Robert Blair, Assistant Professor at Brown University
On December 2, 2021, the Center for Positive/Empirical Analysis of Political Economy invited Assistant Professor Robert Blair of Brown University and held an online workshop entitled “Peacekeeping, Policing, and the Rule of Law after Civil War”.
Based on his book “Peacekeeping, Policing, and the Rule of Law after Civil War”, published by the Cambridge University Press, Prof. Blair focused on policing for UN peacekeeping operations in Liberia. In the workshop, he also introduced the latest empirical work that discussed the provision of the rule of law and the conditions under which the people would accept it.
His attitude of obtaining multifaceted data support by making full use of bias removal and causal inference methods such as list experiments and instrumental variable methods provided extremely useful guidelines, especially with students who are going to present cutting-edge political science research papers.
After the presentation, a lively question and answer session followed. This workshop was a very valuable opportunity for Waseda students to directly enjoy the guidance of Prof. Blair, a well-known researcher in the field of UN peacekeeping operations.
Student’s comments:
KIKUCHI, Masanori
Ph.D. student at the Graduate School of Political Science, Waseda University
In the workshop, we had a presentation by Prof. Robert Blair from his book “Peacekeeping, Policing, and the Rule of Law after the Civil War,” where he examines the effects of PKO activities on the establishment of the rule of law. I was very impressed by the way in which he presents evidence, combining various data sets and quantitative methods, for his argument on the consequences of PKOs, which have divided opinions among scholars. It was a very fruitful 90 minutes. I want to thank Prof. Blair for his talk, as well as professors and the SGU unit for planning and organizing this workshop.
