GW Undergraduate Review, Volume 4, Spring 2021

THE GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY

Undergraduate Review VOLUME 4

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SPRING 2021

www.gwur.org

THE GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY

Undergraduate Review VOLUME 4

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SPRING 2021

Thanks for the photos!

Front cover: @leahopebonzer Back cover: @Taken

ISSN (print): 2578-9171 ISSN (online): 2578-9201 ©2021 The GW Undergraduate Review, The George Washington University

STAFF AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The GW Undergraduate Review would like to thank Vice President for Research Dr. Robert Miller, Mr. Shane Seger, and the Office of the Vice President for Research for their continued support and guidance for our organization. We would also like to thank the Center for Undergraduate Fellowships and Research, the Center for Student Engagement, and Libraries and Academic Innovation for promoting the journal, engaging with the undergraduate research community at large, and advising over the course of publication. Thank you to Margaret Steiner, the founder of GWUR, for setting a standard of excellence. Finally, we would like to thank the tireless work of our authors and editors, whose efforts were invaluable to our publication.

ABOUT US

Established in 2016, the GW Undergraduate Review (GWUR) is the premier publication of undergraduate research at the George Washington University. It features a multi-disciplinary series of peer-reviewed articles from GW’s undergraduates in its annual publication. Our mission is to engage undergraduate students in research on GW’s campus and to promote the research community at large through various events and workshops alongside our journal. Our editorial boards are staffed by editors representing over twenty of GW’s departments. Our organization also publishes the GW Scope, an ongoing research-focused news blog backed by a similarly robust board. GWUR is an entirely student-run organization that works closely with and is supported by the Office of the Vice President for Research.

E XE C UTIVE BOAR D Camille Leoni - President & Editor-in-Chief Janavi Kanagasundaram - Director of the GW Scope Emily Earls - Treasurer & Director of Internal Development Aldonza Chavez - Events Manager Nammu Arumugasamy - Submission Recruitment Chair Diana Vu - Social Media Assistant Richard Sear - Layout Manager Maryam Gilanshah - Lead Editor for Humanities Jessica Bride - Lead Editor for Social Sciences Veronika Kulik - Lead Editor for Natural Sciencs & Engineering

L AY O UT TEAM Richard Sear Jessica Bride Jaylee Davis

E D IT ORIAL B OAR D Dhatri Badri Eleanor Ball Ben Chapman Michael Farina Fiona Garcia Esha Mukherjee Carson Solaz

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FROM THE EDITOR

Dear Reader, Welcome to Volume IV of the GW Undergraduate Review (GWUR)! The outstanding quality of this year’s journal is a testament not only to our authors’ unwavering dedication to their research but also our Executive and Editorial Boards’ tireless efforts to support undergraduate research on GW’s campus. The establishment of the GWUR has provided a novel avenue for students to introduce themselves to the arduous, but rewarding process of conducting and publishing their independent research. Our organization proudly exists as an outlet for objective, open-minded research. It is a true honor to be a part of an organization that sustains the free marketplace of ideas, ensuring that one argument’s validity is solely determined by its competition and comparison to another.

The success of this publication would be impossible without the vigorous determination of our club’s members. The members of the GWUR, who willingly volunteer their precious time without monetary or credit-hour compensation, do not simply execute tasks assigned to them but rather take initiative to enhance the quality and prestige of the journal. Their invaluable contributions and devotion to the prosperity of undergraduate research on GW’s campus are especially admirable considering their hectic and substantial academic and research schedules. Words could never adequately encompass the gratitude and respect I have for our members and their inspiring efforts.

Additionally, it is the inextinguishable curiosity of GW’s undergraduate researchers — the diligent investigators both represented in this journal and not — that ensures the continued existence of the GWUR. Their unyielding desire to observe, understand, and explain the world around us is evident in the superb papers published in this journal. I applaud all undergraduate researchers for their ceaseless inquiries and exploratory efforts, and I earnestly thank our authors for sharing and trusting their remarkable work with us.

The GWUR is an organization unlike any other on GW’s campus. Filled with lasting friendships and rewarding responsibilities, my four short years as a member of the GWUR have been an incredible privilege and priceless highlight of my college career.

In light of the immense obstacles arising as a direct result of the COVID-19 pandemic, the impressiveness of our authors’ dedication to their research and our members’ commitment to our organization cannot be overstated. I hope your experience reading Volume IV of the GWUR is as enriching and gratifying as our experience creating it!

Sincerely, Camille I. Leoni President & Editor-in-Chief The GW Undergraduate Review

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CONTENTS Victory for Justice or Victor’s Justice? Due Process and the Legacy of the Nuremberg Trials

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BENJAMIN KANE

Brexit: A Fluke, or the Future of British Conservatism? Analyzing the PostBrexit Conservative Party’s Populist Status Quo

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JACOB WINN

From Social Exclusion to Social Cohesion: How the Piquetero Movement Achieved Social Policy Expansion in Post-Neoliberal Argentina

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ABIGAIL GUEN

The Past and Present of Cultural Censorship in South Korea: Minjung Art During and After the Gwangju Uprising

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VIVIAN KONG

The Legenda Aurea: From Holy Mediator to Icon of Idolatry

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CAITLIN CHAN

Stopping Violent Extremist Organizations (VEOs) in the Sahel: Guns, Votes, or Cash?

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KEELY DION

Women, Disease, and Colonialism: The Complex Role of Women in Perceptions of Contagious Diseases in Islamic History

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LAUREN KIKER

The Developmental Effects of Six1 Mutations on the Otic Expression of Putative Target Genes in Xenopus Embryos

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SARAH AHSAN , HIMANI DATTA MAJUMDAR, TANYA MEHDIZADEH, ANDRE TAVARES, SALLY A. MOODY 1

Money Moves: An Analysis of Top Margin State Income Taxes and Interstate Migration

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AMANDA STIEBRIS

Internal State-Dependent Conditioned Stimulus Delivery using Cardiovascular Telemetry in Mice

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BENJAMIN TURLEY, ADAM SWIERCZ, LAXMI IYER, PAUL MARVAR

GW Scope Feature: Time to put women back in STEM

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DHATRI BADRI

Meet the Staff

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KEYWORDS: Holocaust, due process, law, international law, Nuremberg Trials, World War II DOI: https://doi.org/10.4079/2578-9201.4(2021).02

Victory for Justice or Victor’s Justice? Due Process and the Legacy of the Nuremberg Trials BENJAMIN KANE POLITICAL SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY, CCAS ‘24, bzkane@gwu.edu

ABSTRACT The Nuremberg Trials are one of the most well-known legal exercises today. Taking place over the greater part of a year between 1945 and 1946, Allied forces conducted trials to bring various high-profile Nazi officials to justice. Ultimately, twelve Nazis were sentenced to death (in addition to another who was sentenced to death in absentia) and six more were given jail time. This research investigates whether criticisms of the Nuremberg Trials are legitimate, including if and how the Trials impacted the future of international law.

Primary sources and first-hand accounts of the Trials will be key to my research as they will provide critical information as to how the Trials were conducted, the methods and reasoning behind these decisions, and the impact that they had on both the defendants and the larger body of international law itself. The results of the research suggest that, despite justifiable criticisms and cases of moderate to severe deviation from the norms, the Nuremberg Trials followed proper due process procedures, establishing a legal framework in which future international criminal cases could adhere. This is not to say that critiques of the Trials are not legitimate; however, the research and synthesis of primary sources, as well as legal scholarship devoted to the topic of analyzing the Nuremberg Trials, suggest that the Trials abided by strict norms and influenced how other courts operated, given the insurmountable task of holding those who committed crimes against humanity accountable.

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GENESIS OF INTERNATIONAL LAW AND LITERATURE REVIEW The judges, prosecutors, defense, and governments of Allied nations were given the task of exercising justice on those who had committed the crimes of the Holocaust. There should be no questioning that the Nuremberg Trials were perhaps the most ambitious legal experiment in modern history. In addition to the trial itself, these individuals had to craft a legitimate legal framework and body to oversee and enforce codified international law for future decades, all while respecting established legal norms. Regardless of this monumental task, the Nuremberg Trials were an exercise in international law that adhered to due process norms; through such actions, it forged a path for future international legal proceedings, despite being an exercise of victor’s justice — the tribunal conducted by victors over the vanquished.

Before the International Military Tribunal (IMT), individual countries attempted to hold their own citizens accountable for what the countries deemed crimes against humanity and war crimes.

Conferences in 1899 and 1907, for example, were critical in shaping the standard of warfare for the early twentieth century. Before these conferences, individual nations were given the mandate to try their

accused nationals. There were few internationally codified laws that dictated the practice of warfare before the IMT. When countries had the opportunity to prosecute their nationals for war crimes, the trials were “inadequate,” according to Meron, a legal scholar and former president of the Appeals Chamber for the UN International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (2006). Meron also stated that “justice was not done, and the opportunity was missed to promote compliance with the law by more transparent and more widespread punishment of war crimes” (p. 558). The inability for nations to convict their own nationals of war crimes made the creation of an international war crimes court even more important, as it emphasized the necessity of an independent body capable of holding criminals accountable for violent acts.

As a result of this need, the IMT was formed, holding trials for accused war criminals in Japan after World War II while conducting the Nuremberg Trials from November 1945 to October 1946. One of the most well-known criminal trials in modern history, 24 of the highest war criminals in the Nazi organization were prosecuted. The legacy of the Trials still depends on how legitimate current legal scholarship regards its exercise of justice. The concept of due process, therefore, is a necessary component of the Trials to cover when discussing

THE GW UNDERGRADUATE REVIEW • VOLUME 4 their legitimacy, as no criminal tribunal can be considered legitimate when due process is suspended or violated. I argue that despite the Trials being inherently an exercise in victor’s justice, due process was still closely adhered to, making the trials legitimate and providing an enduring legacy for future international law. I will investigate specific criticisms and arguments that claim due process was suspended throughout the Trials, as well as provide evidence to show that the legacy of the Nuremberg Trials should rely on its loyalty to due process. One major problem with the international legal framework before Nuremberg was that there was essentially no mechanism to enforce the rulings of the law. International treaties of the early twentieth century “made no allowance for the imposition of individual criminal responsibility upon persons responsible for violations of either its provisions or those of its annexed regulations” (Meron, 2006, p.

554). Essentially, even if individuals were on trial for their involvement in war crimes, they could not be held personally responsible, and it was often the state that dealt with any repercussions stemming from breaches of international law. More often than not, these repercussions manifested themselves in financial compensation by the state. International tribunals before the Nuremberg Trials were fundamentally unable to punish individuals, such as state leaders, warlords, or soldiers, for their participation in war crimes. The Nuremberg Trials represented a change in that practice, where specific people, mainly leaders in the Nazi bureaucracy, were charged as individuals and given individual sentences.

Due to the fundamental change the Trial brought to the practice of international law, there has been considerable legal and political scholarship assessing its components.

The Nuremberg Trials are unique to other major events in legal history for contemporary researchers in that a few key players in the trials, such as judges, prosecutors, and reporters, wrote extensively about their experiences, even into the twenty-first century. Meron’s 2006 article in the American Journal of International Law, “Reflections on the Prosecution of War Crimes by International Tribunals,” creates a narrative of the birth and rapid growth of the framework surrounding international law, from an almost non-existent legal practice to the booming global institution it is today. Such information thus provides a timeline of critical events leading up to and resulting in major international legal institutions, including the Nuremberg Trials and UN International Criminal Tribunals.

Ferencz’s “Nurnberg Trial Procedure and the Rights of the Accused” (1948) delves deeply into those due process norms and guidelines that drove the Trials; his first hand experiences as both a US soldier who oversaw the liberation of concentration camps and a prosecutor in the Trials makes his related scholarship some of the most well-regarded texts for researchers in this arena. This piece in particular provides defense of the processes of the

2 Nuremberg Trials that have come under tight scrutiny in subsequent years. As will be discussed, criticism of some judicial practices and lapses in the enforcement of due process are equally prevalent, and Ferencz’s accounts of the reasoning behind these processes are mainstays in scholarship surrounding international law, particularly in these trials. Of course, Ferencz’s experiences as an Allied prosecutor for the Trials must be taken into account when considering his possible bias, though this piece does not include sources for where due process could be abused.

Conversely, Wyzanski (1946) was one of the most outspoken critics of some of the practices of the Trials and his work is often cited when outlining how the standards of the Trials deviated from other accepted legal codes, especially in the United States. Wyzanski’s argument that there was no true neutral judge to preside over the trials is one of the leading components of the “trial by victors” argument. Wyzanski warns that the judges may have been influenced by sheer outrage and desire for revenge against the defendants, which would set an incredibly dangerous precedent for future war crime trials. The question in response to Wyzanski’s justifiable criticisms therefore is whether it would be possible to find any judge who is not influenced by the horrors of the Holocaust. Turkheimer’s Reflections on Nuremberg (2017) is one of the most modern utilized sources for the topic, discussing the reaction of the legal community, past and present, in response to the Nuremberg Trials. By outlining the cases and convictions, or lack thereof, for several prominent Nazis, as well as investigating the reaction at home to the Nuremberg prosecutors, Turkheimer links together various criticisms and plaudits of the Trials into one narrative.

JUSTICE BY THE VICTORS The winning nations of World War II were given the mandate to hand down sentences to those who lost through the International Military Tribunal. Therefore, by definition, the Nuremberg Trials were an exercise in victor’s justice, sinc “one of the principal criticisms of the Nuremberg and Tokyo Tribunals was, and is, that they were victors’ courts trying the vanquished” (Meron, 2006, p. 569). Such a claim is substantiated by the profiles of the jury of judges, as “each of the major Allies had appointed one judge and an alternate to the International Military Tribunal” (Beltzer, 1996, p. 896).

Throughout the trials, and into the present, there remains considerable legal criticism of the jury of judges.

United States District Court Judge Wyzanski argues that Count 2 of the Nuremberg Trials “is tried not before a dispassionate neutral bench, but before the very persons alleged to be victims. There is not even one neutral sitting beside them” (The Atlantic). Wyzanski argued that the nature of Count 2, “crimes against peace,” being political made it impossible for the jury of judges from countries

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impacted by political crimes to be impartial. Because the judges represented the nations made victims by these crimes, arguments that they were inherently biased became increasingly prevalent, with some criticism claiming that judges could not separate their rulings from personal beliefs that stemmed from their nation’s victimhood (McKeown, 2013).

The question then becomes why the framers of the Nuremberg Trials decided to proceed with a jury of judges instead of a jury of peers, as in American criminal courts. In the case of World War II, and particularly the Holocaust, there “left no real neutrals whose interests were completely unaffected”(Ferencz, 1948, p. 145). This logic made it clear that a trial by one’s peers would be inherently biased, as there would be no possible way to select a group of people who were both informed about the horrors of the Holocaust while still legally and morally neutral. Ferencz disputes the belief that judges are inherently biased as well, and claims that the transparency of the trials and the high amount of legal criticism available in Western democracies, especially in the United States, made a jury of judges more neutral and therefore more suitable to decide the cases, as opposed to a jury of peers. A neutral jury of judges then seemed more suited to follow due process norms than biased ones, establishing that the neutrality of the judges at Nuremberg was important in arguing due process was carried out throughout the tribunal.

Scholars argue that the fact that the trial was carried out by the victors required close criticism but was not immediately disqualifying. Ferencz (1948) defended the premise of the Trials by arguing that “the fact that members of a defeated nation are tried in tribunals of the victor creates the need for closest scrutiny of proceedings but does not necessarily or by itself render the conduct of the trials corrupt” (p. 144). A trial by victors was neither unique nor unheard of by the time World War II ended and had been practiced after previous wars, including by the US after the Revolutionary War, when George Washington tried Major Andre as a British spy. Ferencz alludes to Andre’s specific case — a British spy who was taken into custody and executed by the Continental Army for assisting Benedict Arnold during the Revolutionary War — as a way to illustrate the historical frequency of courts of victors (or in this case, the more powerful) exercising justice on those they ruled to have committed crimes. The fact that there are historical cases of this type of justice is critical in refuting criticism or dismissals of the Nuremberg Trials, simply on the grounds of victor’s justice alone.

The concept of a trial of victors was justified by many legal scholars when comparing it to modern criminal cases. To those who scrutinized the proceedings as being

the winners of the war deciding on the fate of the losers, Ferencz (1948) tells them to examine the structure of our society today, saying “the individual offenders placed on trial are no more ‘vanquished’ than an ordinary criminal apprehended by police representing law-abiding society” (p. 145). They utilize this analogy to show that it would have been impossible for the Nuremberg Trials to be anything but a trial by victors, and that there is no contemporary criminal justice system that would be able to function if it were not implementing victor’s justice. Therefore, it can be concluded that a trial by the victors on the vanquished does not inherently result in breaches of due process, and the Trials can hold a legacy as legitimate legal exercises in spite of being carried out by the victors of World War II.

THE LEGAL STRUCTURE THAT GOVERNED THE NUREMBERG TRIALS A major challenge for the litigants at the International Military Tribunal was that there was only a rudimentary framework upon which to base their research and subsequent litigation. The IMT relied mainly on the London Charter, which within it included the Constitution of the IMT1, to drive their legal proceedings. In order to allow for a more streamlined prosecution process and minimize the debate over semantics, the Constitution of the IMT outlined the three types of crime, all of which the IMT had jurisdiction over, with each crime having its own separate prosecution.

The first crimes under the IMT’s jurisdiction were “crimes against peace”, which the Constitution described as “planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression, or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances, or participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of any of the foregoing.” Essentially, crimes against peace were the planning or intention to act on crimes against humanity or war crimes. War crimes were described as “violations of the laws or customs of war” which included “murder, ill-treatment or deportation to slave labor or for any other purpose of civilian population of or in occupied territory, murder or ill-treatment of prisoners of war or persons on the seas, killing of hostages, plunder of public or private property, wanton destruction of cities, towns or villages, or devastation not justified by military necessity” (Constitution of the IMT, 1945).

It was important for the Constitution to be as specific as possible when listing war crimes as opposed to crimes against humanity, as war crimes were classified as being carried out with the victims mainly being rival or opposing combatants, while crimes against humanity were described as being conducted against civilians.

Additionally, crimes against humanity were specifically drawn out by the Constitution and included “murder,

1 The Constitution of the IMT was the product of an agreement between the United States, France, the United Kingdom, and the USSR. It codified various human rights laws and also dictated the judicial proceedings of the Nuremberg Trials.

THE GW UNDERGRADUATE REVIEW • VOLUME 4 extermination, enslavement, deportation, and other inhumane acts committed against any civilian population, before or during the war; or persecutions on political, racial or religious grounds” (Constitution of the IMT, 1945).

The Constitution gave the prosecution powerful legal tools, including supranational superiority. An important addendum in the description of crimes against humanity was that all actions “in execution of or in connection with any crime within the jurisdiction of the Tribunal, whether or not in violation of the domestic law of the country where perpetrated” were considered crimes against humanity (Constitution of the IMT, 1945). The prosecution at the IMT, therefore, could essentially override domestic governments and laws that protected war criminals, which led to many criminals in post-World War I trials escaping punishment. This gave the IMT sovereignty over domestic laws, a groundbreaking feature in international law that was later copied by other international legal bodies.

One issue that the framers of the Constitution and the prosecution faced regarded the international law principle nullum crimen sine lege, which states that someone cannot be tried for a crime that has not been codified as such before they committed said act. Many of the Nazis’ crimes that an international commission claimed were in violation of the “laws of humanity” could not be brought to the IMT, because the “laws of humanity” were not codified as a legally binding structure beforehand2.

The Constitution of the IMT represents the impact the nullum crimen sine lege principle had on the codification of international law as it made the framers create both a specific and widespread legal body that could be used in the future to enforce violations of international law.

The question then became who could be charged with various crimes. Solely trying the heads of the Nazi organization or the commanders of the camps risked creating a suspension of justice, with too many participants in the crimes going free. This is because there were many people who were responsible for the carrying out of the Holocaust, from the Nazi leaders to the prison guards. In order to ensure that the tribunals could exercise justice on the greatest number of perpetrators possible, The Constitution specifically laid out the people who could be tried with these crimes as the “leaders, organizers, instigators and accomplices participating in the formulation or execution of a common plan or conspiracy to commit any of the foregoing crimes are responsible for all acts performed by any persons in execution of such plan” (Constitution of the IMT, 1945).

This represented a radical departure from criminal tribunals of the post-World War I era, where most nations, rather than individuals, were made to face punishment.

4 EVIDENCE The Nuremberg Trials had an overwhelming amount of evidence against the defense. The Nazis were meticulous record keepers, and many of these records were not destroyed when the Allies liberated concentration camps in 1944 and 1945. Additionally, such records existed all over the Nazi empire, providing the prosecution a multitude of documents and primary sources connecting specific people to certain crimes. The question was no longer about whether the Nazis were guilty of committing these crimes, but instead on whether these crimes were in violation of international statute and if there was enough evidence to justify sentences. Oftentimes, there were pieces of evidence that so clearly incriminated one person to the specific crimes or the Holocaust as a whole that there was no need for any other evidence or deliberation, such as this memorandum tying Nazi leader Herman Goring to the carrying out of the Holocaust: As to crimes against humanity (Count Four) the evidence there was explosive: Göring had, in a written memorandum, to the head of the Main Security Office of the Reich on July 31, 1941—at about the time when virtually all of European Jewry was under the control of Germany and its allies—telling him he was responsible for and to obtain the cooperation of other government agencies in putting into effect the Final Solution to the Jewish Question. This document placed Göring at the heart of the Holocaust, a part of count four, and it was hardly necessary to show more (Tuerkheimer 28).

