The Conflict Research Society congratulates Dr. Kristin Bakke on winning the 2016 Conflict Research Society Book of the Year Prize for Decentralization and Intrastate Struggles: Chechnya, Punjab and Quebec published by Cambridge University Press (2015).
The prize honours research on conflict and peace that is contemporary, exceptional, and world leading, and which provides an invaluable contribution to the literature on conflict and peace.
The prize committee received over 50 nominations from conflict/peace researchers, institutions, practitioners and publishers. The committee chose the winning title out of 4 short-listed books based on criteria such as how well the book demonstrates a significant contribution to conflict/peace studies, impact factor, methodological rigour, robustness and credibility of the findings, the extent to which it is interdisciplinary, quality of writing and presentation. The committee also prioritized first time book authors.
The prize committee noted that Decentralization and Intrastate Struggles is “an excellent critical study of decentralisation as a response to secessionist conflicts.” It is an impressive first book from “an academic who has very quickly been established as a leading researcher in conflict studies.” Committee members praised the book for its “clear thesis that significantly adds to the theoretical and empirical debates on conflict management.” In particular, the committee concentrated on the extent which it uses robust methods to contribute to existing debates: “The study uses new data, new quantitative analysis and presents original case studies done on the basis of a mass of interviewing and travel to the regions concerned (except Chechnya). It is a very thorough-going piece of original research.”
This year’s prize committee had to choose out of 4 very good books. Further congratulations are extended to the following running up titles (in no particular order):
Wallensteen, Peter. (2015) Quality Peace: Peacebuilding, Victory and World Order. Oxford: Oxford University Press
Mitchell, Christopher (2014) The Nature of Intractable Conflict: Resolution in the 21st Century. London: Palgrave Macmillan
Bar-Tal, Daniel (2015) (first published 2013) Intractable Conflicts: Socio-Psychological Foundations and Dynamics. Cambridge: Cambridge University.
The prize winner (Dr. Kristin Bakke) is invited to the CRS annual conference to receive their prize and to provide a short presentation on their work at the CRS conference at Trinity College, Dublin, September, 2016.
For more information on the CRS Book of the Year Prize please see https://conflictresearchsociety.org/the-conflict-research-society-book-of-the-year/