Jeffrey T. Checkel

Education

B.S. (Cornell); Ph.D. (M.I.T.)

Jeffrey T. Checkel is Professor of International Studies and Simons Chair in International Law and Human Security. His reviews and articles have appeared in American Political Science Review, Comparative Political Studies, European Journal of International Relations, European Union Politics, International Organization, International Studies Quarterly, International Studies Review, Review of International Studies and World Politics. In addition, he is the author of Ideas and International Political Change: Soviet/Russian Behavior and the End of the Cold War (Yale University Press, 1997), editor of International Institutions and Socialization in Europe (Cambridge University Press, 2007), co-editor (with Peter J. Katzenstein) of European Identity (Cambridge University Press, 2009), and editor of Transnational Dynamics of Civil War (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming).

In addition to his position at SFU, Checkel is also Research Professor, Centre for the Study of Civil War, Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO), where he leads a working group on the ‘Social Dynamics of Civil War.’

Latest News

• 5.12: Sage Handbook of International Relations - Chapter on theoretical pluralism now available.
  
• 4.12: Sage Series on the Foundations of International Relations - First two books now published!
  
• 4.12: Simons Papers in Security and Development celebrates its second year by publishing 19th paper. Click here for details.
  
• 3.12: Authors' workshop on 'Process Tracing in the Social Sciences: From Metaphor to Analytic Tool' - Click here for workshop program.
• 1.12: Latest workshop papers now on-line - Click here for Oxford norm entrepreneur memo and here for Berlin European public sphere chapter.
• 8.11: Simons Series in the Social Dynamics of Peace and Conflict announces Fall 2011 speakers. Click here for more details!
• 7.11: Transnationalism/civil-war project now forthcoming from Cambridge University Press!
• 1.11: International workshop on 'Social Dynamics of Civil War' - Click here for think-piece/brainstorming memo, here for workshop program, and here for framework questions.
• 11.10: Checkel elected to the Board of Editors of International Organization, which is recognized as one of the leading international relations journals in the world.
• 3.10: The Checkel/Katzenstein volume on European Identity (Cambridge, 2009) has been selected by Foreign Affairs as one of 9 books representing 'the best scholarship on the EU.'

Alpine Adventures (Fun Stuff!)

• 7.10: Breithorn - Younggrat Traverse
  
• 7.10: Zinal Rothorn - Rotgrat Traverse
• 7.10: Suedlenz-Nadelgrat-Nadelhorn Traverse
• 8.09: Weissmies - Nordgrat Traverse
• 7.09: Monte Rosa - Cresta Rey Traverse
• 7.08: Breithorn - North Face Climb

Areas of Specialization

• International relations - Civil war, international institutions, constructivism, transnational politics
• European integration - Europeanization, socialization dynamics, identity
• Qualitative methods - process tracing, bridging positivist-interpretive techniques

Research

Social Dynamics of Civil War.  Despite headlines suggesting that civil wars are increasingly a technological affair – think drones in Afghanistan and Pakistan - these conflicts remain intensely personal and intimate.  Indeed, individual and group relations loom large in fostering organized violence of this type.  Yet, this human element remains poorly understood due to biases in both theoretical framing (political-economy models) and methodological choice (large N quantitative techniques) within the larger civil-war research program.

This research project thus explores the human, group and social dynamics of civil war.  It does so through the lens of socialization, or the process of inducting actors into the norms and rules of a given community.  Socialization is potentially – and powerfully - operative at all stages of such wars, from pre-conflict indoctrination in schools, to insurgent mobilization, to rebel group recruitment and retention, to post-conflict interventions by the international community.

The project builds upon previous work on socialization, while breaking new ground.   In particular, it goes beyond the roster of non-coercive socialization mechanisms developed by IR scholars over the past decade.  Drawing from anthropological work on urban gangs, political-sociology/IR research on criminal networks, and sociological-anthropological studies of military socialization, it theorizes a broader range of socialization processes, including hazing, the use of sexual violence and strategies of dehumanization.