Men sift through documents procured by Allies from the Nazis to use as evidence at the Nuremberg Trials, courtesy of USHMM Photo Archives (Credit of Charles Alexander)

Meron (2006) cites the failure of the Nazis to destroy

2 Meron also points out that many crimes committed by the Nazis could not be prosecuted because the Allies had committed the exact same acts throughout the war.

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Holocaust documentation before the end of the war as a major turning point for the prosecution, saying “because the German bureaucracy did not destroy its official documents before the Allied victory, its extensive archives provided a ‘treasure trove’ of evidence for the prosecution” (p. 560). As entire bookshelves of primary sources and documents from the Holocaust were uncovered and used as evidence to tie Nazis to the war crimes and crimes against humanity of the Holocaust, it is hard to describe just how much evidence there was for the prosecution. Illustration 1 shows aides sorting through documentation available to the prosecution throughout the trials, displaying how much the Allied prosecution had access to.

A major piece of evidence the prosecution introduced was a motion picture documenting the scenes that Allied forces encountered when they liberated various concentration camps. This piece of evidence was intended to “produce visual knowledge of atrocities that resisted summary in the words of eyewitness testimonials” (Douglas, 1995, p. 452). The idea was that this film could provide visuals for written and verbal evidence and push back on a defense claiming that this evidence was propaganda. However, the film, Douglas argues, presented a unique legal challenge for the Tribunal and their attempts to adhere to a standard of due process. Douglas claims that the film, instead of solidifying justification to convict the Nazis of crimes against humanity, tied the prosecution into a legal quagmire.

Introducing the film as evidence raised a great issue for the prosecution at Nuremberg. Many criminal trials before did not allow for photographic evidence to be introduced for various reasons, including being too “gruesome” or “redundant,” simply backing up testimonies from eyewitness accounts instead of introducing any new details to strengthen the case (Douglas, 1995, p. 467).

The IMT was able to circumvent this issue by relaxing the rules that governed the introduction of evidence into the Nuremberg Trials. This bolstered the prosecution in allowing them to use photographic evidence to present “the most reliable and complete representations of unspeakable atrocities” (Douglas, 1995, p. 468).

There were several issues, however, that this type of film brought to the prosecution and the Trials as a whole. Douglas (1995) claims that it was not enough for the prosecution to simply present the film to the Court; instead, it had to “locate an adequate idiom of both representation and judgement” (p. 453), meaning that the prosecution had to be able to synthesize the film into their legal arguments against the Nazis. The prosecution’s film was indicative of a larger issue they faced: although it was well established that the Nazis wanted to wipe out the entirety of European Jewry, was that enough to convict the defendants and sentence them to a severe punishment? The prosecution knew they could not simply introduce pieces of evidence that

were morally objectionable, they had to be defined as specifically illegal under the London Charter or other governing international law structures. Douglas argues that in order to fully utilize the film as evidence of crimes against humanity by the Nazis, the prosecution actually misinterpreted some of the images shown to prove the Holocaust as an exercise of slaughtering and enslaving civilians and prisoners of war, instead of a genocide, in order to represent the political, rather than symbolic, motives behind the Holocaust. The example of the film showed how law and due process constrained the prosecution in their use of evidence, where documents and film that unquestionably showed crimes committed by the defense had to still be cautiously used to achieve legal goals.

EXERCISE OF DUE PROCESS Despite the overwhelming amount of evidence, not all defendants were convicted of crimes, largely because of the IMT’s due process standards. Due process may not have been a principal concern of the Allied prosecutors and judges convening the trial, as “the London Charter was short on due process protections” (Meron, 2006, p. 569). However, there ended up being quite the due process framework being instituted at IMT, which consisted of “a rigorous Anglo-American burden on the prosecution” (Meron, 2006, p. 569). McKeown argues that “rules adopted were an amalgamation of AngloAmerican and continental European systems, though they were predominantly based on the American model,” a necessary compromise that “protected the defendants’ rights under both” (McKeown, 2013, p. 6).

The fundamentals of due process were observed during the Nuremberg Trials, with due process rights, such as public trial and counsel, being available to the defendants.

Counsel for defendants is a critical component of due process, as “the presence of counsel is a means of reducing power imbalances between defendants and the state, and of securing the right to equal justice” (McKeown, 2013, p. 7). Not only was counsel present for the defendants throughout the tribunals they were also treated well by the Allies, signaling their intention for the trials to be fair. Ferencz (1948) wrote that defense lawyers, who were selected by the defendants themselves and were often actually Nazi lawyers on trial themselves, were treated better than Allied soldiers were, saying: By command of the Military authorities all defense lawyers are given the largest German ration allowance, authorizing them 3900 calories daily which is more than the amount received by American soldiers and almost three times the amount available to the average German. In addition, each one is gratuitously issued a very highly-prized carton of American cigarettes per week, which is a privilege afforded no employees of

THE GW UNDERGRADUATE REVIEW • VOLUME 4 Military Government (p. 147) This was an important move by the part of the Allies in the sphere of public relations: in order for the trials to be seen as legitimate and fair and for justice to have been perceived as carried out, there would have had to be no defensive intimidation at all. Treating defense lawyers as such that the Nuremberg Trials were not a farce of a trial, but instead a true exercise of justice.

A major legal battleground in the debate over whether due process was achieved in the Nuremberg Trials stems from the nullum crimen sine lege philosophy, the same principle that those who formed the Constitution of the IMT faced. This philosophy, according to the Cornell Law School,“is the principle in criminal law and international criminal law that a person cannot or should not face criminal punishment except for an act that was criminalized by law before he/she performed the act.”

Wyzanski argued in his 1946 piece for The Atlantic that this is one of the most fundamental principles of politics and law, and that “it rests on the political truth that if a law can be created after an offense, then power is to that extent absolute and arbitrary.” In other words, without this principle in place, it would be possible for anybody with political or legal power to prosecute their opponents with nonexistent or arbitrary laws established at will.

Those who claim that there was a lack of due process throughout the Tribunals often associate violations of this principle as a major reason.

Meron claims that the nullum crimen philosophy was adhered to closely throughout the tribunals. Meron argues, “the Nuremberg Tribunals rooted the principle of legality not only in custom, but also in treaties and general principle,” asserting that arbitrary laws were not being made in order to ensure that Nazis were found guilty, but instead that there was a legitimate legal framework constructed (p. 576). Further, Tomuschat (2006) argues that “Nuremberg introduced no real innovation capable of being denounced as violating the proposition nullum crimen sine lege” in response to objections saying that the philosophy was ignored or suspended throughout the Trials. Tomuschat (2006) continues by saying that “it was easy to demonstrate that the punishable character of crimes against humanity was established in accordance with general principles of international law as set out in Article 38 of the Statute of the PCIJ.”3 By following

6 the principles of international law set out by the PCIJ, Nuremberg cannot be accused of violating nullum crimen sine lege, as its processes and rulings adhered closely to previously established legal clauses.

Legal scholars to this day, however, point out various violations of common due process rights that did occur throughout the trials. Meron points to the behavior of the judges as possible breaches of fair trial standards. Meron (2006) identifies some examples of where the behavior of the judges may be fairly subject to criticism: “three of them arrived after the trials started. All absented themselves from proceedings for greater or lesser periods. Some of the death penalties were decided on a 6-5 basis” (p. 570).4 The lack of unanimity in some of the Nuremberg convictions remains a topic of major controversy in the legal community and similar practices are under considerable review.5 One such case of a suspension of due process can be seen in the conviction and execution of Julius Streicher, the publisher of notorious anti-Semitic publication Der Sturmer and close associate of Adolf Hitler. The strategy of the prosecution in this particular case was that they “argued that without the willingness of the German population to go along, the Holocaust could not have happened” (Turkheimer, 2017, p. 31). The prosecution claimed that Streicher’s comics and writings ensured that the population would be complicit in the Holocaust.

Streicher’s conviction on charges of crimes against humanity remains controversial amongst legal scholars and “there was a general consensus among the attendees at the conference that Streicher probably should not have been convicted: all he did was write and virtually all his writings antedated the Holocaust” (p. 31). However, this logic is refuted because it was the anti-Semitism from the writings of Streicher and similar high-profile authors that fueled Nazi Germany and allowed for the Holocaust to happen.6 There will remain considerable debate over the legacies of the Nuremberg Trials. The fact that the Trials were inherently a practice of victor’s justice does not make them automatically illegitimate or unable to exercise due process. In fact, it can be concluded that the Trials were able to successfully exercise due process despite being conducted by victors on the vanquished.

Although individual cases can be isolated as examples when the Trials failed to adhere to due process clauses, it

3 The PCIJ being the Permanent Court of International Justice, which was published in December 1920.

4 One judge in particular, Major General Nikitchenko of the USSR, is documented of being biased in his role. “Nikitchenko revealed his belief that the purpose of the trial was to determine the appropriate punishment to be given to the Nazi defendants, whose guilt had already been determined,” McKeown writes in their piece on the procedure of the Nuremberg Trials (18).

5 The US Supreme Court is in the midst of hearing arguments for a case trying to reverse convictions of criminals who were found guilty by split juries.

6 Had Streicher been tried in the United States, Turkheimer writes, “he probably would have had a valid First Amendment defense” (32). Of course, this is a view that inherently privileges American jurisprudence.

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is clear that the Tribunal set out to follow necessary due process and was generally successful, as seen through the Constitution of the IMT as well as treatment of defense attorneys, adherence to the nullum crimen sine lege principle, and the institution of systems that protected the rights of the defendants.

The Nuremberg Trials was a major step in the field of criminal law, and when they ended, a new system of international law was born. The young art is still being shaped by important scholars and lawyers who study the structure and proceedings of the Nuremberg Trials closely, but there would be no body of international law to even work with if the Nuremberg trials had not occurred. The legal experiment of the Nuremberg Trials influenced the modern science of international law and the endeavors of the prosecution, defense, and jury of judges made it possible to hold the perpetrators and accomplices of unthinkable acts accountable for their crimes.

Cover page of an edition of Der Sturmer, an anti-Semitic publication by Julius Streicher. Courtesy of USHMM Photo Archives (Credit: Virginius Dabney)

THE GW UNDERGRADUATE REVIEW • VOLUME 4

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REFERENCES 1. Douglas, L. (1995). Film as witness: Screening Nazi concentration camps before the Nuremberg Tribunal. The Yale Law Journal, 105(2), 449–481. doi:10.2307/797126 2. Ferencz, B. B. (1948). Nurnberg trial procedure and the rights of the accused. Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology (1931-1951), 39(2), 144. doi:10.2307/1138144 3. McKeown, T. (2013). Nuremberg: Procedural due process at the International Military Tribunal (Publication No. 32) [LLB(Hons) dissertation, Victoria University of Wellington]. https://ssrn.com/abstract=2647780 4. Meron, T. (2006). Reflections on the prosecution of war crimes by International Tribunals. The American Journal of International Law, 100(3), 551-579. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4091370 5. Second Day, Wednesday, 11/21/1945, Part 04, in Trial of the Major War Criminals before the International Military Tribunal, Volume II. Proceedings: 11/14/1945-11/30/1945 (1947), 98-102. [Official text in the English language.]

6. The trial of German major war criminals: Proceedings of the International Military Tribunal sitting at Nuremberg Germany. Avalon Project - Documents in Law, History and Diplomacy. avalon.law.yale.edu/imt/imtconst.asp 7. Tomuschat, C. (2006). The legacy of Nuremberg. Journal of International Criminal Justice, 4(4), 830–844. https:// doi.org/10.1093/jicj/mql051 8. Turkheimer, F. (2017). Reflections on Nuremberg. Loyola of Los Angeles International & Comparative Law Review, 39(25), 25–33. https://digitalcommons.lmu.edu/ilr/vol39/iss1/3 9. Wyzanski, C. E. (2018). Nuremberg: A fair trial? A dangerous precedent. The Atlantic. www.theatlantic.com/ magazine/archive/1946/04/nuremberg-a-fair-trial-a-dangerous-precedent/306492/

About the Author Benjamin is a first-year student in Columbian College of Arts and Sciences from Sharon, Massachusetts, majoring in Political Science and Philosophy with a Public Affairs Focus. His research interests include political theory, legal history, ethics, and voting rights and democracy. He is involved in the George Washington University College Democrats as well as the GW Pre-Law Association.

Mentor Details An Associate Professor of Writing and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Cayo Gamber is a recipient of the Bender Teaching Award and the Ruth Osborn Award for teaching. She teaches UW1020: Legacies of the Holocaust and UW2020/WGSS2021: Introduction to Women’s Gender, and Sexuality Studies. Gamber publishes across multiple disciplinary/interdisciplinary fields: Holocaust Studies; Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies; Writing Studies; Cultural Studies; and Creative Nonfiction. For example, in her publications, Gamber analyzes the ways the Holocaust is represented via built forms (such as, at the sites of concentration camps, commemorative memorials, and memorial museums), and she also explores how primary sources – such as oral histories and archival photographs – create complex places of witness and memory.

9 KEYWORDS: British politics, Brexit, populism, Euroscepticism, European Union, right-wing DOI: https://doi.org/10.4079/2578-9201.4(2021).09

Brexit: A Fluke, or the Future of British Conservatism? Analyzing the Post-Brexit Conservative Party’s Populist Status Quo JACOB WINN INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS, ESIA ‘21, jacobwinn@gwu.edu

ABSTRACT The British people’s vote to leave the European Union in 2016 — known as the Brexit vote — represents the outcome of a successful populist movement. More recently, the Conservative Party’s staggering 2019 electoral success shows that the populist “Get Brexit Done” message remains popular amongst both traditional Conservatives as well as broad swaths of the working class in former Labour strongholds.

This study asks why the Conservative Party has changed so markedly in response to the ongoing Brexit negotiations and explores explanations for the Party’s new rhetoric, policy changes, and factional shifts within the halls of Westminster. While some scholars look at the supply-side causes of populism and others look at the demand-side causes, this study applies a third school of thought that examines the relationship between supply and demand by analyzing a series of interviews with Conservative Party staff as well as public opinion polling. In doing so, the study concludes that there has been a deep, reciprocal, and simultaneous onset of populist Euroscepticism within both the Conservative Party and the working class that has structurally re-aligned the Conservative Party from more ‘libertarian’ to more ‘authoritarian’ in nature. A feedback loop has locked the new Conservative base into a new mentality that the Conservative Party then reciprocates and feeds back to the voters. This research provides the broader scholarly literature on populism with an example of the aftermath of populist movements when both elites and voters are able to forge relationships and work together to achieve their goals.

• INTRODUCTION

1

Since the onset of the global financial crisis of 2007-2008 and the subsequent Great Recession, the countries and people of Europe persevered by undertaking the difficult process of economic recovery together. The European Union and the national governments, through unprecedented unity and communication, were able to create stimulus packages and financial reforms that have since brought down unemployment, raised GDP per capita, and reinvigorated European businesses and the financial sector (“Eurostat Economic Indicators”, 2019). However, despite the recent gains that led President of the European Commission Jean-Claude Juncker (2017) to say that “the sun is shining” in Europe, this top-line analysis does not account for the loss of faith in the European unity project that the economic downturn fueled. The strict austerity measures that were thrust upon the governments of Europe were perceived as demeaning and counterproductive to those out of work, while rising

tides of immigration from the Middle East and North Africa provoked a wave of nativism (Juncker, 2017).

Rising economic anxiety, increasing nationalist sentiments, and Euroscepticism granted savvy populist movements across the continent newfound electoral success in the 2014 European Parliament elections (Halikiopoulou & Vasilopoulou, 2014). In the same year, far-right parties that had not seen significant success since their modern debuts in the 1980s began entering national parliaments and governments at significantly higher rates than before (Golder, 2016).

European governments have embraced robust liberal democracies since the end of World War II. They erected the European Union and increasingly outward-facing foreign policies to foster an environment of an increased European identity, economic interdependence on the continent, and a common policy outlook through growing supranationalism. Modern European populist movements represent the most pressing critique of the prevailing system of liberal democracy to date,

1 To distinguish quotations from outside sources from interviewees’ direct quote, interviewees will be quoted in single quotation marks throughout this paper.

THE GW UNDERGRADUATE REVIEW • VOLUME 4 and it is a phenomenon that will determine the direction of Europe, its countries, and its people for decades.

The movement’s success or failure will define Europe’s future policy positions in countless areas which include immigration, treatment of minorities, and the continued growth of the European Union project. As such, the issue at hand is deserving of significant scholarly study (Mounk, 2014). Populist politics can be characterized as a rallying of people against ‘elites’, contemporary populism appeals to a narrative of people against ‘European elites’, and a need for a ‘national renaissance’ in which domestic policies and national traditions reassert themselves over those of Brussels. As such, the brand of European populism that is successful today is often nationalist and quite Eurosceptic. As a response to the current populist wave that has emerged on the political right today, mainstream conservative parties have shifted their policies and rhetoric further towards the far-right on the traditional left-right political spectrum to share in this electoral success (Sierakowski, 2018; Colantone & Stanig, 2019).2 As in other European countries, a swath of the British public became so dismayed by their circumstances that they lost confidence in established institutions; they instead increasingly chose unknown (but alluring) extremist parties such as the UK Independence Party (UKIP), which are often far-right in nature today.

The success of the Brexit movement and the 2019 UK Parliamentary elections make the British case of contemporary populism a particularly timely one for research. As such, traditionally mainstream policymakers in Europe and around the world have an incentive to develop a greater understanding of where populism emerges from and how it operates and interacts with citizens. Because of the recent nature of these events, it is important to look at them as case studies of a broader phenomenon by which populism grows, in-part, from within a political party. To address this topic, I analyzed the British case of withdrawal from the United Kingdom — Brexit — and its impact on the political party that embraced it — the Conservative Party.

This modern far-right populism found its footing quite recently and has grown at an explosive rate that

10 scholarship has not been able to keep up with. The phenomenon is woefully understudied, and the analysis of European populist political parties has not been fully modernized to account for Europe’s presentday supranationalism and interconnectedness. The contemporary literature on modern European populism and nationalism has begun to discuss the supply-side3 and demand-side4 factors underlying the promotion and adoption of populism in detail since its resurgence, and there is an emerging scholarly consensus that demandside phenomena are primarily to blame (Halikiopoulou & Vasilopoulou, 2019). However, this consensus has been questioned. One critical gap in the literature remains that prevents us from making strong predictions about European far-right populism: a focus on just the supplyor the demand-side does not account for the “inherent interaction between supply and demand” that determines the electoral and political success levels of various farright parties (Golder, 2016). Scholars have begun to develop a new school of thought, which this paper calls a ‘Third Way’. These scholars examine the relationship between supply and demand so that they can investigate not just populism’s antecedents, but better understand how those antecedents play out in the dynamics of populism. This paper delves into the Third Way within the Brexit case specifically, exploring the way that the British Conservative Party has been impacted by the populism that it has simultaneously supplied to the public and conversely absorbed from public demands.

The purpose of the present case study is to better understand the changes within the Conservative Party as a result of populism. This research contributes to the literature and real-world gaps related to the supplyand demand-side factors of far-right parties by looking at the interaction between supply and demand in the British case. I ask the following research question: Why has the Conservative Party changed so markedly in the years following the Brexit referendum, and what explains the Party’s rhetorical and general policy changes as well as its factional shifts? Through interviews with affiliates of the Conservative Party, I find evidence of a set of conditions that came together in a perfect storm for a political realignment of their Party: emergent populism

2 The current re-ordering of industrial societies towards post-industrial/service economic systems has come at significant costs to the traditional industrial base of working-class laborers in countries across Europe. This is especially true in the North of England, a formerly vibrant industrial and manufacturing hub that has since seen fleeing jobs and stagnant incomes. This is a visible phenomenon in both economic and political scholarship, as the centers of wealth have empirically become more centered in cities at the cost of rural/’traditional’ ways of life. While left-wing political parties such as the British Labour Party had traditionally received high electoral support from working class demographics through advocacy for their interests, these communities today have seen few changes and have begun to look elsewhere. The result in the 21st century has been a wave of populism, nationalism, and anti-institutionalism that has manifested as Euroscepticism.

3 According to Halikiopoulou et al., supply-side factors are “the ways in which parties use nationalism strategically in an attempt to broaden their appeal by presenting themselves as legitimate to large sections of the population.”

4 According to Halikiopoulou et al., demand-side factors are the grievances and social cleavages that create demand for farright parties.

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within the Conservative Party apparatus, and a newfound expanded voter base that has come to include more of the English working class in the conflict-ridden postBrexit years. From the onset of the Brexit referendum campaigns to the present day, a political and electoral realignment has been propelled onward by a feedback loop of ideas between the Party, which perpetually coopted populist rhetoric from the UK Independence Party, and its new expanded base, which perpetually responded to populism and demanded small-c conservative, nonelite candidates that could both ‘Get Brexit Done’ and shake up London-centric politics. In the wake of this realignment, the British center-right has fundamentally shifted: With the support of an expanded majority that demands that the Party reject ‘elite’ politics, the new Members of Parliament and the Party’s current leadership are upending the Conservative Party’s long-standing libertarian tradition by embracing stricter immigration and ‘tough-on-crime’ law enforcement policies, while governing with a mandate from voters who demand paternalistic and ‘Britain-first’ economic reforms.

HISTORICAL CONTEXT: FROM EARLY EUROSCEPTICISM TO BORIS JOHNSON Populism is especially visible in the United Kingdom, where the victory of the Leave campaign in the Brexit referendum (known officially as the “United Kingdom European Union membership referendum”) has thrown British politics into turmoil. The Brexit movement was a populist one, with many nationalist elements that appealed to British voters who are ‘naturally small-c conservative’ but may not have historically voted for the Conservative Party, according to one of this study’s interviewees.5 It easily appeals to people who would prefer a strong military, no perceived overreach of external forces, and controlled immigration. This is not unique to the UK, nor the British Conservative Party — the ability of a movement to affect a state’s politics on this scale using similar rhetoric, politics, and policy is absolutely possible and demonstrably occurring across the world.6 However, the Brexit movement is an especially salient example of far-right populism because of its success: the Brexit referendum occurred and triggered the United Kingdom’s exit from the European Union.

