz examines the continuing use of force by states and provides a detailed understanding of the conditions under which decision-makers will, or will not, respect and protect human life on the national level.

How did you proceed, methodologically speaking, to address the vast issue of state violence and human life protection norms?

I applied a comparative and qualitative case study design based on “grounded theory” and set within the constructivist paradigm of international relations. The analytical framework builds on the concept of norms as manifested in the discourses of key decision-makers such as parliamentary debates, public speeches, government policies and reports, media reporting and official press releases. The empirical case studies are situated in two countries – India and Mexico – and two time episodes – the 1960s–70s and nowadays (the 2000s onwards). For each country and time episode, a “good” and a “bad” example was examined. This comparative setting allowed me to address two vital questions. Firstly, under which conditions are key decision-makers more/less likely to adhere to/violate the fundamental norm that human life shall be respected and protected? And secondly, is there any evidence for a change over time?

And what did you find out?

The main findings of the thesis reveal that the occurrence of state violence does not happen in a vacuum. It depends on certain conditions being present or absent – among them most importantly how the “problem” is framed, how the identity of the “object” of state violence is constructed, what emotions the involved actors experience, and what values are perceived to be at stake. Comparing the discursive logics and rationales at play in the 1960s–70s with the situation nowadays (2000s onwards), it seems that the main changes take place along the categories of how the problem is framed – moving away from a primarily state-centred to a more human-centred concept of security – and which values are at stake – again shifting from more or less nationalistic system-oriented values to more people-centred values. Overall, this has led to an increased concern of key decision-makers to safeguard human life. In the “good” examples, socio-economic and rights-based discourses advocating for an addressing of the underlying root causes of the conflict have gained strength. In the “bad” examples, however, the increased concern for protecting human life has produced a quite ambivalent picture. On the one hand, there does seem to arise some awareness among key decision-makers that the lives of the (potentially) dangerous rebels or criminals might be worthy to be respected, too. On the other hand, however, the strength of the norm that human life shall be protected also presents its major weakness, as the argument that the state has a duty to provide security to its citizens has precisely become a major justification for its resorting to lethal force by the state.

More concretely, can you give us an example of a state’s problematic use of force that your research might help understand?

Let us consider the Mexican Drug War case. Since the start of the Mexican government’s proactive launching of various “security” operations all through the country, the number of drug crime–related deaths has increased significantly, and not only among supposed members of such drug cartels. From the findings of my thesis, it appears that the norm that human life shall be respected and protected by state authorities is effective in its “respect” component but potentially very counter-productive in its “protection” component. In order to make this norm more effective, a certain enlargement of its “scope” so as to include not only the “innocent” citizens’ lives, but the lives of the “bad” guys too, might be one of the most stressing needs of the day. The “innocent” citizens themselves would arguably benefit from such an enlarged scope. The “good” cases which I examined affirm this point: only if the government cares also about the lives of the (potential) rebels and/or criminals is it likely to favour “softer” methods of political reconciliation and dialogue over the use of coercive force.

Originally, how did you choose your PhD subject?

When I started my PhD studies, my research interest was mainly peace and conflict analysis. Later on, I found it beneficial to combine the subject of state violence with its analytic counterpart, the fundamental human right to life. This allowed me not only to focus my work more clearly on what I wanted to empirically examine, but also to enhance the practical significance of my work. If there might be anybody out there who could ever be interested in the main findings of my thesis – they would most likely be professionals working in the field of human rights. In spite of a widespread ratification of the most important human rights treaties by numerous countries, national implementation remains an issue. The goal of my research was to address this shortcoming and contribute to a more detailed understanding of the conditions that encourage key decision-makers to respect and protect human life on the national level. This is also the reason why I explicitly wanted to look not only at incidents of high state violence, but also at “good” examples where potential and real conflicts were handled rather peacefully and with a reconciliatory attitude of state actors.

Finally, what did you like most about your PhD experience?

I have always enjoyed learning new things. This natural curiosity pushed me forward and motivated me also during my research work. It made me travel to India and spend two semesters at the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) in New Delhi, India, my first choice of case studies. More than a year later, I started investigation on the Mexican cases. Both countries posed their own challenges. They pushed me towards and sometimes past my limits, and in their uneasiness, made me grow. That is really the best part I remember of my doctoral experience, the opportunity to explore, to fail, to succeed, to fail again and to continue searching – finding and loosing truths and presupposed facts which sometimes contradict and sometimes fit each other, and trying to match it all into one big picture, an academic “story” that is waiting to be written down… One of the reasons why I wish to continue my academic career with a post-doc fellowship is to keep enjoying this incredible freedom to grow both in professional and personal terms. 

Full citation: Tauchnitz, Evelyne. “When States Employ Lethal Force against Their Own Citizens : Human Life Protection Norms on a Crossroad”. PhD thesis, Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, 2016.

Illustration: photograph of a graffiti by Banksy.