The goal is not to prove that social dynamics and socialization always operate during civil wars or decisively trump other causal factors.  Rather, the project seeks to develop temporally and spatially delimited theories of ‘conflict socialization’ that specify scope conditions – when and under what conditions they operate.  Their specification then opens a space for linkage to other variables and theories, be they structural, material, incentive based, or discursive. 

Click here for 10.11 research proposal.

Process Tracing in the Social Sciences.  In recent years, process tracing has attracted renewed interest among a growing number of political scientists.  Yet, despite or perhaps because of this fact, a buzzword problem has arisen, where the phrase is invoked, but often with little thought or explication of how it works in practice.  This project – a volume co-edited by myself and Andrew Bennett of Georgetown University - corrects this state of affairs, and does so along several dimensions.  Meta-theoretically, it delineates a clear philosophical basis for process tracing – one that captures most mainstream uses while simultaneously being open to applications by interpretive scholars. Conceptually, contributors explore the relation of process tracing to mechanism-based understandings of causation.  Most important, we develop evaluative operational standards for individual process-tracing accounts - for example, criteria for how micro to go and how to deal with the problem of equifinality.

The book has three parts.  Part I is an introductory essay that sets the stage for the volume as a whole.  It historicizes the term process tracing, grounds it philosophically, and articulates various criteria for distinguishing good process tracing from bad; the analysis is in equal parts conceptual and applied. The six chapters in Part II are the manuscript’s core, assessing the contributions of process tracing in particular research programs or bodies of theory.  Working from a common template of questions – what are the best examples of process tracing in your subfield; the evidentiary and interpretive matters relevant to the topics you research; the process tracing issues specific to the kind of theories on which you have focused – recognised experts critically assess what works and what does not when process tracing is applied.  Collectively, the analyses highlight issues of data quality, the role of hypothesized causal mechanisms, time and resource constraints, research ethics, multi-method strategies where process tracing is one technique in play, and theory development, among others.

In Part III, we step back and – in two separate essays – explore the research frontier.  Chapter 8 examines the role of process tracing in interpretive social science, exploring the gap that separates positivist and post-positivist understandings of the technique.  In Chapter 9, the co-editors synthesize and critique the volume as a whole, and outline an agenda for future development of and research on process tracing.

Click here for 2.12 version of Bennett/Checkel introductory chapter.

Transnational Dynamics of Civil War.  Civil war has become the dominant mode of organized violence in the contemporary international system.  Yet such wars rarely play out within the bounds of one state; more often than not, they create opportunities and incentives for outside actors to intervene.  These actors may be other states, rebel groups, transnational civil society, or the international community, and this intervention may be malign (fanning the war) or benign (transnational NGO’s targeting the use of child soldiers).  This project thus explores the relation of the transnational to the local in the context of civil war.  How do we conceptualize this transnational dimension?  In material or social terms?  How does it affect civil war dynamics?  By bringing new material resources into play?  By promoting learning among actors?  Under what conditions do transnational factors increase or decrease levels of civil violence?

We argue that to address these issues requires three moves.  Theoretically, transnationalism’s importance in civil war needs to be linked to existing literatures in other subfields that have extensively conceptualized and empirically documented such non-state dynamics; key here is work on transnational politics in international relations and sociology.  Analytically, one needs a more robust understanding of causality, where the goal is the measurement of causal mechanisms and not simply establishing causal effects.  Methodologically, the central challenge is practical and operational – to measure mechanisms in action.

This project is now forthcoming from Cambridge University Press.  Click here for a full prospectus and here for chapter 1, 'Transnational Dynamics of Civil War.'