As this paper will discuss, the Conservative Party’s response to far-right populism has been to embrace Euroscepticism in Parliamentary affairs. Under Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s leadership, the Party has signaled to the public that it plans to put national interests first and return the United Kingdom to a period of lost glory that occurred before the country’s ‘mistaken experiment’

with supranationalism. As such, this case represents a broad shift in the supply- and demand-side factors of nationalism. As such, the way in which populism has affected British politics is of substantial interest and makes the United Kingdom a highly compelling case; the ramifications on the future of the country and its political parties have manifested themselves more consequentially than in any other country in Europe today. The underlying Eurosceptic sentiments, anti-immigrant attitudes, and economic woes that propelled the Leave campaign have not subsided; they have, in fact, become a dominant wing of the mainstream Conservative Party. David Cameron’s promise to reform Britain’s relationship with the EU regardless of the outcome of the referendum began his party’s shift towards a mainstream pro-Brexit position (Oliver, 2016). That said, Britain’s Euroscepticism had emerged long before Cameron’s premiership.

British Euroscepticism has had a place in both the Conservative and Labour Parties since the 1970s, when the United Kingdom joined the European Community (EC). The Labour Party was initially the more Eurosceptic of the two; its leadership and membership alike saw the European Communities as increasingly neoliberal and unable to confront working class challenges (Startin, 2015). In 1975, future Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn had voted with the majority of the Labour Party in its bid to challenge the processes of European integration; his own Euroscepticism would persist as party leader throughout the 2016 Brexit referendum campaign (The Economist, 2019). For its part, the Conservative Party had its own Eurosceptic elements. Though she had spent much of her career being supportive of the European project, Margaret Thatcher had eventually become wary of European integration: In 1988, Thatcher (1988) warned against forming a “European super-state” during her Bruges speech; in 1990, she proclaimed “No, no, no” in the House of Commons to the creation of the European Union (BBC News, 2013). In the wake of the 1992 Maastricht Treaty — the founding treaty of the European Union — organizations such as the European Research Group, which sought to provide an intellectual and ideological critique of the European Project, appeared within the Conservative Party. At the same time, the UK Independence Party (UKIP) emerged as a leading advocate for Britain’s exit from the European Union. It gained minimal traction at first, though it eventually began to find electoral success at the European Parliament level due to the use of proportional representation and the far-right populist rhetoric of its leader, Nigel Farage.

After the onset of the Great Recession and the signing of the Lisbon Treaty by the Labour Party, UKIP had amassed some right-wing support under Nigel Farage in the 2009

5 A ‘small-c conservative’ refers to someone who adheres to a conservative political ideology. This is distinct from a ‘Conservative’, someone who is a member, politician, or dedicated voter of the British Conservative Party.

6 See the cases of the Republican Party in the United States, the Canadian Conservative Party, Italian Five Star Movement.

THE GW UNDERGRADUATE REVIEW • VOLUME 4 European Parliamentary elections, spelling fear for the Conservative Party that it might siphon off its voters at the national level in future elections (Flamini, 2013).

Since these first bouts of Euroscepticism, the U.K. has followed the same theme as other 21st century powers by converting into a largely service-based economy centered around urban areas, especially London (The Economist, 2012). On the other hand, the North of England, Wales, and the English Midlands were left particularly far behind the rest of the country (The Economist, 2012). It is no coincidence that populists were able to build a coalition consisting of far-right nationalist voices, right-wing Conservative voices, and populist/far-left Labour voices that spoke with one voice against globalization and the perceived ‘other’ in the form of the European Union.

The populist movement quickly lost the overt support of the Labour Party, even before the Brexit referendum, and so it turned its attention entirely towards the right (Flamini, 2013). This message was incredibly powerful, and many savvy politicians that represented the Conservative Party both locally and nationally noticed how it resonated with rural voters from across the political spectrum.

Concepts such as providing for one’s own poor (rather than relying on the European Development Fund), ‘writing one’s own laws’, and ‘controlling one’s own borders’ have entered the Conservative Party’s voter base and Party Parliamentary Group in greater numbers, and in a louder volume, than before.

The situation in the United Kingdom has evolved significantly since the referendum; the underlying trends of populism have continued to sweep through the Conservative Party and its voters. On December 12th, 2019, the Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Conservative Party won its largest government majority in decades on the back of major swaths of Labour voters in the English Midlands who abandoned the Labour Party in its traditional stronghold districts. On February 1st, 2020, the United Kingdom formally withdrew from the European Union, entering a transition period for the UK and EU to arrange departure agreements before the withdrawal took effect on January 1st, 2021.

LITERATURE REVIEW The resurgence of the modern European far-right populist movement over the last decade has provoked a new round of scholarship focused on studying the phenomenon, but many questions remain regarding how these political movements interact with their respective voter bases and how these movements affect mainstream political parties and politics at-large. To analyze this issue, scholars tend to divide and conquer to address populism and nationalism on two fronts. On one front — the ‘Demand Influences Supply’ school of thought — scholars study how voters overtly demand populism from their elected officials in response to

12 real or perceived economic or social grievances; these are the ‘demand-side factors’ of far-right nationalism (Halikiopoulou & Vlandas, 2019). On the other front — the ‘Supply Influences Demand’ school of thought — scholars have chosen to focus on the ‘supply-side factors’, which are “the ways in which parties use [populism and/or nationalism] strategically in an attempt to broaden their appeal by presenting themselves as legitimate to large sections of the population” (Halikiopoulou & Vasilopoulou, 2014). Scholars within each of these schools of thought tend to consider their respective side to be the driver of the other; they also typically study supply- and demandside factors in isolation of each other. As a result, the interaction between supply- and demand-side factors has been understudied (Golder, 2016). In recent years, some have proposed a ‘Third Way’ approach. Scholars from this school of thought contend that there is a two-way interaction between supply- and demand-side factors (Mudde, 2010). Crucially, they also assert that supply- and demand-side factors must both be maximized to facilitate populist party success; neither is more seen as inherently more important than the other. As such, this literature review first examines the ‘Demand Influences Supply’ and ‘Supply Influences Demand’ schools of thought. It then proceeds to discuss the ‘Third Way’ school of thought.

The ‘Demand Influences Supply’ Approach The demand-side factors of nationalism amongst the voting public are particularly salient in understanding the rise of the modern European far-right. Scholars in the ‘Demand Influences Supply’ school of thought consider demand-side characteristics to be the drivers of the present rise in far-right nationalist parties and consider supplied nationalism to be a secondary response. This school of thought has been highly dominant historically, and dates back to Scheuch and Klingemann’s (1967) treatise which outlines the “normal pathology thesis” of the far-right. The theory asserts that far-right values are foreign to liberal democracy, and there is always a risk of a far-right party rising in all democracies. They argue that far-right parties spread as a pathogen through situational demands by the public. Typically, scholars study one of three key demand-side grievances that lend themselves to populist party success, especially amongst the far-right: economic insecurity, cultural change, and reduced trust in elites.

Globalization and the Great Recession have left many in Western democracies in a state of economic insecurity as jobs have moved abroad, low-skill labor has become automated, and wages have decreased.

This financial damage manifests in a psychopolitical narcissistic injury — “a deep personal conflict at the interface of sociopolitical context and individual identity” (Umbrasas, 2017). As Post and George (2004) assert in their extreme leader-follower behavior framework, these

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psychologically injured individuals are the first to demand a strong leader. In post-Great Recession Europe, looking to the nation can provide “an answer to a pervasive, and at the extreme, pathological feeling of ineffectiveness in [one’s] life” (Umbrasas, 2017). Austerity measures imposed by the European Union were unpopular, and many voters thought that their nation’s economic status was under threat (Rodrik, 2018). Simply put, many voters have chosen to look nostalgically towards their nation’s ‘better past’, and regaining a lost national economy is a hallmark of modern European nationalism (Bekhuis et al., 2013). As de Búrca (2018) states, these factors were visible in five ways in both the British and American contexts: “(i) a reaction against immigration, (ii) concern about economic insecurity, (iii) a rejection of internationalism and transnationalism, (iv) a return to inward- looking (economic) nationalism and (v) a rise in authoritarian and illiberal sentiment.”

Ongoing cultural change has wracked European countries since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 in two main waves: inter-European cultural integration driven by the free movement of labor between European Union member states and the 2015 influx of predominantly Muslim refugees (Polyakova & Shekhovtsov, 2016). Some who have seen their country’s culture or language ‘change’ wish to avoid this culture shock. Moreover, Mounk (2014) observes that short-term fluctuations in the economy do not fully explain the rise of the far-right. Mounk (2014) suggests in his “identity crisis theory” that some type of cultural change must be occurring on a longer time scale. Mounk (2014) identifies these cultural changes as the perceived ‘threat’ to national identity by immigrants and supranational organizations and the perceived decline in intergenerational living standards. Because establishment European political parties typically possess a pro-European Union orientation, discontented voters have seen nationalism as the only viable alternative to express their Euroscepticism (Ünver, 2016). Vasilopoulos et al. (2019) find that emotions resulting from cultural grievances play a role in demand for the far-right and that angrier voters are more likely to vote for far-right parties and more fearful voters are more likely to vote for mainstream parties.

In recent years, trust in elites has been significantly diminished due to both economic and cultural upheaval (Mudde, 2010). Mukand and Rodrik (2015) theorize that elites, the majority group, and the minority group(s) are three separate societal groups that can experience social cleavage. Though cleavages between majority and minority groups can be based along any line of identity, including ethnicity and religion, cleavages between either of these groups and elites will be most often visible on the basis of class (Mukand and Rodrik, 2015).

Moreover, voters will come to perceive the upper class as a protector of the status quo, and will come to perceive extremist candidates as outsiders who can upset the

status quo (Karakas & Mitra, 2020).

The ‘Supply Influences Demand’ Approach Another rapidly growing set of scholars reject the classic consensus that voter demand is the primary driver of far-right populist success today. Instead, they argue that a demand-side focus neglects the realities of inter- and intra-country variation in support for populist movements. Why, they ask, does nationalism only take root in some locations where demand-side factors are present? Mudde (2010) argues that although demand-side factors do help explain the success of farright nationalist parties in Europe today, it is supply-side factors such as party strength, party ideology, and party rhetoric that truly predict whether or not these parties will be successful. Mudde (2010) asserts that far-right populist parties are not abnormal and actually function in the same ways as other parties, and says that Scheuch and Klingemann’s “normal pathology thesis” ought to be known as the “pathological normalcy thesis.” By this, Mudde means that far-right parties are the result of normal democratic operations that have ‘gone too far’ and have created a political pathology. As a result, scholars in this school of thought treat far-right parties as typical entities within a democracy. They view far-right parties as ‘make or break’ agenda-setters that influence voter demands, just like any other party.

Scholars in the ‘Supply Influences Demand’ school of thought focus on supplies such as party strength and ideology. Party strength is typically measured by analyzing media presence, legislative participation, and grassroots support. Mair (2006) notes that populist parties find the most success when the conception of ‘the people’ as the core component of democracy is degraded. Mair (2006) asserts that far-right parties leverage conceptions of ‘the lost nation’ as a replacement bedrock in society to gain strength. Furthermore, van Spanje (2010) finds that mainstream parties will ostracize a far-right party less frequently if it appears strong in the electoral dynamics of just one or a few regional elections within a country.

As I will study in my case, scholars also focus heavily on party rhetoric as a crucial supply-side factor in determining the success of today’s far-right. As such, they conduct content analyses, discourse analyses, and find historical or symbolic references within far-right politicians’ speeches. As an extension of classic social exclusion theories, far-right nationalist parties today organize social exclusion based on nativist and xenophobic rhetoric that focuses on cultural differences rather than overt arguments of biological superiority. Mondon (2015) refers to this rhetoric as “neo-racism, cultural racism, or cultural differentialism” because it subtly implies to voters that European liberal democracy can only flourish in countries consisting of ‘traditionally’ European races.

Polyakova and Shekhovtsov (2016) argue that today’s

THE GW UNDERGRADUATE REVIEW • VOLUME 4 far-right political parties significantly tone down the rhetoric of overt biological racism and authoritarianism to avoid association with fascism. They demonstrate that today’s most electorally successful far-right parties are ones that have been able to moderate their rhetoric to gain “respectability” during election seasons (Polyakova & Shekhovtsov, 2016).

A ‘Third Way’ Forward to Bridge the Gap? This literature review has found the divide between the ‘Demand Influences Supply’ and ‘Supply Influences Demand’ schools of thought to be quite deep. The driving direction of the supply-demand interaction remains a highly contested gap in the literature on modern populism. However, limited research has begun to pursue a third path forward, which exists as a separate school of thought. As Golder (2016) argues in his study, this school of thought theorizes that supplied and demanded contemporary nationalism can only grow together, and will only produce far-right successes when both are maximized. Lubbers and Scheepers (2002) have pioneered this practical model by quantitatively measuring the growth of demand-side factors together with ideological markers within France’s National Rally party. Instead of focusing on the contentious direction of the partyvoter interaction, Lubbers and Scheepers (2002) provide correlative analysis of the French electorate and National Rally ideological rhetoric in comparison to data from other Western European countries. Though promising, their comparative study and others like it have been seen as incomplete because they overly condense different qualitative demand- and supply-side factors across many countries’ scenarios into a framework of quantitative variables in a manner that does not wholly represent the social interactions within far-right nationalism (Golder, 2016).

Vines and Marsh (2018) also grapple with the need to move past supply- and demand- in a vacuum, instead arguing that we need to “move beyond explanations of the problem that [place] ‘blame’” on either the suppliers or demanders of populism. Vines and Marsh (2018) build on the concept of “anti-politics,” which is political action and rhetoric that is perceived to be ‘outside’ of a country’s politics and that leads to developments such as “the decline in voting participation, party membership, and other forms of traditional political participation.”

While Mete (2010) argues that anti-politics can be either passive (or from below), with “activists questioning the existing political order,” or active (or from above), with “citizens being particularly attracted to populist leaders/ parties,” Vines and Marsh go a step further. Rather than acknowledge the possibility that both supply and demand can influence populist rhetoric in different cases, Vines and March (2018) assert that “anti-politics is a relational concept… [revolving] around the relationship between

14 political authorities and citizens, which is interactive and iterative.” This means that more study is needed to understand the relationship between the voters and politicians — a relationship that Vines and Marsh (2018) argue has become frayed and “decoupl[ed],” which they say is the real cause of anti-political populism.

Given the deadlock in this body of academic literature, a unifying approach is needed to add to the scholarly understanding of how populism functions in Europe today. This research contributes to a more dynamic approach to the scholarly conversation by shedding some light on how demand- and supply-side factors of populism interact in the British case to apply the ‘Third Way’ school of thought.

METHODS Approach My data collection and analysis employed an interpretivist epistemological approach. The nature of populism and the changes that it has produced in the British political system must be understood in a social context. The goal of my research methodology has been to qualitatively explore sociopolitical interaction. Finally, because of the social nature of my research subject, an interpretivist approach permitted me to act as an instrument in this project to communicate with British voters and political actors to understand their thoughts, opinions, and experiences. I allowed my interviewees to guide me to what they saw as the most important aspects of the new Conservative Party and of the new British political landscape.

Data Collection Process To answer my research question within the British case, I observed the ways in which the Conservative Party has changed in terms of party ideology, rhetoric, and composition since both the Brexit referendum and onset of widespread British Euroscepticism. To do so, I organized and conducted semi-structured interviews with fifteen ‘party actors’ within the Conservative Party, all from either England or Wales. These party actors included parliamentary assistants and office staffers, senior parliamentary staffers and communications officers, local Councilors, Young Conservative members, parliamentary office managers, and one Member of Parliament (See Appendix A).

These interviewees both carried out change in the Conservative Party and are influenced by those changes; the views of party actors have not been deeply explored since the 2016 Brexit referendum nor the 2019 general election, in which the Conservative Party won a landslide victory. I first asked questions related to their understanding of the history of populism, nationalism, and Euroscepticism in the UK before turning to the history of

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the Brexit movement and post-referendum withdrawal.

Next, I explored their perceptions on change within the Conservative Party, such as by asking how or if they perceive the Party to have shifted across the Cameron, May, and Johnson premierships, and by exploring whether or not they perceive ideology or policy objectives to have changed in recent years. I also asked them to comment on any trends of continuity and change with respect to elite maneuvering, party rhetoric, and policy from a supply perspective. Additionally, I sought to observe changes in voter demand by asking them about their perceptions as private citizens as well. Where relevant, I utilized my semi-structured format to follow up on common themes that I was learning about, such as the internal Conservative Party divide between ‘libertarianism’ and ‘authoritarianism’, the role of immigration in the Brexit referendum, or their perceptions of the Conservative Party’s direction.

I asked questions related to their perceptions, such as how they perceive their party to have changed, if at all, and what they consider to be the most important policy objectives of their party today. I also asked them to comment on any trends of continuity and change with respect to elite maneuvering, party rhetoric, and policy from a supply perspective. Additionally, I sought to observe changes in voter demand by asking them about their perceptions as private citizens as well. The semistructured interview format was ideal because it allowed me to ensure that I could follow up on specific topics that became common throughout the interviews (e.g., the decline of libertarianism or the new make-up of the Conservative Party in Parliament).

In addition to these interviews, I also analyzed a variety of public opinion data from the British Polling Council which identifies how British politics have changed at historical points of transition throughout the twentieth century as it did during the Thatcher years. Lastly, I consulted other studies, news media, and all UK and EU parliamentary election results chronicling these years.

Data Analysis Process I analyzed my data in accordance with the ‘Third Way’ school of thought, which required careful attention to the interaction between supply- and demand-side factors of nationalism. The purpose of my interviews with party actors was to better understand changes in the supplyside factors of nationalism, and to tease out the demandside factors of nationalism in the wake of the December 12th, 2019 parliamentary elections and the January 31st, 2020 exit from the European Union.

I conducted a thematic analysis of my fifteen interviews. First, each interview was recorded and listened to in order to record direct quotes as well as copious notes on everything that each interviewee said.

Then, all pertinent statements that an interviewee made

that had reoccurred in the data, as well as all statements that provided a novel viewpoint, were sorted by theme.

A view was considered pertinent and assigned a theme if it: (a) related to interactions between the Conservative Party and voters, (b) related to changes within either the Conservative Party or the public, (c) discussed a personal view that was not a broad reflection of public opinion, (d) discussed or referenced populism and/or nationalism (or referenced a sub-category of these ideas such as economic anxiety, globalization, or Euroscepticism). For a full list of coded themes and their frequency amongst all interviews, see Appendix B. My analysis examined how voters recall the Brexit campaign, what it meant to them, and how their views of British politics and British political parties have shifted over time. Moreover, by asking party actors about changes in legislative affairs and strategy (as it relates to rhetoric and electoral politics), my analysis identified where party actors and voters think the same and where they differ to ascertain what role populism plays in each group’s thinking and interactions with the other.

Ethical Considerations and Limitations There were important ethical considerations at play while conducting interviews. With respect to conducting interviews with Conservative Party actors, risk to participants may come in the form of job security considerations. For this reason, all data was anonymized and responses were obfuscated to ensure that responses would not indicate an interviewee’s identity, specific career, or affiliation. A participant consent form discussed the inherent risks to confidentiality posed by participating in interviews and provided a full overview of this study’s purpose and scope. All interview recordings were stored offline using encryption software, pending deletion, pursuant to the consent form.

This study also had two limitations due to the COVID-19 pandemic. First, the virus made in-person interviewing impossible. Conducting interviews virtually increased risks to confidentiality and could have theoretically precluded full honesty from participants despite precautions. Second, the pandemic drastically increased the workload of all Conservative Party actors, from Councilors to parliamentary staffers to Members of Parliament. As such, some sampled individuals declined to be interviewed due to other pressing priorities and lack of availability, which limited this study’s interview pool.

THE GW UNDERGRADUATE REVIEW • VOLUME 4 FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION: KEY ANTIPOLITICAL ISSUES AND A FEEDBACK LOOP The Core Issues of British Populism Euroscepticism and Sovereignty The issue of sovereignty has been deeply rooted within the “vox pop” — which describes the “snippets of public opinion from people ‘on the street’ — of the British public for decades; common concerns are often limiting out of control immigration and “tak[ing] back control of laws” (Hearn, 2017). Both of these concerns were heavily reflected by interviewees, who saw the Brexit movement as primarily stemming from the United Kingdom’s ‘unique’ position off the coast of the mainland continent.

Both Remainers and Leavers cited the British people’s long-standing reluctance towards the European Union and skepticism of bureaucracy.7 Euroscepticism, they said, had been seeded in the Conservative Party during the Thatcher era. Those who wanted the European Union to remain far less unified, such as Bill Cash, persisted throughout the process of the ratification of the Treaty of Maastricht. Though they were able to negotiate down Britain’s contributions to the EU, many in the party infrastructure ‘privately wanted the European Union to remain a useful club and nothing more’ and were not supportive of the European project. Most interviewees said that the large-scale shift in public sentiment came after Tony Blair signed the 2009 Lisbon Treaty, which prompted UKIP’s meteoric rise to third place in national polling. I was told that UKIP’s ability to push David Cameron to support a referendum in 2015 was critical in beginning the Conservative Party’s embrace of populism.

Though Euroscepticism had begun to grow within the European Research Group since 1993 in response to the Maastricht Treaty ratification, it was the Lisbon Treaty that increased the scale of its work and increased concerns within the Conservative Party in Parliament.

Interviewees identified the signing of the Lisbon Treaty as the period when British government appeared to be ‘superseded’; outcry against the Labour Party by Conservatives solidified a certain Eurosceptic sentiment within the Conservative Party.

Another issue that was crucial to changes in the Conservative Party was David Cameron’s recessionera austerity policies, which signaled to those who had lost their jobs that Cameron was adhering to European Union policy rather than looking out for the British public. Nationalism stemming from economic tensions had already been on the rise, but “the degree to which individuals were adversely affected by the crisis and their discontent with the EU’s handling of the crisis are major factors in explaining defection from mainstream pro-European to Eurosceptic parties in these elections”

16 (Colantone & Stanig, 2019; Hobolt and de Vries, 2016).

Some interviewees said that ‘Little Englanders’ in the North were fed up with the ‘London-centric and Brusselscentric narrative’ that had pushed austerity, and the lack of democracy at the supranational level had left some feeling particularly left behind and particularly disdainful towards bureaucrats. Conservatives were shocked that UKIP had come in third place in the polling before the 2015 election. There seemed to be an opportunity for populism to sweep up these Eurosceptic narratives, both within and outside of the Conservative Party. Soon populism would bubble up to the surface in the wake of the Brexit referendum and totally reshape the landscape of the Conservative Party.

At its core, several interviewees said the Brexit movement ‘relied on the idea of Britain as a global superpower.’ There was a sentiment amongst many interviewees that a large number of the Conservative Party’s membership ‘yearned for past glory’ and saw it as ‘shameful’ that a country with such ‘economic and global clout’ would not be able to determine the wellbeing of its people and its businesses ‘on its own.’ Indeed, as Hobolt and de Vries (2016) show, “the degree to which individuals were adversely affected by the crisis and their discontent with the EU’s handling of the crisis are major factors in explaining defection from mainstream pro-European to Eurosceptic parties in these elections.”

To a large extent, this sentiment of exceptionalism was considered to have driven turnout all the way through the 2019 elections, where interviewees identified the “Get Brexit Done” slogan as a sign of an ascendant Britain.

Indeed, Boris Johnson’s Conservative Party appeared to have ‘shown the differences between Conservatives and Labour’. His electoral campaign highlighted the strength of a fully independent Britain, while traditional Northern working class voters saw Labour’s mixed Brexit message as evidence that ‘Labour Party did not view Britain as a superpower’ and that it ‘still wanted to rely on the European Union.’ Many also identified the Johnson government’s coronavirus-era spending increases not just as efforts to head off a recession, but as an attempt to show the country that Britain can handle such a crisis with its own strength. The government seems ‘acutely aware’ of how Cameron’s unpopular austerity policies had helped the Leave campaign succeed, as Fetzer (2019) noticed, and now seems ideologically determined to grow the role of government in the domestic economy to prove that ‘Britain can go it alone’.

Immigration The importance of immigration in the minds of the British people depends on with whom one chooses to speak. While it would be difficult to ascertain how much

7 “Remainer” interviewees were those who had disclosed that they had voted to ‘Remain’ in the European Union in the 2016 Brexit referendum; “Leaver” interviewees had voted to ‘Leave’.

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immigration policy has informed the British electorate or the nature of the Conservative Party, interviewees said that there is ‘no doubt’ that anti-immigration rhetoric from UKIP and Nigel Farage during the Brexit referendum campaign ‘made it acceptable to talk about people “flooding in” to the United Kingdom.’ Every interviewee that I spoke to, possibly due a common socioeconomic background that has exposed them to metropolitan multiculturalism, regarded this type of rhetoric with disdain. Most were quick to note that, in their eyes, neither the Remain or Leave campaign sought to make immigration the core issue of the campaign; only Nigel Farage’s UKIP and other far-right groups ‘made it an issue’ (BBC News, 2016). I was also told that the Leave campaign was able to make its economic arguments while ‘outsourcing harsh, simple, and emotional rhetoric’ to Nigel Farage; the Remain campaign had to fight on two fronts.

Those who discussed immigration always identified Northern England as an area from which negative attitudes towards immigration are more common. After the Treaty of Maastricht established free movement of people, there was a movement of nationals from Eastern European countries into the United Kingdom. Despite the fact that these immigrants typically lived closer to London, interviewees described a broad English sentiment that these immigrants were taking jobs or were being favored by ‘Etonian elites’ over building up the ‘forgotten North.’

It is notable that voters with anti-immigration attitudes tend to call for, and latch onto, political voices such as UKIP’s Nigel Farage who advocated heavily against the free movement of people (BBC News, 2016). Amongst interviewees, views on immigration tended to correlate heavily with their preference for either Remaining or Leaving in the European Union. All described Priti Patel, current Secretary of State for the Home Department, as a pivotal Johnson government appointee who has signaled to those who supported Brexit that hardline immigration was on the agenda. One pro-Brexit interviewee described Priti Patel as ‘the heartthrob of all small-c conservative young men who want to see restricted immigration.’

Indeed, Boris Johnson’s post-2019 government has moved towards the ideological right on immigration by moving to implement a points-based immigration system, hiring more police officers and border enforcers, and publicly denouncing illegal migration (Elgot, 2019).

A Feedback Loop: The Working Class and the Conservative Mainstream Merge In combination with concerns over immigration throughout the country, the issue of Brexit has fundamentally reshaped the views of the English working class. As the 2019 election shows, the Labour Party’s traditional working class strongholds in the North of England — known aptly as the “Red Wall” —

overwhelmingly turned, constituency by constituency, in favor of the Conservative Party (Wainwright, 2019).

The Conservative landslide, and large resulting majority, demonstrates that a political realignment has occurred in the United Kingdom: The Labour Party is now much more urban, and the Conservative Party has grown its majority by forging deep local ties in working class constituencies. These ties, forged through rhetoric pertaining to ‘sovereignty’ and ‘immigration’, created a right-wing wave of populism that pulled the working class into the Conservative Party. One dejected staffer told me that the Conservatives have ‘expanded their base remarkably by cutting out people’ like him — that is to say, he felt that Cameronites like himself no longer saw their beliefs represented in the Party’s rhetoric, or at times, its policies. While some of this shift surely came from a desire to see Brexit through, interviews revealed a populism that changed both the electorate and the Conservative Party. Between the Brexit referendum campaign and the present day, both the voters and politicians have created a feedback loop that has supported and powered this political realignment.

Oesch (2008) provides a robust framework through which to understand this political realignment: the working class “has become the core clientele of right-wing populist parties in Western Europe” not just as a result of economic and welfare woes, but more importantly by political discontent and the ideology of “cultural protectionism”. When the working class simultaneously becomes disaffected with a country’s democratic elites and fearful of the loss of an “exclusive form of community” to outsiders, they will turn towards right-wing populist parties (Oesch, 2008).

This theory seems to hold especially true in the British case. Conservative interviewees used words such as ‘Etonian’, ‘Oxbridge’, and ‘London-centric’ to describe not just the make-up of British politics, but also the make-up of Members of their own Party in Parliament.

Whether originally Remainers or Leavers, all expressed dissatisfaction with the degree to which the Conservative Party had, for a long time, appeared not to speak to the country’s working class. In this way, a politician like David Cameron failed to carry much popularity with the working class, who were most exposed to 2010 fiscal cuts and therefore correlatively more likely to support the Leave campaign after becoming disaffected with elites (Colantone & Stanig, 2019). Instead, the Conservative Party lost votes to UKIP, the third largest party in the 2015 general election. According to interviewees, UKIP possessed a broadly right-wing populist agenda that was attractive to voters on both metrics that Oesch describes: it positioned itself as an ‘alternative to elites’ and as a ‘protector of the Englishman.’ As we know, the Conservative Party responded by co-opting these demand-side calls for populism and called for the Brexit referendum (Hobolt, 2016).

THE GW UNDERGRADUATE REVIEW • VOLUME 4 My interviewees attributed this populism to Theresa May’s 2017 general election shortfall. They said that, to voters, Theresa May represented ‘more of the same’: Traditional Etonian power in Parliament that would ‘embrace immigration and Europe’ in spite of the referendum. However, Boris Johnson had a ‘clever’ understanding of voter demand and was then able to use his power as an influential agenda-setter to supply his own brand of nationalism while leading the party into the 2019 general elections: the “Get Brexit Done” slogan.

The New Conservative Party and the ‘Libertarian-Authoritarian Dichotomy’ The 2019 Election Sparked a Political Realignment Interviewees were careful to note that, under Theresa May, many Conservative MPs saw the process of leaving the EU as a ‘damage limitation exercise’; the goal of these individuals was to ensure as ‘soft’ a Brexit as possible. After the thrice-repeated failure of Parliament to pass Theresa May’s EU Withdrawal Agreements, increasing frustration on the Conservative right, the tabloids, and among the electorate, led these political figures to be called ‘Remoaners’ — a term that referred to all MPs, but especially Conservatives who voted remain and were ‘obstructing Brexit’ in the House of Commons. Conservative Remoaners were described as ‘working with Labour’ and going against their own party. According to interviewees, the Remoaner label was fueled by exhaustion with the Brexit proceedings.

Politicians and voters alike simply wanted Brexit to be out of their news cycle and viewed attempts to ‘water down Brexit’ to be undemocratic and the actions of ‘Etonian’ elites who ‘thought they knew better than the majority of voters.’ When none of this changed under Boris Johnson’s leadership, he stripped the twenty-one Conservative MPs of the whip, punishing them for betraying the new party line (BBC News, 2019). Those who did not have their whip restored were essentially forced out of their seats, as new candidates were selected for their constituencies, creating a ‘much more pro-Brexit Conservative Party in Parliament.’

While Johnson was always careful throughout the 2019 campaign to ‘play his cards close to his chest so that no one could know what he believed’ on issues of policy, he made an ‘end to the Remoaners’ a priority through his “Get Brexit Done” slogan. The slogan was quite popular within swing constituencies in the North, whose Labour voters had warmed to the idea of Brexit or had become frustrated with both the Labour Party’s ‘lack of message’ on Brexit (Stewart, 2019). Moreover, Johnson’s Conservative associations in these constituencies were sure to nominate ‘local people who understood’ both the Brexit message and the struggles of the working class.

This new intake represented ‘small-c conservatives’ more directly and was highly pro-Brexit in nature. They

18 described candidates standing for Labour as ‘rudderless’ on the issue of Brexit and promised a return to traditional values that ‘the Labour Party could not provide because they were enamored with the cities and cosmopolitanminded voters.’ This new Conservative intake that entered the House of Commons in the wake of the 2019 election, along with the small-c conservative Members of Parliament who were already there, became the largest single voice in the Conservative Party in Parliament.

This new intake knew, and knows, that its electoral prospects stand on its ability to deliver both Brexit as well as prosperity for the working class. As such, the ideological makeup of Conservative MPs was pulled away from the socially liberal, yet economically austere, wing of the party that had dominated the Party in Parliament for so long. In its place stands a set of Conservative MPs that is more socially traditional, but that has sought to recapture the pre-Thatcher concept of paternalistic ‘One-Nation Conservatism’ that had supported a larger role for government programs to bolster citizens’ wellbeing.

‘Libertarians’ versus ‘Authoritarians’ This ideological shift in the Conservative Party was exemplified by a changing of the guard, so to speak, within the party’s leadership. Figures such as David Cameron and Dominic Grieve — socially liberal, fiscal conservatives who supported Remain — have been replaced in leadership by people such as Dominic Cumming and Priti Patel — more ‘traditionalist’ voices who want Britain to ‘rediscover itself as a nation that provides for its own people.’ This dynamic was described to me by every single interviewee from every single background. Without passing a moral judgement, most described this divide using these exact terms, and so I choose to employ them in the same ways in this paper: ‘libertarianism’ versus ‘authoritarianism’ within the Conservative Party. I was told that, while these two factions have existed in some shape or form for decades, if not centuries (dating back to the divide between ‘Whigs and Tories’), the ‘authoritarians’ are dominant in today’s Conservative Party as a result of Brexit. By ‘libertarian’, interviewees referred to an increasingly small role for the British state in markets alongside an increasingly socially liberal approval of higher immigration, the LGBTQ+ community, and racial justice. By ‘authoritarian’, they were referring to an increasing willingness to intervene in the economy as well as willingness to support more socially conservative policies that restrict more libertarian choices, such as increasing the number of police officers, implementing a points-based immigration system, and ‘making transgender issues an ideological fault line.’

These words should not be construed as morally loaded; only as indicating the proclivity for Conservative Party politicians and voters to support a larger authority role for the state in economic or social affairs.

In this ‘Libertarian-Authoritarian dichotomy’, of

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sorts, interviewees identified the Conservative Party’s libertarian wing as the ‘longstanding establishment’ that had been the clear ideological leaders of the party since Margaret Thatcher realigned British politics along neoliberal lines. Placing new limitations on the welfare state and lowering taxes became the norm in order to ‘allow the private sector and the individual to thrive.’

While Euroscepticism did exist — including, to a small extent, from Thatcher herself — it was mostly cast to the sides of the political mainstream by the influence of the Tory Reform Group (TRG) and the Conservative Group for Europe (CGE), which were described to me by interviewees as ‘instrumental in promoting pro-European Union views and social progress.’ The TRG was described to me as particularly influential and as having been crucial to the maintenance and preservation of the National Health Service as well as to social policy victories for British progressives, such as the Conservative Party-led legalization of gay marriage. Indeed, most Conservative Party Leaders in the post-Thatcher years — John Major, Michael Howard, David Cameron, and Theresa May — have either been directly affiliated with the TRG or have actively praised its brand of socially liberal, one-nation conservatism (Tory Reform Group [TRG]; TRG, 2016; TRG, 2019).

On the other hand, the ascendant ‘authoritarian’ branch of the Conservative Party sought to ‘reclaim traditional values’ and legitimize itself as the coalition of the working class that could deliver one-nation conservatism. Proponents of this type of conservatism heavily emphasize ‘sovereignty as a reason for a strong government role in the economy.’ One interviewee shared that ‘[t]he United Kingdom now has something to prove, which is that the national government can provide for its own people better than Brussels could,” and this sentiment was shared by the other interviewees who were supportive of Leaving the European Union. For instance, while Cameron had spoken about the Conservative Party’s ‘Northern Powerhouse’ policies that would reignite the economies of the North of England, these constituencies felt that change had not come and that Cameron’s government had ‘focused on the cosmopolitan interests of London and Brussels.’ Amongst these interviewees, the Johnson Government’s message of ‘Leveling Up the North’ has already been successful through the process of instituting a points-based system, ending free movement from Europe, and through economic stimulus in the face of the coronavirus pandemic rather than austerity. Immigration, of course, was at the top of voters’ minds ahead of the referendum (Blinder & Allen, 2016).

Interviewees often cited the European Research Group (ERG) as an example of an organization that pushed these ideological values within the party apparatus.

Political figures and Leave Campaigners such as Priti Patel, Michael Gove, and Steve Baker had described the globalization and European integration that was heralded

by the pre-Johnson Conservative Governments as having failed to protect the ‘core people of England.’ Implicit in the 2019 election was the idea that these ‘Remoaners’ who claimed to espouse the ideals of one-nation conservatism had actually forgotten about the people that the government was meant to serve. To these voters and interviewees, a bipartisan Major/Blair/Cameron policy consensus had emerged in the cities, and austerity and European integration had ‘hung the North of England out to dry.’ In this way, this ‘authoritarian’ branch was able to claim one-nation conservatism for themselves by grouping ‘libertarian’ Conservatives and the Labour Party as one and the same: serving establishment, Etonian, cosmopolitan elites at the expense of ‘the silent majority.’

At the same time, social issues such as increasing police funding have become priorities within the Conservative Party.

As such, the left-right spectrum that the Conservative Party had traditionally possessed has been supplanted.

Rather than Conservative voters or politicians disagreeing with each other on social or economic issues, the Party’s political spectrum is now defined by the degree to which one supports policies that ostensibly ‘protect’ the cultural traditions or economic power of the nation.

The result of this shift towards the ‘authoritarian’ wing of the party is a disaffected center/center-right group of Conservative libertarians, who ‘tend to be middle class cosmopolitans’ who fall into one of two camps: they have either begrudgingly accepted what the right/far-right touts as the ‘democratic argument’ in favor of honoring what the new Conservative constituency wants, or ‘they have left the party.’ Those who do not agree with some of the decisions that have come along with the new majority — such as Boris Johnson’s EU Withdrawal Bill’s new customs union between Northern Ireland and Britain across the Irish Sea, which undermines the ‘traditionally Unionist nature of the Conservative Party’ — have now ‘lost a place in mainstream British politics’ and have been replaced by ‘a much larger, much noisier electorate that is less middle class and more working class.’

A ‘Do What It Takes to Win’ Mentality Regardless of whether or not an interviewee had personally been pro-Remain or pro-Leave, virtually all of them repeated some version of the following line: ‘The Conservative Party will do whatever it can to win, and that is why it is the most successful political party [at winning elections] in the world.’ As such, in the face of fracture during the defeats of Theresa May’s Government, the Conservative Party rallied around what it knew best in the wake of the 2019 election: “Get Brexit Done” appeared to be a winning slogan, the Labour Party could be portrayed as weak and as lacking a decisive message, and libertarian “Remoaners” who were not on board with any aspect of the Johnson Government’s agenda could be lamented as going against the tides of democracy.

THE GW UNDERGRADUATE REVIEW • VOLUME 4 Interviewees, as well as the media in general, see Boris Johnson as the embodiment of this ‘do what it takes to win’ approach. It was abundantly clear to both Remainers and Leavers that, in 2016, “Johnson sniffed the chance to become prime minister, and — in Union jargon — decided at the last minute to back the [Brexit] motion” (Kuper, 2019). Despite ‘personally being a libertarian who represented social liberal ideas as the Mayor of London’, Boris Johnson has reinvented himself entirely around the issue of Brexit. As Prime Minister, he has promised to ‘take the European Union to task’ in his Withdrawal deal and has embraced a No-Deal Brexit as not his first choice, but a choice that ‘Britain is strong enough to get behind if it must.’ He has become someone heavily in favor of a bigger role for government in welfare and in local economies; he has been ‘the first Conservative Prime Minister in a long time to veto local Councilors’ ordinances.’ Additionally, he has embraced his party’s willingness to intervene on social issues: He has named Priti Patel his Home Secretary, who is reshaping immigration by imposing points-based limits that favor high-skilled labor from Commonwealth member-states in place of free movement of labor to and from Europe. Similarly, the Government is now hiring new immigration and police officers and have promised the British people that the United Kingdom is strong enough to grow on its own without any trade deal with the European Union if necessary.

Given the 2019 election results, this approach appears to be wildly successful from the perspective of the Johnson Government. Even though ‘some of the voters in the center have been left without a party,’ the new Conservative plebiscite exerted a heavy influence on the party; ‘voters who granted UKIP the third-largest vote share in the 2015 elections have now delivered the Conservative Party an unquestionable right-wing mandate.’ As such, voters who had “fled the center,” as Hobolt and Tilley (2016) say happened across Europe in the wake of the Great Recession due to fears over “EU integration, austerity, and immigration,” have fully realigned the Conservative electorate away from the libertarian wing of the party.

View of the Labour Party Today Interviewees also shared their views on the Labour Party in the wake of the 2019 elections. Those who considered themselves to be more pro-Remain or more libertarian tended to see the election of Keir Starmer as leader of the party as a positive step for the Labour Party ‘so that it can be a party that holds Conservatives to account.’ These interviewees saw a robust opposition that the public could support as ‘crucial to British democracy.’

They also viewed the Labour Party as a real challenger in future elections due to ‘more competent leadership that can win back the North by the end of the 2020s if Boris Johnson falters.’

Those who tended to be more pro-Leave, or who

20 belonged to the office of an MP that had been newly elected from the North in 2019, saw things much differently. To these interviewees, Starmer represented a ‘far-left Corbyn lieutenant’ who ‘tried to overturn democracy with a second referendum.’ Dismayed, they told me that Labour was ‘opposed to absolutely everything’, though they did note that the Labour Party had broadly supported the Johnson government on policies to mitigate the coronavirus pandemic. They said that, in the North, voters view the Labour Party as far-left and ‘anti-British’, asserting that Labour had become ‘too city-based’ and ‘no longer [had] a love of country, [but a] hate [of] traditions.’

Amongst these interviewees, the difference in views towards the Labour opposition between those who subscribed to the ‘libertarian’ versus ‘authoritarian’ branches of the Conservative Party was stark, and indicative of the party’s changing nature. ‘When America sneezes,’ one senior staffer from a freshman MP’s office told me, ‘Britain catches a cold.’ They saw ‘culture issues in the United States’ as having arrived on British soil; pushing Labour and ‘professional, white-collar Conservatives towards extremes.’ Only these new Conservatives, several believed, could ‘reject the status quo and restore Britain’ without these efforts being hampered by globalization or by the European Union.

CONCLUSION & FUTURE RESEARCH Contemporary populism and nationalism have never been more salient than they are today, both within scholarship and society at-large. Within the European context, no populist movement has seen greater or more consequential success than the Brexit movement, which has successfully shepherded the United Kingdom out of the European Union. These populist ideas have co-opted the mainstream British Conservative Party in a way that has pushed it further to the political right, both in policy and rhetoric. In this study, I sought to understand Brexit within the context of this surge of far-right populism, which continues to persist in the United Kingdom and Europe at-large. To learn both why the Conservative Party has changed so markedly in response to the ongoing Brexit negotiations and what realities explain the Party’s rhetorical and general policy changes as well as its factional shifts, I analyzed interviews with Conservative Party actors in accordance with the ‘Third Way’ school of thought. A rising framework within the scholarly literatures on populism and nationalism, the “Third Way” school of thought, has been especially well-articulated by Vines and Marsh (2018), who argue for a recognition of the relationship between politicians and citizens rather than a focus on either of these parties. In summary, this study found the key themes of contemporary British populism to be Euroscepticism, sovereignty, and immigration. It also found three mechanisms of action that mobilized

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populist discourse within the Conservative Party and the voters: A feedback loop between the English working class and the Party apparatus, an active dispute between ‘libertarians’ and ‘authoritarians’ in the Party, and a ‘do what it takes to win’ mentality amongst Members of Parliament that has allowed the Conservative Party in Parliament to re-establish party unity around the new ideological consensus.