European Identity. This collaboration is a multi-disciplinary overview, synthesis and exploration of the politics of European identity, published by Cambridge University Press in 2009. Understood as process, these identities flow through multiple networks and create new patterns of identification. Viewed as project, the construction of identities is the task of elites and entrepreneurs, operating in Brussels or various national settings. Process and project involve publics and elites; they are open-ended and have no preordained outcomes; and they serve both worthy and nefarious political objectives. Bureaucrats crafting a Europe centered on Brussels, xenophobic nationalists, cosmopolitan Europeanists, anti-globalization Euro-skeptics, and a European public that for decades has been permissive of the evolution of a European polity - they are all politically involved in the construction of an evolving European identity.

Teaching

Undergraduate

• IS 451 - Seminar in Core Texts in International Studies: Governance, Identity and War (Spring 2012)
• IS 409 - Theorizing International Politics (Fall 2009)

Masters

• IS 830 - Analytical Approaches for International Studies (Fall 2011)
• IS 800 - International Development and Complex Emergencies: From Big Ideas to Social Science Research Projects (Spring 2010)

Doctoral

• Qualitative Methods and the Study of Civil War (May 2012)
  

Selected Publications

• Transnational Dynamics of Civil War (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming)
  
• “Theoretical Pluralism in IR: Possibilities and Limits,” in Walter Carlsnaes, Thomas Risse and Beth Simmons, Editors, Sage Handbook of International Relations, 2nd Edition (Sage Publications, 2012)
• European Identity (Cambridge University Press, 2009)
•  “Bridging the Gap? Connecting Qualitative and Quantitative Methods in the Study of Civil War (Symposium),” Qualitative Methods: Newsletter of the American Political Science Association Organized Section for Qualitative and Multi-Method Research 6, 1 (Spring 2008)
•  “Process Tracing,” in Audie Klotz, Editor, Qualitative Methods in International Relations: A Pluralist Guide (Palgrave Macmillan, 2008)
•  “Constructivism and Foreign Policy,” in Tim Dunne, Amelia Hadfield and Steve Smith, Editors, Foreign Policy: Theories, Actors, Cases (Oxford University Press, 2007)
• “Social Mechanisms and Regional Cooperation: Are Europe and the EU Really All That Different?,” in Amitav Acharya and Alastair Iain Johnston, Editors, Crafting Cooperation: Regional International Institutions in Comparative Perspective (Cambridge University Press, 2007)
• International Institutions and Socialization in Europe (Cambridge University Press, 2007)
• “Constructivism and EU Politics,” in Knud Erik Joergensen, Mark Pollack, Ben Rosamond, Editors, Handbook of European Union Politics (Sage Publications, 2007)

Recent Invited Lectures

• "The Dark Side of Transnationalism: Civil War in the Post-Cold War Era," Barcelona Institute of International Studies, May 2012
  
• "Social Dynamics of Civil War," Balsillie School of International Affairs, Wilfrid Laurier University and University of Waterloo, May 2012
  
• "Social Dynamics of Civil War," University Seminar Series – Polity, Society and the World, Bilkent University, February 2012
• "Process Tracing in the Social Sciences: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly," Departments of Political Science and International Relations, Bilkent University, February 2012
• “Constructing European Identity: The EU, Institutions and Social Practice,” Department of Peace and Conflict Research, Uppsala University, November 2010
• “Publishing in the Best International Outlets: Strategies, Opportunities and Challenges,” Department of Politics & International Relations, University of Edinburgh, November 2010
• “A Bridge too Far? Efforts at Synthesis in Contemporary International Theory,” Centre for International Policy Studies, University of Ottawa, November 2010
• “Civil War and Regional Security,” 40th Anniversary Conference, Peace Studies Program, Cornell University, April 2010
• “Causal Mechanisms and the (Transnational) Dynamics of Civil War,” Mershon Center for International Security Studies, Ohio State University, January 2010
• "Transnational Dynamics of Civil War," Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zuerich), December 2009
• "The Politicization of European Identities," Social Science Research Center Berlin, May 2009
• “The Transformative Power of Europe? Conditionality, Socialization and the (Forgotten) Role of Politics,” Otto Suhr Institute of Political Science, Free University Berlin, May 2009

Curriculum Vitae (January 2012)