There has been a “decoupling of political authorities and citizens” in the lead-up to Brexit, and this has continued between Conservative Party political authorities and its voters until the 2019 election (Vines & March 2018).

Local activism for the Brexit vote by UKIP and the Leave Campaign promised an interactive democracy could do what the status quo could not (Bang, 2009). Reciprocally, the Conservative Party has been realigned by these voters and locally-raised Parliamentary candidates who have been elected to ‘deliver Brexit themselves’ and succeed where the libertarians had failed (Bang, 2009).

This decoupling of the huge swaths and voters from their typical political loyalties, such as the Labour Party in the North or a more ‘politically moderate’ sect of the Conservative Party, has occurred because of a feedback loop between the working class and Conservative politicians from the ‘authoritarian’ wing of the party. Both the ‘suppliers’ and ‘demanders’ of populism have engaged in this feedback loop (Vines & March, 2018). Each brought ideas that major parties in the United Kingdom had mostly rejected for decades into the political mainstream: an isolationist, ‘go-it-alone’ approach towards Europe, a shift towards pre-Thatcherite economics, and a desire to ‘look inward, rather than outward.’

A perfect storm of events contributed to this political realignment, and the Brexit referendum was the spark: The Great Recession, agenda-setting by UKIP and Nigel Farage, the Eurozone crisis, austerity policies, and the systemic move towards policies that support the British middle- and upper-classes by the Conservative and Labour Parties for decades. This realignment cannot be attributed to supplied populism or demanded populism, and must be attributed to a highly “interactive and iterative” process of communication between the Conservative Party and a shifting, restless base of disaffected voters (Vines & March, 2018). As such, while others such as Mete, de Búrca, and Mondon provide valuable contributions to the study of either supplied or demanded populism, the British case of populism indicates that we should view supplied and demanded populism as a “duality,” not a “dualism” (Mete, 2010; De Búrca, 2018; Mondon, 2015; Vines & March, 2018). The first key moment within this supply-demand conversation occurred in the wake of the 2015 elections, when a Brexit referendum was formally promised after UKIP had established itself as a major player that had clearly tapped into latent disaffection and anti-political ideas. Next came the 2016 Brexit referendum itself, which explicitly demonstrated voter demand. In the wake of the

referendum, a further inflection point was the failure of the libertarian wing of the Conservative Party to ‘win the day in the Commons’; voters simply became more disaffected with traditional politics. Finally, the 2019 elections solidified the political alignment, and crystallized disdain for ‘Remoaners’, austerity, globalization, and cosmopolitanism; this disdain now exists both within the Conservative Party in Parliament and within the party’s base. This has been clearly communicated by the deselection of ‘libertarian’ members who were labeled ‘disloyal’ and as ‘Remoaners’, and by the new intake of Northern English MPs who are more ‘authoritarian’ in their policy outlook and are ‘not Etonians, and represent the people who elected them.’ Today, this shift means that the Conservative Party’s voters expect their party to be more socially right wing (on issues such as immigration, policing, and gender identity) and more economically paternalist (to be more ‘sovereign/independent’ and ‘powerful/capable of providing’). So far, the Johnson government has succeeded in either delivering these new types of policies, or at least appears to be delivering in the face of heavy government spending in the face of the coronavirus pandemic (Mattinson, 2020).

Future researchers can expand on these findings in four main ways. First, researchers should continue to analyze the state of British populism after Boris Johnson’s government succeeds or fails to avoid a ‘no-deal Brexit’.

The degree to which the Northern working class stays with the Conservative Party, as well as the degree to which libertarian-leaning Conservative MPs return to the cabinet in a post-deal cabinet shake-up, will determine how strong the bonds are between the new Conservative electorate and the Johnson government’s appeal to the right. Second, future papers can employ the Third Way approach to other cross-national examples, such as to the French National Rally, populism across the political spectrum in Germany, or could depart from Western Europe entirely to examine the rise of Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil and his continued grip on populist support.

Third, scholars should examine the Conservative Party’s ‘libertarian-authoritarian’ dichotomy that was described at length by this paper’s interviewees, both with respect to the Conservative Party and with respect to other political parties around the world. For instance, future studies may ask whether this dichotomy is useful in understanding contemporary or historical political realignments, with or without respect to populism.

Finally, this paper holds that disaffected voters and politicians will quickly establish a feedback loop that advocates against globalization, supranational unions, and socioeconomic elites in the education system. As such, a fourth area in which both policymakers and researchers should continue to explore is the impact of increasing income inequality and urban economic prosperity that globalism has produced. The policymaking and scholarly communities should pay special attention to the impact of

THE GW UNDERGRADUATE REVIEW • VOLUME 4 supranationalism on the collective identity and collective psyche of rural populations. For instance, scholars should test whether or not successful government interventions that redistribute some of the earnings of globalization’s ‘winners’ to globalization’s ‘losers’ are successful at breaking this anti-political feedback loop and restoring the honor and self-image within rural communities that have seen stagnant wages, high unemployment, or underdeveloped infrastructure. Researchers should also examine the effect of mainstream parties’ austerity policies on third-party populist rhetoric.

22 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank Professor Alexander Cromwell, Professor Kimberly Morgan, and the entire 2019-2021 Dean’s Scholars Program Cohort for their assistance in shaping this project at all stages.

APPENDIX A: PARTICIPANT DATA Total interviewees

15

Job Title* Parliamentary assistant or staffer Senior parliamentary staffer, communications officer, or senior office manager Local Councilor Young Conservatives member Member of Parliament

8 5 2 2 1

Parliamentary assistant or staffer Voted to Remain Voted to Leave Did not disclose

5 9 1

* Includes overlapping job titles

APPENDIX B: LIST OF CODED THEMES AND EXAMPLES Theme Categories

Supplied and Demanded Populism Themes Corruption* Economic anxiety*** Globalization*** England/Wales** English Midlands* Etonianism/‘Oxbridge’*** Euroscepticism*** ‘Federal Europe’** Feedback loop*** Immigration*** Nationalism** Northern England** Sovereignty*** Working class***

Brexit

Conservative Party Change

Other

Chequers plan** European Research Group** Foreign labor*** Healthcare/NHS*** Irish backstop** Labour Party/‘failures’*** Leavers*** ‘Nasty’/’messy’ politics** Nigel Farage/UKIP*** Protectionism** Remainers*** Tory Reform Group** Withdrawal Agreement(s)** Young vs Old Leavers*

2019 Election:*** Messaging** New composition*** New electorate*** New intake*** Red Wall** ‘Authoritarians’/‘Whigs’*** Boris Johnson*** David Cameron*** ‘Do what it takes to win’*** John Major* ‘Libertarians’/‘Tories’*** Margaret Thatcher** One-Nation Conservatism** Theresa May**

British Commonwealth* Devolution** Dominic Cummings** Dominic Grieve* Jeremy Corbyn** John Bercow** Keir Starmer* Nigel Farage*** Northern Ireland** Priti Patel*** Scottish independence** Social media** Tony Blair*

* Least frequently mentioned ** Commonly mentioned *** Always/almost always mentioned; highest frequency topics

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About the Author Jacob is a January 2021 graduate from Holliston, Massachusetts. He received his Bachelor of Arts in International Affairs, with an international politics concentration, and a double major in Political Science. His research interests are political movements, party politics, and international affairs. As a student, Jacob was a member of the Elliott School’s Dean’s Scholars Program, a two-year program designed to allow undergraduate students to complete a funded research project. He has work, internship, and extracurricular experience within party politics, the U.S. House Energy & Commerce Committee, the Lab at OPM, and the nonprofit sector.

Mentor Details Dr. Alexander Cromwell oversees the Dean’s Scholars program at the Elliott School and greatly enjoys helping students design and implement their individual research projects. He teaches the three required research methods courses in the Dean’s Scholars sequence, an internshipfor-credit professional development course, and conflict resolution. His research focuses on peace education in conflict contexts, and he has investigated the impact of these programs with Pakistani, Afghan, US, and Indonesian youth. His work has been published in the International Journal of Educational Development, the Journal of Peace Education, Action Research, and edited volumes. Cromwell received his PhD in Conflict Analysis and Resolution from George Mason University.

26 KEYWORDS: Piquetero , social movement, Argentina, neoliberalism, unemployment DOI: https://doi.org/10.4079/2578-9201.4(2021).07

From Social Exclusion to Social Cohesion: How the Piquetero Movement Achieved Social Policy Expansion in Post-Neoliberal Argentina ABIGAIL GUEN INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS, ESIA ‘21, abby_guen@gwu.edu

ABSTRACT Argentina’s implementation of neoliberal economic policies in the 1990s caused unprecedented levels of poverty and unemployment. In the face of political and economic subordination, the working class and unemployed turned to collective action and formed the Piquetero movement, carrying out hundreds of protests between 1997 and 2007 to demand more inclusive social policies. To understand how this social movement became a legitimate vehicle for influencing Argentinian social policymaking, a rigorous literature review of scholarly articles and relevant quantitative data was conducted and three main findings were identified. First, strong social cohesion within the movement made the protest activities highly organized and persistent. Second, the size and visibility of the protests made the movement impossible to ignore.

Third, the democratic political structure of Argentina meant that meeting the demands of the movement was necessary for presidents to secure the vote for reelection. These findings highlight the importance of the social sphere in development discourse and emphasize the ability of social movements to influence government action. The Piquetero movement was an impressive demonstration for how to effectively assemble people in a democratic space to create immediate social change.

• INTRODUCTION Argentina has garnered a global reputation for its volatile economy. Since the mid-twentieth century, the country’s approach to economic policymaking has swung between a wide spectrum of tactics trying to foster sustainable economic development, with unsatisfactory results. Debt and default crises have plagued the country for the better part of thirty years, peaking in 2001 when Argentina defaulted on over US$100 billion owed to external creditors.

Only recently was the country able to restructure nearly all of its remaining US$65 billion in debt with the International Monetary Fund and other private lenders. This deficit mainly originates from loans of the post-Import Substitution Industrialization period, when economic liberalization brought new waves of external financing. The volatility and stagnant growth felt during this period of the 1980s, known as Latin America’s “Lost Decade,” led Argentina and many of its neighbors to turn to more orthodox, neoliberal policies.

While such policies tamed inflation and yielded growth in the short term, they did not lessen the fiscal deficits. With a low government budget, deregulation, and privatizations, the lower and working classes experienced reductions in services

and wages and many lost their jobs. As economic vulnerability deepend for the average person throughout the 1990s, a movement of unemployed people emerged as a voice for those who lacked a formal method for public discourse. This movement became known as the Piquetero movement, encompassing hundreds of organizations fighting for inclusive social policies.

Historically, labor unions were the strongest entities for pushing policy reform. They had legal recognition and structure that social movements often lacked and were often given access to official policymaking channels. Throughout the 1990s, union membership dropped drastically as privatizations and other market-oriented policies drove up unemployment, slashing their strength. As a result, unemployed Argentines turned to collective protest and reached national scales demanding better employment opportunities and more inclusive social policies The peak of the movement came in 2001 and 2002 amid political disorientation and a default crisis. Many of Argentina’s Latin American neighbors also experienced social unrest in response to these detrimental economic experiments. However, the Piquetero movement became quite distinct in its size, persistence, and relationship to politics.

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This paper provides a country-level case study of Argentina, analyzing the causes, scope, and influence the unemployed Piquetero movement had on social policymaking. I will consider the timeframe from 1997 (when the first protest of the movement occurred) to 2007 (when Néstor Kirchner left office). Kirchner’s exit provides a logical end date because the Piqueteros became much more incorporated into electoral politics and social policymaking under his administration. This trend lessened the movement’s political autonomy and unification. Generally, I will discuss how economic policies enacted by Carlos Menem and Fernando de la Rúa were central to the rise and continued presence of the Piqueteros, and how their demands of each administration helped provoke Eduardo Duhalde and Néstor Kirchner to pass more inclusive social policies. I use Garay’s definition of social policy, which encompasses “social transfers and services for individuals and households, such as pensions and income support programs, as well as health care and social assistance services” (Garay, 2016, p.29).

I argue that the movement was able to exert unprecedented influence over social policymaking for three reasons. First, the production of obvious losers through economic austerity measures from the late 1990s into the early 2000s catalyzed feelings of social cohesion and resilience among the groups that Garay deems as social “outsiders.” To her definition, the outsiders who made up the Piquetero movement include “the urban informal sector – the self-employed, street vendors, and employees hired off the books – as well as rural workers and the unemployed” (Garay, 2016, p.1). The strong sense of common struggle fostered an environment of collective identity, which impassioned the unemployed and their peers to push for change.

Second, the sheer size and persistence of protests organized by unemployed Argentines, who generally would not have such political agency, allowed for constant demands to be made until results were won.

Over a decade, the movement encompassed a variety of organizations and hundreds of thousands of people.

Their tactics of picketing and street-barricading were highly disruptive, making a direct government response necessary for economic activity to carry on. The Piqueteros used their visibility to build legitimacy and position their protests as attacks on neoliberalism. Their strength and persistence were instrumental in winning them access to policy-making channels previously untouched by the unemployed.

Third, the Piquetero movement was able to warrant social policy expansion by making the meeting of their demands a political necessity. The lack of political and economic stability enjoyed by the Menem, de la Rúa, Duhalde, and first Kirchner administrations made the unemployed vote necessary to secure reelection.

Fernando de la Rúa’s 2001 resignation showed Duhalde and Kirchner that ignoring the demands of the social

movements was political suicide. In response, they dramatically expanded social policymaking and opened negotiation spaces for the unemployed to curtail the mass social unrest and maintain electoral support.

Many of the scholars mentioned in this paper describe certain policies enacted by administrations of the time as direct reactions to the protests. I only analyze several policies on a broad scale, as the full transformation of social policy from the late 1990s and early 2000s far exceeds the scope of this paper. I begin by discussing related literature, then move into a brief economic background on the neoliberal structural adjustments of the 1990s and how the results gave rise to the Piquetero movement. I then analyze three social policies passed by the state in response to the social movements and discuss my three theories for how and why the Piqueteros were instrumental in their passage and implementation.

METHODOLOGY This paper is a theoretical analysis of mainly qualitative literature covering four central themes: (1) social cohesion and social movement theory, (2) Argentinian labor and social policies, (3) Argentinian political and economic history, and (4) the Piquetero movement itself. These sources - in both Spanish and English - are pulled from a variety of scholarly journals, books, and articles from databases accessed through the GWU library system.

Quantitative data from international organizations complement the qualitative findings, mainly in economic analysis and explanation of the scope of the movement, but the creation of new quantitative data was not the goal. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, fieldwork was not possible. All conclusions are drawn from reading, analyzing, and understanding existing data and literature.

The central research question is “How was the Piquetero movement able to influence social policymaking so substantially in the post-neoliberal era?” Research began with theoretical literature on the rise and role of social movements in Latin America, ultimately leading to the identification of social cohesion as the most important conceptual factor for the Piquetero movement. This led to deeper exploration into the literature on Argentinian labor systems, economic history, and political structures, especially with respect to the Peronist Party - the Partido Justiscialist (PJ). With this background in mind, three hypotheses were formulated to answer the research question - the movement’s strong and organized social cohesion, mass participation and visibility, and ability to use political circumstances to its advantage. Next, national-scale social policies passed during this time were identified and related to the hypotheses to conclude that the Piqueteros had a substantial influence on their creation and passage.

THE GW UNDERGRADUATE REVIEW • VOLUME 4 RELATED LITERATURE Before 1997, popular demand for new social policies in Argentina mainly came from labor unions, who were able to lobby through corporatist channels facilitated by the government. Without this formal access to policymakers, the Piqueteros operated instead in the social space, seeking to integrate social life and the social economy into the political and economic narrative. Sánchez de Roldán argues that much of Latin America’s development literature undervalues the importance of social action in shaping development, and introduces the “proper social issues” that must be considered more thoroughly.

These issues are social vulnerability, social capital, social exclusion, social inclusion, and social cohesion (Sanchez de Roldán, 2012). I will focus mostly on how the exclusion of the Piqueteros from social programs and economic support fostered the last issue, social cohesion. I utilize the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) definition of social cohesion, which is “the dialectical relationship between mechanisms of social inclusion/exclusion and people’s reactions, perceptions and attitudes to the ways in which these mechanisms operate in producing a sense of belonging in society” (ECLAC, 2007, p.48).

Considering this relationship between social exclusion and social cohesion, Jenson details how social cohesion can be understood either through the relationship between society and governments or within a broader context to society as a whole (Jenson, 2010, p.7). In this case, the relationship between society and the government was weak, lacking meaningful vertical linkages. This lack of access to the government generated horizontal social cohesion between poorer classes who were not getting the support they needed. The growing number of unemployed Argentines and precarity for those working in the informal sector generated a great deal of social and economic vulnerability. Tokman stresses the relationship between vulnerability and the informal sector, asserting that the larger the informal sector, the greater the public perception of insecurity. As a growing number of people lost their formal employment and thereby social protection, feelings of insecurity drove many Argentines to civil society groups for support (Tokman, 2007, p. 87).

What goes beyond Tokman’s consideration is that the unemployed used these feelings of insecurity to leverage organizational legitimacy, not just informal workers. It was both the real and perceived insecurity felt by the unemployed that gave the Piquetero movement a strong foundation on social cohesion and collective struggle and pushed it comfortably into the political sphere.

Retamozo argues that the rise and success of the Piquetero movement hinge on two social conditions: the process of class restructuring as quality of life deteriorated and the visibility of the protests. These conditions align with my hypotheses of the importance of

28 social cohesion and mass organization, and help explain how space was created for collective action among citizens experiencing the same challenges (Retamozo, 2006, p. 112). Retamozo and Becloweicz both explain how the deterioration of neoliberal hegemony allowed the rise of new alternatives in the social, political, and economic spheres (Bencloweicz, 2006, p. 129). For the Piqueteros, this meant an appropriate space to exercise social cohesion.

To develop their insecurity into action, the Piqueteros turned to the social and solidarity economy. Veltmeyer describes the social and solidarity economy as both an alternative development model and a vision of development through social transformation. He claims that it can be functional in both capitalist and anticapitalist movements by becoming a third sector that complements the public and private sectors. This is the case in Argentina, wherein the social and solidarity economy – through mass protest and organized movements – became a mechanism for advocating social policy expansion aimed at lessening poverty and inequality. He deems the 1990s the “Age of Resistance” as the Washington Consensus – the market-oriented structural reforms prescribed by D.C.-based institutions to developing Latin American countries in crisis – fell and a post-neoliberal framework was ushered in (Veltmeyer, 2018, p. 39). Effectively, the goal was to shift the political focus from the growth-oriented economy to the social economy.

To this end, there is an important link between social movements, economic circumstances, and political systems. As unions declined in the 1990s, the acknowledged relationship between the political and social spheres did not fall with them. Instead, social movements distinguished themselves from unions and political parties to demand change in the relationship between individuals and the collective. Bacallao-Pino argues that social movements inherently push against institutional politics by demanding concessions for sectors of the population often excluded from clientelist networks (Bacallo-Pino, 2016, p. 118-119). Indeed, the access to policymaking that the Piqueteros won for themselves went against the established corporatism that had long excluded them.

Bellinger and Arce posit the rise of unemployed citizens in the framework of democracy. Much of the literature on the effects of neoliberal reform on society, they state, argues that social demobilization occurs under structural adjustment. Instead, while unions declined, lower socioeconomic classes repoliticized (Bellinger & Arce, 2011, p. 691) and became reincorporated (Rossi, 2019, p. 7) within and outside of formal party politics.

Democratization coincided with the deterioration of living standards but “expanded the scope for citizen mobilization against exclusionary economics” (Grugel & Riggirozz, 2012, p. 6). On the heels of the brutal

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Videla dictatorship, emphasis on democratic principles created the conditions for social movements to become legitimate vehicles for government agenda-setting. These arguments will support my third claim for the success of the movement in the social policy arena; the democratic nature of the administrations under consideration underpins the need for presidents to respond to the protests to maintain electoral support.

I will begin with a brief economic history of Argentina that explains the structural changes that catalyzed feelings of social exclusion and cohesion, and ultimately led to the rise, strength, and success of the Piquetero movement.

THE ERA OF NEOLIBERAL REFORM Argentina’s economic history over the twentieth century is riddled with volatility, stop-and-go economics, and frequent shifts in economic models. Along with many of its neighbors, Argentina adopted Import Substitution Industrialization (ISI) from 1945-1976, enacting industrial policy and restricting trade. Despite early growth and investment, the shortcomings of ISI became clear in

the 1960s; Argentina lacked competitiveness in its manufacturing sector with an overvalued exchange rate, left its agricultural sector under-invested in, and racked up large fiscal deficits. Attempts to finance these deficits brought the average consumer price inflation to over 300% between 1975 and 1990, slashing the purchasing power of Argentine citizens (Brown, 2004, p. 222).

When the country fell under the military government of General Jorge Rafael Videla in 1976, drastic measures were taken towards austerity and liberalization - a common approach among hyperinflationary economies in Latin America at the time (Kaplan, 2013, p. 49). The move away from economic populism brought rigid defense of a fixed exchange rate, which required increasing external borrowing (Franko, 2019, p. 84). The massive fiscal deficit and lack of export revenues to finance the high ratio of debt to GDP left Argentina, alongside many of Latin America’s nations, vulnerable to the domestic and international shocks of the 1980s “Lost Decade.” Once democraticallyelected President Raúl Alfonsín took office, he deepened economic commitment towards Washington Consensusguided reforms to tame the inflation and reduce the

Billion 300

250

200

150

100

50

0

1990

1995

2000

2005

2010

FIGURE 1. Argentina Total External Debt Stocks (Billions, Current USD), 1989 – 2019

Source: “External debt stocks, total (DOD, current US$) – Argentina.” World Bank Data (Washington, D.C., 2019).

2015

THE GW UNDERGRADUATE REVIEW • VOLUME 4 deficit. Despite his intentions, public backlash curbed his attempts to fully commit to the neoliberal approach, and by 1989, price inflation rebounded and reached over 3,000%, spelling the end of Alfonsín’s rather slow-moving term (Brown, 2004, p. 266).

Neoliberal structural adjustment truly took place under Carlos Menem in 1994. Despite being a member of the Partido Justicialista, which often promoted state spending and redistributionist policies, Menem also undertook swift policy action to implement neoliberal reforms. Along with selling off hundreds of state-owned companies to the private sector and reducing trade barriers, he proposed and enacted the Convertibility Plan in 1991, which reduced government spending, increased privatizations, and most notably pegged the peso to the dollar at a 1:1 rate with fully backed reserves (Tiechman, 2004, p. 57). While meant to bring currency stability and tame inflation, the continued reliance on fiscal spending to fill the gap between tax revenues and government expenditures meant the deficit kept growing (Brown, 2004, p. 270) During his term, international debt obligations grew from $62 billion to $127 billion, as seen in Figure 1, and a wave of capital flight ensued. Argentina became reliant on the IMF and other external creditors, and eventually the IMF refused to issue more loans until the country complied with its austerity conditionalities.

By the late 1990s, the effects of the loan cycle on the lower classes were massive.

At the heart of the socioeconomic struggle was increasing unemployment, shown in Table 1. Between 1991

30 and 1997, unemployment rose from 6.5% to 16.8%, largely due to privatizations. Profits from these privatizations were used to service debts rather than engage in social spending (Teubal & Rodriguez, 2001, p. 68). Accordingly, many Argentines felt that neoliberal policies had only harmed them. Services that had once been accessible were suddenly expensive and becoming increasingly complex, and prices were soaring. Any macroeconomic growth potential from the 1990s restructuring was offset by rising social exclusion. The country’s Gini coefficient, which measures wealth inequality on a scale from 0 (perfectly equal) to 100 (perfectly unequal), increased from 46.8 in 1991 to 49.1 in 1997 and peaked in 2002 at 53.8.

Anger over these conditions rose steadily after Menem’s reelection in 1995, and 1997 marked the first wave of protests considered part of the Piquetero movement.

Early protests took place in select provinces that had been hit especially hard by unemployment. They demanded greater workfare benefits and better distribution of existing funds, claiming that social safety nets were insufficient. In 1998, several of the largest unemployed organizations merged into strong coalitions that would become foundational in the Piquetero movement.

THE RISE OF THE PIQUETEROS I pull strongly from Rossi’s 2019 work to explain the rise of the Piquetero movement. He deems the struggle for reincorporation by the unemployed as the driver of the movement, with the central grievances being the

Year

Unemployment

Year

Unemployment

1990

7.6%

1999

16.1%

1991

6.5%

2000

17.1%

1992

7.1%

2001

19.2%

1993

11.6%

2002

22.5%

1994

13.3%

2003

17.3%

1995

18.9%

2004

13.6%

1996

18.8%

2005

11.6%

1997

16.8%

2006

10.2%

1998

14.8%

2007

8.5%

TABLE 1. Unemployment by Year (1990-2007) Source: “Argentina – Unemployment Rate,” Knoema: World Data Atlas, 2019.

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lack of work opportunities and social safety nets and the exclusion from clientelist politics. The Piqueteros became “the main national, social movement in the struggle to shape a post-neoliberal arena in Argentina, made up of unemployed citizens and informal workers” (Rossi, 2019, p.5). Their methods of picketing and blocking roads began in the Neuquen Province, where thousands of workers lost their jobs when YPF, one of Argentina’s largest energy corporations, was privatized. Newly jobless, hundreds of people organized their first roadblock in 1996 to demand compensation and new opportunities (Almeida, 2007, p. 123). The method quickly spread across the country as an effective approach to organizing people outside of workers’ strikes and manifested into the name of the movement as the “Picketers” – the Piqueteros.

The Piqueteros tended to be affiliated with groups from the left, most notably with the Partido Justicialista. Over time, the party underwent extensive restructuring into a machine party, which pushed some party members towards civil society groups more on the political periphery. This reformulation gave way for alternative avenues for the poorer classes to organize alongside the party, which were also fueled by the reduction in union power (Rossi, 2019, p. 72). Between 1985 and 2000, union membership rates fell from about 67.5% to 31.7% (González, Medwid & Trajtemberg, 2009). No longer having a structured group through which to fight for social policy reform, former union members and the unemployed turned to social movements to voice their demands.

Scholars seem to settle on three social movement organizations (SMOs) that truly founded the Piquetero movement. The first was the Movimiento de Trabajadores Desocupados (MTD), comprised of left-wing Guevaras and autonomists who remained more on the periphery of the political sphere. The second was the Maoist Classist and Combative Current (CCC), estimated to have about 70,000 members and known to be more central on the political spectrum than many of its left-leaning counterparts. The final SMO was the Federación de Tierra, Vivienda y Hábitat (FTV), which aligned with the Central de Trabajadores Argentinos (CTA) labor union. The FTV had an estimated 125,000 members and was most involved in direct political negotiations with the government (Salvochea, 2008, p. 305). The spectrum of political alignment and involvement among these three central SMOs, which each encompassed a variety of smaller organizations under their ideological umbrellas, contributed to the movement having a wide range of followers. Accordingly, the various arms and offshoots of the movement were differentiated by region, collective identity, and general approaches to social dialogue.

The first wave of unemployed protests considered part of the Piquetero movement broke out in 1997. Menem’s unwavering commitment to the Convertibility Plan and structural adjustment cost him electoral popularity,

and each successive year of his incumbency saw more organizations joining the movement. Though protests briefly subsided when his successor, Fernando de la Rúa, took office, the continued inability of their administrations to sufficiently meet the demands of the unemployed population set the stage for the continued momentum of the Piquetero protests into a national movement.

REACTIONARY SOCIAL POLICIES ON THE NATIONAL SCALE It was not until after de la Rúa’s resignation that targeted and nationally reaching social policies were truly proposed and passed. Among many others, three key policies were passed under Duhalde and Kirchner that helped to alleviate the economic burden felt by lower-class Argentines in the sectors of unemployment, pensions, and health care. The Piquetero movement was instrumental in shaping the social discourse and provoking the passage of each.

Unemployment After five presidents passed through the Casa Rosada in just a week, the beginning of Duhalde’s 2002 term brought the recognition that the government needed to listen to the demands of the people. His first attempt was the Plan Jefes y Jefas de Hogar Desocupados (Program for Unemployed Heads of Household, or PJJHD). The plan involved a monthly cash transfer of AR$200 (about US$66 at the time) to unemployed households with children under 18 or disabled persons. To incentivize productivity and opportunity within beneficiary households, Duhalde attached conditionalities to the funds that children had to be attending school and household members had to be involved in local community projects (Colina, Giodano, Torres, & Cárdenas, 2009, p. 339-340). Eventually the plan supported almost 2 million households, making it “the most far-reaching unemployment program ever applied in Latin America” (Rossi, 2019, p.178-179). Funds were dispersed among the provinces to consultative councils as well as other groups including the CTA and, in about 10% of the cases, the Piqueteros (Kaese & Wolff, 2016, p.

50). Movement leaders in the CCC and FTV were even included in meetings to help design the program, and they took the opportunity to press for national coverage and extension of universal benefits (Salvochea, 2008, p.

306).

The main flaws of the program were that its guidelines, eligibility criteria, and beneficiary lists were highly centralized. Alterations to the program could not be made to reflect regional circumstances and the government was still able to use clientelism to influence who received funding. Notwithstanding the shortcomings, the policy was seen as a good complement to existing assistance programs and was a direct response to the persistent

THE GW UNDERGRADUATE REVIEW • VOLUME 4 demands of the Piqueteros. Duhalde hoped the program would “disarticulate the movement. He tried to inundate the country with benefits to remove the motive to launch protests…to internally demobilize movements” (Garay, 2016, 184). The PJJHD was more widely known than previous social policies and seen as a step in the right direction for Argentinian policymaking. Indeed, it helped pave the way for several more social policies under Duhalde and provide more spaces for Piquetero participants to exert more control over their own wellbeing.

Pensions Another critical demand from the Piqueteros was a more inclusive pension system. Unions had pushed for pension reform since the 1990s, but the outcry from the unemployed highlighted the need to finally overhaul the system. Under pressure from social actors, Duhalde met with leaders from the CCC and FTV, among others, to negotiate pension expansions in exchange for a reduction in protests. The resulting policy was an extension of pension coverage under PJJHD for seniors in 2003. The program only reached a fraction of households needing the service and left many social outsiders unaccounted for, since beneficiaries of PJJHD had to have children (Garay, 2016, p. 197). In the end, more extensive pension reform was left to Kirchner.

Garay cites Kirchner’s decision to expand the pension system as a direct result of continued public frustration with PJJHD (Garay, 2016, p. 201). The most important reform for the Piquetero beneficiaries came through Law 25994 in December of 2004. The legislation allowed unemployed women over 60 and men over 65 to receive a pension even if they had not contributed to social security for the required 30 years. Kirchner created a moratorium in which non-contributory beneficiaries would become contributors by paying part of their benefit back (Niedzweicki, 2014, p. 38). Combined with the added flexibility to the system between private and public plans, pensions were deemed universally reaching once the reform took effect.

Pension reform had been a high priority for many groups since the 1990s, not just the Piqueteros. When unions still carried superior strength, their push for pension reform came from the desire for stability in the financial crisis. During the Menem era, the inclusion of unions in helping to craft reforms was at the top of the political agenda (Berniell, de la Mata & Machado, 2020, p. 1302). In the era of the Piqueteros, unions and other formal-sector groups were still quite involved in fighting for more comprehensive reforms and were instrumental in convincing Kirchner to do so. However, I argue that in the early 2000s, the Piqueteros’ spearheading of the cause for universal coverage influenced Kirchner to reform the system as a whole rather than just add provisions to an

32 inherently non-inclusive system.

Health The healthcare system was among the many aspects of life that had been decentralized in the 1990s with neoliberal reforms. Medicine prices soared by 309% amidst the inflationary crisis between 1991 and 1997, pushing them out of financial reach for many people (Tobar, 2004, p. 6). Falleti and Cunial assert that the “first national-level health program to promote civic engagement in health policies” was Remediar (Falleti & Cunial, 2019, p.4). The 2002 program provided medical consultations and 36 essential medicines at no cost to those who could not afford them through primary health care centers. At the time, more than 15 million people lacked access to these services (Tobar, 2004, p. 15).

Furthermore, the program’s ten goals included measures to enlist civil society participation in the distribution of medicine kits, helping to ensure the neediest populations were being reached (Homedes & Ugalde, 2006, p. 127).

Research has proven it difficult to state surely that some of these civil society actors involved were Piqueteros (Falleti and Cunial do not elaborate on who is included in “civil society”), and the direct line of their influence on the program’s passage is less clear than the previous two policies. However, I argue again that it was their strength and visibility that turned inclusive health policy – alongside employment, pensions, and other social services – into a government priority. While initially local participation in the program was confined to monitoring, over time civil society members became more involved in planning and executing. Today, despite variations in the quality and distribution of insurance plans and facilities, health care in Argentina is among the best in Latin America, and Remediar is still in operation.

The social policies mentioned, along with many others, helped reduce poverty and the wealth gap and improve well-being for those marginalized by the neoliberal era.

The efforts of the Piqueteros were paramount in pushing for the expansion of social policy. I believe that without the movement, the governments of the time would have remained far more focused on economic policy. Social cohesion, mass organization and visibility, and their influence on electoral politics to make passing social policy a necessity explains their success.

DISCUSSION Social Cohesion The first factor I consider causal in the success of the Piquetero movement as an agent for social policy expansion is social cohesion. Understanding social cohesion means recognizing the relationship between inclusion and exclusion in the economic, political, and social spheres of society. The importance of democracy

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in Argentina at the time was instrumental in allowing an environment in which civil society could come together to share and act on their struggles. As Bellinger and Arce argue, “grievances – as those generated by economic liberalization – create a strong will for collective activity, while democracy creates a favorable environment or opportunity for collective responses” (Bellinger & Arce, 2011, p.691).

Retamozo describes two factors alongside conditions of marginality that explain the emergence of collective response from outsiders. The first is class restructuring.

Throughout the 1990s the increase in unemployment and the changing face of labor unions was drastic. Many Argentines could feel their quality of life deteriorating and quantify the toll the reforms had taken on their incomes. Ordinarily, unemployment is seen as an individual problem that should be overcome through individual means. However, once it became clear that the government was not living up to its perceived role as the guarantor of social well-being, space for collective action emerged as economic vulnerability deepened. Neoliberal policies generated a gap in social life wherein the middle and upper classes remained able to voice concerns through labor unions or clientelist politics, while the lower classes began to develop other ways to counteract the neoliberal order and propose alternatives (Retamozo, 2006, p. 119-126). The Piquetero alternative was one of collective struggle and social cohesion. The second factor central to Retamozo’s argument on the emergence of collective action, protest visibility, will be revisited in the next section.

My argument is not that a movement of hundreds of thousands of people nationwide was entirely united. In fact, the make-up of the movement by many different SMOs and their offshoots suggests that there was significant variation in the collective identities that brought people together (Rossi, 2019, p. 21). The movement was quite territorialized, though I will not go into detail about the geographic dimensions and characteristics in this paper.

While generally well organized, the unemployed workers’ movement functioned in a decentralized manner, with individual municipalities providing spaces for their own organizations and protests. What is important is that each SMO within the movement had varying priorities and positioned themselves at the forefront of a variety of policy demands that were not always perfectly aligned.

The SMOs involved also varied in their political ideologies. This was especially true once Kirchner was elected and began to splinter not just the PJ alignment with the left, but various groups within the Piquetero movement. The CCC maintained a “radical, anti-capitalist rhetoric” and remained detached from the Kirchner government in the early 2000s, while the FTV and other organizations aligned themselves closely with the administration (Kaese & Wolff, 2016, p. 51). Between these differences, the unifying threads were the anger over

insufficient government support and the tactics they used to draw attention to their demands.

Salvochea highlights how reliance on the idea of social cohesion can be problematic. He states that the capacity of the Piqueteros as a civil society agent was the most important aspect of their movement, but asserts that sometimes it meant they prioritized continuous activism over qualitative activism. He states, “some accuse the Piquetero organizations as acting as mercenaries in exchange for political favors or economic advantages.

Indeed, the Piquetero organizations have been involved in protests completely unconnected with their principles and purpose” (Salvochea, 2008, p.310). In this way, social cohesion is important to social movement in general, but targeted goals can get lost in the need to simply maintain the movement’s momentum. His observation is truthful, but with a movement lasting nearly ten years, it seems inevitable that some events will not be perfectly executed or eloquently articulated. The emphasis on social cohesion worked for the Piqueteros by developing into a consistent and impassioned movement that was impossible to ignore.

Another argument made by Salvochea is that the use of social protest to demand welfare programs and increases in government social spending impedes the development of human capital. By choosing to spend their time organizing protests, SMO members chose not to engage in capacity-building activities that would increase their employability in the future (Salvochea, 2008, p. 316).

Once again, I do not dispute his point, but this argument seems easier to state in theory than execute in practice.

An unemployed person may not have the resources to improve their human capital independently or might be spending all their time outside of the movement searching for work or caring for dependents. They may not understand what human capabilities might be best for them to build or have the means to engage with resources to do so.

At a time when many Argentines’ basic needs were not being met, engaging in social protests to obtain social safety nets for immediate needs took precedence over sustainable development. Indeed, it should be the government’s role to encourage practices that promote sustainable development, rather than expecting the people to have an intrinsic recognition that attending night school might have a greater relative impact on their economic mobility in 10 years than attending a social protest. Human capital-building and personal investment are both individualistic behaviors, but the period of the early late 1990s and early 2000s was instead a period of great collectivism among struggling Argentines. It was more productive, at least in the short term, for citizens to turn to social cohesion and harness its unifying nature to demand more directly attainable concessions for their well-being. The beauty of the movement is that it encouraged people to put aside their individual struggles

THE GW UNDERGRADUATE REVIEW • VOLUME 4 to achieve change on behalf of society. Eloquently put

by Dees-Mason, the Piquetero movement was viewed by many of its participants as “a space where power relations are turned upside down, and new social relations are formed based on solidarity and trust” (Dees-Mason, 2020, p. 103).

Mass Organization The mass participation in Piquetero activities and the disruptive nature of their tactics are perhaps the most important characteristics of the movement. The Piquetero protests attracted people from a wide variety of professions who had been laid off or seen their benefits slashed. Though the heart of the protests saw jobless people at the forefront, the informally employed, parttime, or underemployed workers also saw their wellbeing decline during the neoliberal era. As a result, the movement encompassed citizens of many ages, races, and ethnicities. Women made up as much as 60% of the protesters (Dees-Mason, 2020, p. 101). Because of the constant and decentralized nature of the movement, estimates of the total number of participants across the country are not well-documented. At the very least, the movement is understood to have included hundreds of thousands of people over the ten-year period under consideration.

Urban centers served as the main setting for Piquetero activities, becoming subject to hundreds of roadblocks per year. Buenos Aires alone experienced 23 in the movement’s first year, and from April to June of 1997 there was an average of 1.6 protests per day across the

34 country (Salvochea, 2008, p. 305). The earliest protests were centered around demanding workfare benefits in response to the shortcomings of Menem’s Plan Trabajar (Garay, 2016, p. 173). The 1996 Plan gave funds to the Ministry of Labor and Social Security to create jobs for the unemployed in local projects. Its limited and clientelist-influenced reach, unclear criteria, and low supply of benefits prompted the Piqueteros to push for more reforms (Garay, 2007, p. 305). Whereas some of the early protests relied on general economic principles like privatization and deregulation to drive their goals, Plan Trabajar provided an easily identifiable starting point in which to criticize policies rather than practices.

This made identifying concrete policy options easier to articulate.

August of 2001 saw the largest and perhaps the most organized protest since 1997. Nationwide, over 100,000 people shut down 300 highways to demand social policy expansion. Not only was the event quite visible, but it effectively shut down the economy for the duration.

Further driving the movement’s passion was the fact that in the months leading up to the 2001 roadblock, at least five Piqueteros were killed and over 3,000 arrested across several protest events. At this point, it was clear that de la Rúa prioritized containing social unrest over politically addressing it. As the Piqueteros increased their activity in 2001, his resignation and the freeing of jailed protesters were added to the growing list of demands. In September, the Piqueteros organized another massive highway block in Buenos Aires in conjunction with a general union strike to disrupt government activity and commerce (Petras,

Year

Acts

Duration (days)

Average Estimated Protest Participants

1997

66

183

625

1998

20

22

171

1999

21

49

796

2000

103

180

672

2001

157

273

1921

2002

394

570

1587

2003

200

224

1649

TABLE 2. Unemployed Protest and Organization (1997-2003) Source: Candelaria Garay, “Social Policy and Collective Action: Unemployed Workers, Community Associations, and Protest in Argentina,” 312. Original data set compiled by author.

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2001, p. 4266). De la Rúa’s resignation came amid his inability to control the masses of people organizing in the streets, looting storefronts, and engaging in the popular Latin American protest practice of cacerolazos, the disruptive banging on pots and pans to draw attention (Mayekar, 2006, p. 61).

After the tumultuous political turnover that ended in Duhalde landing the presidency, 2002 became the peak year for the movement with over 2,000 protests throughout the country (Kaese & Wolff, 2016, p. 52). More than 1,000 gatherings occurred in Buenos Aires province alone (Salvochea, 2008, p. 305). Duhalde’s attitude towards the protests was more accommodating than his predecessor’s, but his intent alone was not enough to provide the policies being demanded. Between January and May of 2003, “unemployed workers’ organizations performed 89 acts of protest,” with as many as 80,000 – 100,000 mobilized in just Buenos Aires (Garay, 2016, p.

199).

The blockage of roads and highways as the Piqueteros’ primary means of protest was quite strategic. I return to Retamozo’s argument that visibility is the second causal factor in the rise of collective momentum for the Piquetero movement. Claiming Buenos Aires as the movement’s clear epicenter allowed for maximum visibility, as thousands of people could see and hear the protests out their windows. The Piqueteros positioned their protest activities not just as spaces to demand help from their government, but as confrontations to Argentina’s social order. SMOs drew on widespread feelings of collective struggle and social exclusion to build legitimacy, which is vital to understanding how the movement became so large and yielded the policy responses it did (Retamozo, 2006, p. 126).

The act of picketing roads was symbolic as an attack on neoliberal capitalism. Large highways symbolized the movement of goods in and out of the crucial sites of capitalism, wherein production, trade, and free markets relied on the transport of people and goods through wellorganized supply chains. By blocking the way for these supply chains, “the piquete was an entirely effective form of disruption and protest of contemporary capitalism” (Dees-Mason, 2020, p. 102). In this way, the key benefits pushed by neoliberal capitalists – cheaper and better quality goods, diversification, and economic growth – could not be delivered.

Though the government was the main target of the protests, road picketing was disruptive to everyone. As a result, many Argentines not involved in the movement viewed the Piqueteros as a public nuisance, punishing everyday people for grievances they had with the government. This disdain was heightened any time violence was involved in a Piquetero event, regardless of which side it came from. Indeed, some of the activities carried out by the Piqueteros were quite ruthless, and seemingly tried to tip the use of clientelist politics in their

favor by forcing the hand of political leaders (Brown, 2004, p. 285). Regardless of any negative perceptions of the Piqueteros by their often richer, employed counterparts, the external distaste for the movement had little impact on the movement’s mass appeal and its consistency in influencing the political agenda.

The resignation of Fernando de la Rúa signified that countering the protests with repression was an ill choice.

Without this lesson, the likelihood that his successors would have granted the degree of targeted social policies they did is low. Rather, the constant and widespread unrest drummed up by the Piqueteros provoked much of the social policymaking undertaken, whether it was successful or not. The approaches of Duhalde and Kirchner were much more accommodating, and they opened communication channels that were previously closed to people outside of the formal, union sector. Despite the importance of the movement’s visibility in developing these more accommodating attitudes, the concessions given by Duhalde and Kirchner to the Piquetero movement were also linked to their involvement in clientelist politics; they knew that the loss of the Piquetero voter base could push the PJ out of office.

Political Necessity The success of the Piquetero movement to provoke social policymaking is quite interesting when considered against the political circumstances of the time. Indeed, the democratic landscape of the country provided the right circumstances for many people to become involved in political life through the social sphere. Despite being a PJ member, which historically enjoyed support from the working and lower classes, Menem was unpopular among the Piqueteros as the spearhead of neoliberalism. The restlessness of the country under his leadership opened the space for Fernando de la Rúa, a member of the centerleft party Alianza para el Trabajo, la Justicia y la Educación, to run on a campaign of anti-corruption, macroeconomic stability, and job creation. His platform quickly won over many of the PJ’s historical constituencies. After his election, there was a brief decline in Piquetero protests due to an expectation that de la Rúa would provide the redistributionist policies they sought (Garay, 2016, p. 176).

This, of course, did not turn out to be the case.

While in office, de la Rúa reduced workfare benefits and other social programs with the intent of replacing them with programs less politically entrenched. In the end, many of the programs were never rejuvenated.

Coupled with restrictive fiscal policy and reductions in public sector salaries meant to preserve convertibility and reduce the public deficit – valued at about $141 billion in 2001 - de la Rúa quickly made many enemies among the unemployed. The Piquetero movement strengthened substantially between 1999 and 2001, increasing from a territorialized set of protests into a national-scale

THE GW UNDERGRADUATE REVIEW • VOLUME 4 movement centered in Buenos Aires (Brown, 2004, p. 272).

Aware of the mounting social unrest, the de la Rúa government proposed a number of social programs from housing and pension reform to family and child allowances. Despite the efforts, disagreements within his party and Congress prevented most of the measures from being implemented. Those that passed were insufficient or delayed substantially. Furthermore, many of his proposed solutions were strongly contested by labor unions like the CGT – one of the strongest unions in the region since the 1970s – for being poorly designed (Garay, 2016, p. 171). While the demands of the Piqueteros and many of the unions were fundamentally rooted in different struggles, on many occasions they were able to come together to contest poor policymaking. Alignment between the unemployed movement and unions allowed for an even greater scale of roadblocks throughout the country and a partnership between street protests and workers’ strikes. In the face of such contention, as Garay puts it, “de la Rúa declared a state of siege, thereby banning meetings and protests to contain conflict…this measure immediately triggered massive anti-government protests, provoking his resignation amid police violence and riots” (Garay, 2016, p. 181). His inability to prevent the country from defaulting on billions of dollars of debt on top of meeting desperate protesters with repression resulted in his ouster.

Duhalde, a member of the PJ and Menem’s former vice president, was appointed President by Congress after three fleeting presidents passed through the Casa Rosada between December of 2001 and January of 2002. He ran against de la Rúa for the 1999 presidency but was ultimately hurt by Menem’s tarnishing of the PJ appealability to lower and middle-income voters.

His main focus was restoring government legitimacy and simply getting the country through its day-to-day until the 2003 election, keenly aware of the need to address the social unrest to maintain electoral support.

As a machine party, the PJ was subject to fluid waves of support and unpopularity among its followers. It was a clear possibility, as seen under Menem, that Duhalde’s actions could impact the general attitudes towards the party as a whole and risk driving voters away. Piquetero activities were instrumental in setting this mentality into motion by using the protests as a threat to withdraw their votes if social policy reforms were not made.

Duhalde’s passage of the PJJHD, several large food distribution programs, and the creation of informal spaces for negotiation between the movements and the state were crucial in shifting the government agenda from economic issues to social policies. He also extended the de la Rúa-era Labor Emergency Program and tried to improve cash transfer programs to provide immediate relief (Garay, 2007, p. 313). By the end of his term, his efforts were still insufficient.

In the 2003 election, Argentina fell among the many

36 Latin American countries considered part of the “Pink Tide,” a period of political left-turning in response to Washington Consensus-era economics. Initiated through the election of Hugo Chávez in Venezuela in 1998, the pink tide swept across the region into the early 2000s to include Ricardo Lagos of Chile in 2000, Luiz Inácio Lula de Silva of Brazil in 2002, Néstor Kirchner of Argentina in 2003, Tabaré Vázquez of Uruguay in 2004, and Evo Morales of Bolivia in 2005 (Levitsky & Roberts, 2011, p.

1) Many of these candidates’ campaigns utilized populist tactics to appeal to the working class, and the widespread shift to the left represented a regional frustration with the effects of market-oriented economic policies. While some countries under leftist leadership maintained more orthodox macroeconomic policies, Argentina folded in civil society and created more societal linkages – with unions and with movements like the Piqueteros – to help guide policy orientation (Levitsky & Roberts, 2011, p.

4).

The PJ historically represented a coalition of leftleaning politicians and constituents, though its alignment with the left was and remains far more fluid than most other machine parties in the region. Indeed, the PJ is “flexible and pragmatic in their policy orientations. As such, their location on the Left is not fixed by ideology; they may tack to the Left or Right, depending on the policy preferences of the party leadership and the social, economic, and political contexts in which they operate” (Levitsky & Roberts, 2011, p.21) Such swings were seen when Menem pushed the party further to the right under neoliberalism, then Kirchner reorienting the party towards the left. This concept is central to understanding how the Piqueteros were able to yield social policy expansion from the national government, especially when Peronist leaders were in office. Even as incumbents, presidents of the time knew they would need to provide inclusive social policies to maintain electoral support and reduce social unrest.

Having seen the disastrous result of the de la Rúa administration, Kirchner emphasized the importance of reducing protest – which remained high during his first term – and responded to the popular mobilization through incorporation measures. He allowed unprecedented access to the state through meetings and policy councils for the unemployed. Having run on an anti-neoliberal platform, he reformed the pension system, expanded Remediar, passed new employment policies, and increased Piquetero participation in distributing benefits (Garay, 2016, p. 199-201). By this time, the Piqueteros began to fragment based on their political ideologies, and Kirchner was able to distinguish between groups in the movement who supported him and those who remained outside the political sphere.

By the end of Kirchner’s term, the incorporation of many of the movement’s SMOs into mainstream politics lessened the strength of the Piqueteros as an autonomous

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social movement. Etchemendy explains that Kirchner successfully contributed to the splintering of the Piqueteros by absorbing “a significant portion of urban social movements that operated outside the machine politics of the Partido Justicialista” into his party networks (Etchemendy, 2019, p. 169). Many groups chose to remain outside of party politics but did not enjoy the same degree of social policy benefits or policymaking influence as those that openly backed the Kirchner administration.

Unlike his successors, “Kirchner is the only president who utilized a more nuanced strategy to fully coopt certain factions of the Piqueteros at the expense of others in order to utilize protests to his advantage” (Mayekar, 2006, p.45). For many of the Piqueteros, this was a positive thing, as they gained access to policymaking channels and were rewarded through the social policies. For others, it lessened their legitimacy in the social space and reoriented collective bargaining back towards unions.

By 2007, union bargaining re-emerged as the central social policymaking tactic. The Piqueteros evolved from more of an external coalition in 2003 and 2004 to a partially incorporated coalition into 2005 and finally a “territorial allied sector of the government” (Rossi, 2019, p.201). Indeed, after 2002, Piquetero protest events in the largest cities declined steadily. The movement by no means stopped at the end of Kirchner’s two terms, but by 2007 the strongest days of unemployed workers’ protests were behind them. Kirchner’s success in incorporating many of the Piqueteros into party politics contributed to the victory of his wife, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, in the 2007 election and the maintenance of support for the PJ.

CONCLUSION I have demonstrated how the Piquetero movement of unemployed and informal sector Argentines was an effective agent for provoking social policy reforms. At a highly economically-focused time, the Piqueteros utilized social cohesion, mass organization and visibility, and tools provided by the political landscape to shift the paradigm to one that better recognized the need to foster inclusive growth, rather than just macroeconomic growth. The Piquetero movement defied history by overtaking labor unions as the main collective bargaining body between 1997 and 2007. Though unions have since been restored in Argentina’s political arena as the strongest collective actor in politics, the Piquetero movement was instrumental in making social-sector coalitions a legitimate vehicle for political negotiation and agenda-setting.

There are several aspects of the movement that exceed the scope of this paper that are important to address.

First, this paper takes a fairly positive perspective of the Piqueteros, and I have elected not to elaborate on several of the mentioned criticisms of the movement.

The Piqueteros were viewed by several segments of

society as violent, criminal, or unproductive, and indeed not all of their activities were effective in yielding the desired results or executed in the most efficient manner.

Ultimately, I sought to evaluate the degree to which the movement achieved policy outcomes rather than analyze the specific characteristics of each protest.

Second, I do not elaborate on the territorialization of the Piqueteros, which is important in understanding the emergence of the movement and the many offshoot groups. The movement began in select provinces and eventually spread to the urban centers where they would be more visible, but activities continued throughout the entire country alongside the largest urban ones. For the purposes of my research, focusing on national-scale movements and policies was the most effective way to assess the influence of the Piqueteros on social changes.

Third, it is quite difficult to define “success” in social policy expansion. I cannot identify how many social policies were passed in the ten-year period under consideration, the degree to which the Piqueteros were involved in those decisions, and whether there is a benchmark for defining when a movement is successful versus moderately influential versus a failure. However, I feel that the evidence I have provided and the arguments from many of the scholars cited in this paper that the Piqueteros had direct linkages to political decisionmaking is quite telling in how effective the movement was in shifting the agenda towards social policy.

What makes this conclusion so significant is the fact that the movement was organized, executed, and led mainly by unemployed citizens rather than existing, legally recognized organizations. Social movements have such potential to be disorganized, short-lived, and illegitimate, but overwhelmingly, the Piquetero movement did not suffer from these challenges. Of course, the movement by no means achieved all its demands, and Argentina is not exactly representative of inclusive development in the present. However, these shortcomings are more likely attributed to the lack of political and economic capacity within Argentina than the shortcomings of the Piqueteros to get their point across.

Finally, I would like to clarify that neoliberalism cannot directly be credited for all of the protests and the rise of the Piqueteros entirely on its own. While neoliberal policies exacerbated and accelerated the negative economic trends of the time, the circumstances were compounded by the global financial environment of the time, including the contagions from crises in Russia, Mexico, Brazil, and East Asia and regional trends of overborrowing. My main point is that the fundamental shift in economic policy throughout the 1980s and 1990s seems to underpin most of the effects that external shocks had, and therefore, citing neoliberalism as the root of the problem is an acceptable way to identify a turning point. It is important to consider, though, that political corruption also underpinned much of the social

THE GW UNDERGRADUATE REVIEW • VOLUME 4 discontent of the time.

Argentina’s development trajectory is quite unusual.

Given its educated population, thriving cities, and massive workforce, one would expect the economy to be in better shape. However, it faces many of the same challenges of poverty and lack of government accountability as developing countries across the world. What sets Latin America apart in many ways is the ability its citizens have to influence policymaking through social channels. Latin America’s regional development is often compared to Asia because of the similarities of their trajectories during the mid-twentieth century, then stark divergence leading into the 2000s. Social protest is widespread, respected, and allowed by most of the governments of Latin America, whereas many Asian countries are more likely to meet protesters with force. The Piqueteros cannot be credited with this phenomenon, and part of this is simply because most of the Latin American region is governed through democracy while much of Asia is not. However, the Piqueteros are exemplary in demonstrating how to utilize these democratic conditions to create social change.

The reality is that solutions to problems like poverty and inequality are complicated and take generations to take effect. Decades of debt restructuring have overshadowed Argentina’s focus on long-term sustainable development beyond initiatives that bring short-term relief. Given the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic on the social and economic atmosphere of Argentina, it seems unlikely that the economy will settle into a path of stable growth for some time. However, if the rejuvenation of social protest across Latin America in 2019 is any indication, social movements will continue to ensure that social policy expansion will not become subordinate to economic aspirations as the region struggles towards sustainable, inclusive development.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I thank my faculty advisor, Professor Cynthia McClintock, for dedicating her time on sabbatical to advise me and providing me with vital constructive criticism throughout my writing process. Her evident excitement in my research propelled my own passion for the paper. I also extend my thanks to Professor Stephen Kaplan, not only for providing me with a foundational understanding of the economic concepts involved in this paper through his wonderful political economy class, but for fielding my questions about Argentina thoughtfully and thoroughly despite his busy schedule. Finally, thank you to my parents and to Tara and Quinn for listening to me talk about this paper for the last five months and being a consistent, collective support system in reminding me that I would not only complete this paper, but that I would produce something great.

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16. Grugel, J. & Riggirozzi, P. (2012). Post-Neoliberalism in Latin America: Rebuilding and Reclaiming the State After Crisis. Institute of Social Studies: Development and Change, 43(1), 1-21. https://doi. org/10.1111/j.1467-7660.2011.01746.x.

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26. Rossi, F.M. (2019). The Poor’s Struggle for Political Incorporation: The Piquetero Movement in Argentina. New York: Cambridge University Press.

27. Salvochea, R. (2008). Clientelism in Argentina: Piqueteros Relief Payment Plans for the Unemployed – Misunderstanding of the Role of Civil Society. Texas International Law Journal, 43(2), 287-323. Retrieved from https://heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage?handle=hein.journals/tilj43&div=16&id=&page=.

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30. Tobar, F. (2004). Políticas para promoción del acceso a medicamentos: El case del Programa Remediar de Argentina. Banco Interamericano de Desarrollo, 1-35. Retrieved from https://publications.iadb.org/publications/ spanish/document/Pol%C3%ADticas-para-promoci%C3%B3n-del-acceso-a-medicamentos-El-caso-delPrograma-Remediar-de-Argentina.pdf.

31. Tokman, V.E. (2007). The informal economy, insecurity, and social cohesion in Latin America.International Labour Review, 146(1-2), 81-106. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1564-913X.2007.00006.x.

32. Teubal, M. & Rodriguez, J. (2001). Neoliberalismo y Crisis Agraria. En La Protesta Social en la Argentina: Transformaciones económicas y crisis social en el interior del país, (pp. 65-116). Buenos Aires: Alianza Editorial.

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About the Author Abby Guen is a senior from Exeter, New Hampshire majoring in International Affairs with concentrations in International Economics and Development. Her research interests center around the intersection of economics, human rights, and development in Latin America, especially after spending a semester in Santiago, Chile in the fall of 2019. Abby is a research assistant at the Elliott School’s Institute for International Economic Policy and has interned for D.C.’s Global Financial Integrity and Strategies for International Development. She is a member of the University Honors Program, the UN360 2020-2021 Cohort, and a finalist for the Princeton in Latin America Fellowship.

Mentor Details Cynthia McClintock is a Professor of Political Science at George Washington University. She is the author of Electoral Rules and Democracy in Latin America (Oxford University Press, 2018), Revolutionary Movements in Latin America: El Salvador’s FMLN and Peru’s Shining Path (U.S. Institute of Peace, 1998), and Peasant Cooperatives and Political Change in Peru (Princeton University Press, 1981). She is also the co-editor of The Peruvian Experiment Reconsidered (Princeton University Press, 1983) and co-author of The United States and Peru: Cooperation at a Cost (Routledge, 2003). Awarded a Fulbright grant, she taught at the Catholic University in Peru in 1987, and in 2008 received the Orden del Sol del Perú (Order of the Sun of Peru, awarded by the Peruvian state for extraordinary contributions to Peru). In 2019, she won the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Latin American Studies Association’s Peru Section.

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KEYWORDS: Korean democracy, Gwangju Uprising, art censorship DOI: https://doi.org/10.4079/2578-9201.4(2021).08

The Past and Present of Cultural Censorship in South Korea: Minjung Art During and After the Gwangju Uprising VIVIAN KONG INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS, ESIA ‘23, viviankong@gwu.edu

ABSTRACT The Gwangju Uprising provided pivotal momentum for South Korea’s path toward democracy and was assisted by the artwork by Minjung artists. However, the state’s continuous censorship of democratic art ironically contradicts with the principles that Gwangju upholds, generating the question: how does the censorship of democratic artists during and after the Gwangju Democratic Uprising affect artistic political engagement and reflect upon South Korea’s democracy? I argue that censorship of Minjung art is hypocritical in nature by providing key characteristics of democracy the South Korean state fails to meet.

Minjung art intends to push for political change and has roots in the Gwangju Uprising, an event that was the catalyst in creating a democratic state, yet the state continues to suppress a democratic freedom of expression. Looking to dissolve the line between activism and art, Korean Minjung artists have been producing content criticizing the state from the 1980s to modern day despite repression from the state.

Past studies and first-person accounts on Gwangju have focused separately on authoritarian censorship on art or on modern cultural censorship. This paper seeks to bridge this gap and identify the parallels between artistic censorship during South Korea’s dictatorships and during its democracy to identify the hypocrisy of the state regarding art production and censorship.

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INTRODUCTION On May 18, 1980, the Democratic Uprising in Gwangju, South Korea catapulted the nation toward democracy after a history of military dictatorship. In this paper, the main components of democracy are defined to be the preservation of individual rights, direct exercisable power by the people, and active participation in civil society.1 There will be a focus on ordinary citizens engaging in collective action to transform politics based on shared interests and values.2 This definition focuses on societal aspects of democracy in order to analyze the relationship between political art and the state. Democratic movements had been gaining momentum in the years prior, but the Gwangju Democratic Uprising launched a series of events that ultimately led to the ousting of General Chun Doo-hwan and the election of President Roh Tae-woo. Although art inspired by democracy had been developing before 5.18, the Gwangju Democratic Uprising symbolized the true start of what became known as Minjung art. Minjung stands for “the people,” appropriately attributing Minjung art as the people’s art meant for everyone

regardless of class. It is a socio-political art form that criticizes imperialism and authoritarian politics while focusing on community resistance (Joo, 2016, p. 361).

The formation of Minjung art led to different groups and artists identifying with this art movement, notably the Gwangju Liberal Artists Association. Members of the Association, known as Gwangjahyop, also participated in the Democratic Uprising using art as propaganda and a form of political resistance (Lee, 2018, p. 63). Minjung artists contributed to civil society by advocating for democracy in South Korea using collective action despite the adverse challenges posed by the state. The dictatorships preceding democracy had outright censored cultural and artistic expression to eliminate opposition against the state, but even under democratic governance, South Korean artists regularly face both explicit and implicit censorship.

Various Minjung artists have pushed for political change even with the threat of suppression and arrest by the state from the 1980s and even today. While Minjung art has largely faded out of mainstream Korean culture, the sacrifices and accomplishments

1 See Putnam (2000) for a further exploration of the intersection between civil society and democracy.

2 See Armstrong (2002) for more information about how South Korean civil society is one of the most dramatic cases of civil society pushing for regime change.

THE GW UNDERGRADUATE REVIEW • VOLUME 4 of the art movement still remain relevant.

The successive administrations following Roh Taewoo’s still maintained legislation and policies that enable artistic suppression, creating a hypocritical actor that advocates for favorable art in the opinion of the state while censoring any criticism against itself. The struggle for democracy in the 1980s created a means for political change; however, the recent censorship of political art has symbolized a lasting struggle within democracy for democratic principles such as the freedom of expression and the right to criticize the state. Despite South Korea’s transition to democracy and push for cultural development with Korean popular culture spreading across the world, Korean artists face censorship in home territory. This suggests a continuation of cultural censorship from South Korea’s period of authoritarianism that has lasted even in a modern democratic state.

This paper first provides historical context of the Gwangju Democratic Uprising to understand the conditions that made way for Minjung art to enter South Korean mainstream society. The historical context is split into the background of the Democratic Uprising and background of the Minjung art movement. Although other Minjung groups and individual artists do exist, I focus on the Gwangju Liberal Arts Association to draw a direct parallel between censorship during the Uprising and modern censorship with the same artists remaining suppressed by the state today. Then, a comparative examination of cultural censorship during South Korea’s authoritarian period and democracy follows in order to identify the subtle similarities in policies and attitudes toward cultural expression in South Korea. I will argue that despite South Korea’s exportation and encouragement of arts and culture, the state remains deeply hypocritical and manipulative to limit the autonomy of artists with both implicit and explicit censorship. In spite of the political change that South Korea underwent to become a democracy in the late 1980s, there are elements of the state that remain undemocratic in nature. These elements include state institutions that are accomplices to cultural censorship, secret blacklists and whitelists of artists, and explicit censorship of certain works that offend the state. The preservation of undemocratic state elements contradicts both my definition of democracy and the South Korean claim to democracy. Although the popularity of Minjung art has now diminished, the values of the movement will remain relevant as long as there are democratic agendas that citizens are willing to fight for just as they did in 1980.

METHODOLOGY The research methods employed in this study of Minjung art in South Korea from 1980 to present day include in-depth literature and art reviews, consulting of primary sources, and analyses of interviews. To

42 understand the history of cultural suppression and the events leading up to the Gwangju Democratic Uprising, media including books, theses, and first-person accounts of the events were analyzed. These analyses formed a qualitative method that looked to find the complex relationship between the South Korean state and artists.

In looking at secondary data sources, the political positionalities of sources were taken into account.

Accounting for political positionalities is important as certain South Korean media outlets publish content with progressive or conservative values that could impact the way Minjung artists and the state are perceived. In order to not involve personal political affiliation with any conclusions made, sources were triangulated to back any substantive claims made throughout the paper. In the process of finding the answers to the questions of ‘Why? And what?’ to understand the motives, experiences, and perceptions of the various actors involved, it was important to minimize biases toward any event.

The limitations to this research include the lack of opportunity to conduct in-person research and review sources in Korean. Due to COVID-19 travel restrictions, planned visits to the city of Gwangju were cancelled, eliminating the opportunity to review Minjung art and artists in person. To make up for this lack of in-person research, art pieces were reviewed from online pictures and videos. Additionally, unfamiliarity in academic Korean limited my ability to research on Korean databases.

Instead, news articles and reviews written in Korean were used to identify Korean perspectives on Minjung art, including statements from the artists themselves.

Many academic papers in Korean were also translated into English, so those sources are cited instead of the original Korean.

Methods to determine collective and personal experiences of state actors and of the Minjung artists included analyzing previous interviews, quotes, and government documents conducted by other researchers and studies. These methods assisted me in answering my research questions and uncovering the close relationship between art and politics during the birth and development of South Korea’s democracy.

LITERATURE REVIEW The end of South Korean dictatorship brought promise for democracy, yet undemocratic practices such as censorship continue well into the present day. This lack of change regarding the arts is ironic when considering the Minjung art movement arose from demands for the authoritarian government to better represent the South Korean people. To understand the roots of Minjung art and trace why the current government would suppress creation of Minjung art, it is necessary to refer to Joo Mi-kyoung’s article (2016) that connects the themes of politics and art by tracing Minjung art throughout

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the twentieth century. Through this article, Joo (2016) reveals that a theme remained constant throughout the governments of the 1980s to the 2010s: the “threat” of communism from the North (p. 365). By labeling Minjung art and artists as communists, the government could justify the censorship and repression of Minjung ideals throughout the decades.

Douglas Gabriel (2019) echoes Joo’s findings by reaffirming South Korean rhetoric against all things communist. Douglas traces this rhetoric back to 1945 at the division of the two Koreas and focuses on art and the artist as the subjects of his research (p. 29). This focus assists in discovering the intricacies of action and reaction to censorship in art galleries, on literature, and visual artworks that the South Korean government claims are threats to national security. To transition to current censorship, Ju Kim details the blacklist scandal under former President Park Geun-hye. Kim focuses on the relationship between culture and governance, analyzing members of Park Geun-hye’s regime and their involvement in the surveillance and censorships of artists (2018, p. 85). The social environment that culminated from the betrayal felt by artists and the general public alike stirred memories of the distrust felt against the government and returned many to the era of dictatorship.

Sohl Lee considers Minjung art from an aesthetic and exhibition perspective to understand how it became an effective mode of propaganda in the 1980s. Lee’s (2014) analysis aims to connect “political avant-garde art” (p. v) to South Korea’s present and future of reconciling with its colonial past and its tumultuous relationship with North Korea. While Sohl Lee focuses on the Minjung art itself, Shin Hae-ran (2016) centers her study on the place Minjung art associates with most. Her article evokes a geographic analysis on the place-making process Gwangju underwent after the Gwangju Uprising.

By understanding the impact the authoritarian and democratic state had in presenting its own narratives of Gwangju to the rest of Korea and the international community, Gwangju’s shifting reputation over time can be analyzed. This reputation was influenced by differing opinions from Gwangju residents and non-residents to portray Gwangju positively or negatively as a political city tied with bloodshed, politics, rebellion, art, and culture. The literature of these scholars assisted in building a foundation to connect the pieces of Minjung art, dictatorship, democracy, and censorship to study Minjung art through a modern lens, a perspective lacking in current studies.

Because Minjung art is a contemporary art movement that merely elicits traditional motifs in artworks, there are few foundational texts from the period when Minjung art was most popular. Instead, Minjung artists directly created seminal artworks and were influential in creating the first narrative within the genre of Minjung

art. Scholarships tends to focus on the main groups producing Minjung art to examine visual and political motifs within the art movement. The most prominent group I chose to focus on was Gwangjahyop, whose members include Hong Song-dam, Kim San-ha, Kang Dae-kyu, Choi Ik-gyun, and Lee-Young-chae. The decision to focus on one group was made to pinpoint artists consistently censored by the state, such as Hong Song-dam, and analyze their censored paintings, murals, and woodcuts. Additionally, I also reviewed the works of Shin Hak-chul based on his paintings and scholarship written about Shin’s experiences with South Korean censorship (Joo, 2016, p. 364). Directly reviewing Minjung art over reading art reviews benefited this study since the imagery in the artworks and the date created could be studied to identify exactly what Minjung artists were responding to in their art and why the government chose to censor a specific artwork.

LEGACY OF THE GWANGJU DEMOCRATIC UPRISING The Gwangju Democratic Uprising, known as 5.18 for its starting date on May 18, 1980, began as a peaceful demonstration calling for constitutional revisions and direct elections under the military dictatorship (Shin, 2016, p. 42). The Gwangju Uprising was directly caused by General Chun Doo-hwan’s coup d’etat and implementation of martial law, but it was also representative of the South Korean people’s continuous struggle for democracy. Japanese and American imperialism and military occupation left political turmoil in their wake. From 1948 onwards South Korea was plagued politically by antagonistic North and South relations, military rule, and ineffective efforts at democratic reforms. By 1979, President Park Chung-hee had been ousted and assassinated via a military coup (Hurley, 2004). What began as a demonstration of 200 students from Chonnam National University against General Chun Doo-hwan’s call for martial law escalated when the state initiated unnecessary violence against the demonstrators (Shin, 2016, p. 41). The Uprising progressed throughout May and ended with at least 161 dead, nearly 3,000 wounded, and over 1,000 arrested or detained (Shin, 2016, p. 43). Under General Chun, the people of Gwangju continuously faced repression and isolation from the other regions of South Korea with poor media coverage, misrepresentations of the Uprising, and discrimination against the bereaved families. Examples of accusations against Gwangju include suspicions of North Korean involvement in the Uprising, “one of the most effective methods of political suppression” within the state that would also garner condemnation from the United States for assuming communist relations (Shin, 2016, p. 43). Although the Gwangju Uprising was a catalyst for democratic movements, it took until 1987

THE GW UNDERGRADUATE REVIEW • VOLUME 4 for South Korean political democracy to consolidate under a revised Republic. By mid 1987, public fury and mistrust against the military regime culminated in the June Democracy Movement reminiscent of the Gwangju Uprising in that it was a pro-democracy movement led by students and citizens (Chang, 2018, p. 152).3 The June Democracy Movement forced the government to give into public demands, redraft the Constitution, and allow the people to directly elect President Roh Tae-woo in December of 1987 (Lee, 2014, p. 72).

After the events of 5.18, Gwangju became characterized as the city of blood, contributing to negative regionalism for the area. To contrast, residents of Gwangju characterize their city as one of democracy and art, seeking to memorialize 5.18 instead of dismissing it. With the election of Roh Tae-woo, the state began to repair relations with Gwangju in an effort to “right the wrongs” (Shin, 2016, p. 48) and better the city’s image. Under President Kim Young-sam, local elections were installed, and the May 18 Special Law was enacted to recognize the survivors and families of 5.18 and give financial compensation (Shin, 2016, p. 49). The local government that was elected to Gwangju subsequently created the Gwangju Biennale in 1995 to spread Gwangju’s reputation as the city of art and culture; moreover, the Gwangju Biennale would seek to provide Gwangju funding for cultural centers in later years (Shin, 2016, p. 50). These attempts at reconciliation and rebuilding backed the significance of art to the city, especially after the Gwangju Democratic Uprising.

The Gwangju Biennale and democratic expression go hand-in-hand, yet it was one of the institutions attacked by censorship. The Biennale was structured to attract international attention, holding exhibitions with cultural and global values in a local city that had been overlooked for decades. There were initial negative reactions from local artists when the first Gwangju Biennale was planned. An Anti-Biennale was staged with members criticizing the Gwangju Biennale as a state-led project set to misrepresent the political history of Gwangju along with local artists at odds with the Gwangju Biennale’s focus on high art and foreign art instead of domestic art movements. Instead of condemning the Anti-Biennale, these qualms were incorporated in restructuring the Gwangju Biennale to be more representative of the rich history of Gwangju (Shin, 2016, p. 50). Despite these efforts, exhibitions at the Biennale have recently been the target of state censorship due to the overt political messages involved in the artwork. State censorship has directly contributed to the self-censorship of artists in the hopes of keeping work opportunities available and staying in the good graces of the state. Artists can engage in self-censorship by choosing not to portray political critique in their art, choosing to deny a role in a film, or

44 refusing to showcase their artwork in certain exhibitions or countries. The consequence of state censorship and self-censorship has been the watering down of political commentary in art.

CULTURAL CENSORSHIP DURING THE AUTHORITARIAN ERA Cultural censorship had run rampant before the Gwangju Uprising of 1980. Under the regime of Park Chung-hee, draconian censorship guidelines were upheld. The October Revitalizing Reforms of 1972 enacted martial law and made “speeches, publications, press, and broadcasts subject to censorship” (Youm, 1986, p. 877).

The Park regime targeted artists and political dissidents alike, running an extensive film censorship campaign that restricted political commentary in its scripts. The Chun Doo-hwan regime continued cultural censorship of the arts and media, especially during and in the aftermath of the Gwangju Uprising. In fact, one of the direct causes of the Uprising was the implementation of Martial Law No. 10 that included the outlawing of political gatherings and required the screening of all publications (Youm, 1986, p. 877). The manipulation of media outlets covering the events of the Uprising delayed the transmission of information to Korean citizens and worked to minimize the extremity of the event, demonstrating the state using the production of culture and media as a propaganda tool.

For years following the Gwangju Uprising, any mention of 5.18 was taboo and forbidden in Korean society. Any media or content created about the Uprising was either prohibited from publication or censored, preventing survivors and activists from the Gwangju Uprising to properly mourn and preserve their memories. For example, an eyewitness account of the Uprising published in 1985 called Kwangju Diary: Beyond Death, Beyond the Darkness of the Age was banned by the Chun Doo-hwan regime and anyone associated with its publication investigated or arrested (Han, 2005, p. 1038). Yet, illegal copies of the book were distributed secretly during the remaining years of dictatorship, encapsulating the resistance and democratic spirit of South Korean activists. Another method for political commentary at this time was the production and distribution of Minjung art.

While Minjung art had been developing before 1980, it took off during the Gwangju Democratic Uprising with the involvement between Minjung art and demonstrators.

Minjung encapsulated the idea of liberation for the people, an idea that was largely repressed during Korea’s authoritarian regimes. Censorship was a widely used tactic to suppress opposition, as popular support and legitimacy were often lacking in these authoritarian governments.

Minjung ideology critiqued the oppressions enacted on behalf of the state such as political repression, censorship,

3 For further information on the legacy of South Korean protest culture, see Chang (2018) and K. Lee (2014).

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violence against protestors, and authoritarianism. During and after the Gwangju Democratic Uprising, Minjung appealed mainly to university students and middle-class workers with its Marxist influences and emphasis on liberation for all oppressed through the renouncement of “a Western-style liberal democracy in favor of a socialistdemocratic vision” (Fedorenko, 2016, p. 1054). Because Minjung art focused on the themes of anti-imperialism, rebellion, and Marxist-Leninist ideas, many artists were accused of being communists or having ties to North Korea.

Minjung art followed this ideology in hoping to “give voice to the voiceless: workers, peasants, the poor, the displaced, the oppressed” (Kim, 2020, p. 773) through common art forms such as woodcuts, banners, and wall murals that embraced common issues and traditional art forms. These common art mediums and accessible locations to view Minjung art made ordinary citizens a reachable and receptive audience. The power of Minjung art is held in its accessibility and appeal to the ordinary people who faced the very political and socioeconomic issues criticized in Minjung art. It is a postmodern form of art that is inherently political due to its emphasis on socio-political commentary and push for political change (Cho, 2020, p. 38). However, it must be taken into account that despite its emphasis on liberation for all, artists experience self-censorship and repression within the art movement that limited the entrance of intersectionality between causes with a lack of women in the movement.

One of the main groups of Minjung Art, the Gwangju Liberal Arts Association formed in August of 1979, rose to prominence during the Gwangju Democratic Uprising. Some prominent members, also referred to as Gwanjahyop, include Hong Song-dam, Kim San-ha, Kang Dae-kyu, Choi Ik-gyun, and Lee-Young-chae (Lee, 2018, p. 63). The role of the Gwanjahyop during the Uprising included producing banners, posters, and spraying messages onto surfaces (Lee, 2018, p. 37). During and after the introduction of democracy in South Korea, Minjung artists such as the Gwanjahyop focused their art to represent the struggle for democracy in regard to human rights. While Minjung art mainly thrived between the 1980s and 1990s, it still remains relevant for the repeated suppression of Minjung art and artists by the state.

CONTINUATION OF CULTURAL CENSORSHIP DURING DEMOCRACY South Korea portrays itself as far more democratic and tolerant than its neighbor to the north but fails to consider that North and South Korea share more features in common than perceived. In South Korea, there was far more explicit cultural censorship under the military dictatorship of Chun Doo-hwan than there is today, but cultural censorship did not end once democracy was instituted in South Korea. After Chun

Doo-hwan’s removal in 1987, bans on media such as songs and artwork created by defectors to North Korea were lifted (Cho, 2020, p. 29). However, the use of the National Security Act under President Roh Tae-woo was an area of contention between the state and artists. On August 17, 1989, Minjung artist Shin Hak-chul was imprisoned for his oil painting “The Modern History of Korea—Planting Rice” (Figure 1) on the grounds that it “posed a threat to national security” (Gabriel, 2019, p. 128). The Roh regime took particular offense to Shin’s piece for its inclusion of “the theory of socialist realism” that painted North Korea in a more positive light than South Korea, represented by the “capitalist wasteland” at the bottom (Gabriel, 2019, p. 129). Thus, state prosecutors maintained that Shin violated Article 7 of the National Security Law which prohibits to this day, “the creation, importation, copying, possession, transportation, distribution, and selling of enemy expressions,” (Gabriel, 2019, p. 129) the enemy represented here as North Korea and communism.

This reoccurring fear and suspicion of communism has led the state to cultural censorship time and time again. In the same year, another Minjung artist, Hong Song-dam, participated in the painting of “The History of the National Liberation Movements of Korea” with around 200 other artists, culminating in a 77-meter-long portable mural that depicted election sections of South Korea’s struggle for democracy, including the Gwangju Uprising (Kal, 2019, p. 102). It was shown at Hanyang University but soon destroyed by police force. In an attempt to reproduce the artwork, the first art exchange between North and South Korea occurred since its split in 1948 by exchanging photo slides (Kal, 2019, p. 102). Like the case of Shin Hak-chul, Hong Song-dam and other artists were arrested for violating the National Security Act. During his time in prison, Hong was tortured with various methods including waterboarding, a scene that he would later represent in his artwork to deal with the trauma (Kal, 2019, p. 103). Unfortunately for Hong, his experience with state censorship would last long past the Roh regime. While successive administrations opened up policies for cultural and artistic expression, there remained rigid structures to cultivate art that favored the administration whether it be through review committees or quiet suppression.

The most recent experience Hong Song-dam has had with state censorship is with his piece “Sewol Owol” (Figure 2) in 2014 under Park Geun-hye’s administration.

The piece was created for exhibition at the twentieth anniversary of the Gwangju Biennale but was recalled as an offense to the state. It was inspired by the tragic sinking of a ferry ship resulting in the death of around 300 students, teachers, and other passengers that was excused by the South Korean government as “poor management of the ferry company and the irresponsible and inexperienced crews,” yet many civilians saw the event as a “mass killing…for which the government was

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FIGURE 1. “The Modern History of Korea—Planting Rice”

by Shin Hak-chul, 1987.

ultimately responsible” (Kal, 2019, p. 100). Hong shared these sentiments, feeling that the Sewol incident was “another Gwangju,” and appropriately titled his artwork “Sewol Owol” to represent the Sewol ferry and connect the Gwangju Uprising in May 1980, the fifth month or “Owol.”

The painting contains numerous allusions to the Gwangju Uprising, including the two figures lifting up the Sewol ferry in traditional Korean clothing to represent civilians that took part in the Uprising. The physical connection between these two figures and the Sewol ferry indicates a continuum of political events starting from the Gwangju Uprising to the Sewol ferry incident that Hong criticizes. The continuity over the length of the painting represents the Sewol incident as a repetition of history where the state is an actor of corruption, collusion, and tragic violence. State authorities mainly took issue with the portrait of former President Park Geun-hye as a puppet scarecrow being controlled by her father and former dictator Park Chung-hee and her Chief of Staff Kim Ki-choon. When Hong responded by painting over Park Geun-hye with a chicken, a clear reference to the former president and a jab at the state’s lack of response to help the massacre in Gwangju and prevent the deaths of students in the Sewol ferry, state authorities became even more incensed. The state censorship of “Sewol Owol” represents the exact sentiments Hong had

46 attempted to express in his work: a dysfunctional society that could not discuss its problems openly (Kal, 2019, p.

105). It further adds to the irony of censoring Minjung art as the very ideas that allowed for the development of a democratic state are now being repressed by the state. The aftermath of the censorship of “Sewol Owol” involved more than pulling the artwork out of the Gwangju Biennale; Hong and his family were subjected to death threats and accused of being communists, and his home was surrounded by right-wing protestors (Kal, 2019, p. 105).

These two pieces, “Sewol Owol” and “The Modern History of Korea--Planting Rice,” were censored by state for similar reasons. Although the art style and palettes are different, there are similar political themes in both artworks that the South Korean state, whether during the authoritarian or democratic period, would seek to eliminate. Both artworks align themselves with a South Korean political enemy: North Korea. They also criticize the state of the South Korean government in their respective years of 1987 and 2014 as prioritizing capitalist gain over livelihood or abusing power over the masses. Additionally, both artists have been censored and arrested on the grounds that they could be communists. While accounting for individualistic differences, the parallel paths of Shin Hak-chul and Hong Song-dam indicate they both have been labeled as enemies of the state for producing Minjung art consistently over the past few decades while the enemy of Minjung art is the repressive state. While there are numerous other cases of Minjung art censorship, these two pieces were chosen to display the clear visual motifs in Minjung art and recognize two artists who have faced similar consequences due to the continuation of cultural censorship in South Korea.

More recent cases of cultural censorship in South Korea can be traced to President Park Geun-Hye’s administration. While the President drew attention to her “Creative Korea” policy to boost the national economy, she also headed a blacklist and whitelist of thousands of artists critical of the regime (Kim, 2018, p. 81). A combined effort on behalf of the Blue House and the Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism had abused their power to censor a counted total of 9,473 artists (Kim, 2018, p. 81). Efforts included handpicking judges for the Arts and Culture Commission, excluding certain artists from support and financial aid programs, and surveilling the behavior of left-leaning artists (Kim, 2018, p. 85). A presidential aide’s corroboration also included direct directions from the Chief of Staff, Kim Ki-choon’s, to “punish artists who satirized Ms. Park” and to “make them afraid to challenge the President” (Kim, 2018, p. 86). His blacklist scandal not only revealed the hypocritical nature of President Park’s administration, but also destroyed the trust and relations between the

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FIGURE 2. “Sewol Owol” by Hong Song-dam, 2014.

state and artists in South Korea, causing outlash and demonstrations to erupt.

Not only were the livelihoods of artists affected through direct censorship by the state, but artists also experienced psychological consequences due to cultural repression.

Artists self-censored themselves by altering their artistic judgements and decisions based on the possibility of being shut down by the state. For example, actor Song Kang-ho hesitated to accept a role in A Taxi Driver in fear of repercussions as he would depict a role as a taxi driver involved in the Gwangju Uprising (Kim, 2018, p. 87).

The film centers around a West German journalist riding with Song’s character who is determined to share the truth of the state-backed massacres in Gwangju with the rest of the world. Additionally, Hong Song-dam revealed how the state had gone as far to deny transportation for his painting via any domestic company and even audited the taxes for his wife’s clinic (Kim, 2018, p. 87). Cultural censorship consequently affects the financial and mental well-beings of artists as artists suffer from fewer opportunities and exposure. In response, artists flooded Gwanghwamun Square in 2016 to call for an endorsement of anti-censorship in a form of “collective resistance against the iniquity of governmental practice” which received popular support across the nation (Kim, 2018, p. 88). Not only was this scandal a negative reflection on South Korea’s democratic standing, it reminded Koreans of the intense censorship under Park Chung-Hee’s regime as “the political and economic exploitation of the arts and culture signified a return to the age of dictatorship” (Kim, 2018, p. 89).

To further contribute to the reliving of repressed memories, the history of cultural censorship was traced back to Lee Myung-bak’s administration after investigations began under the newly elected President, Moon Jae-in’s Truth Commissions (Yuk, 2019, p. 34). The continuation of cultural censorship prompts the question of why an administration would limit artistic autonomy when cultural exportation had been succeeding in South Korea, especially in a nation where a constitutional right

is the freedom of expression. A simple answer is that the desire to retain power motivates many in positions of power, including the administrations that had sponsored both cultural innovation and repression. To do so, administrations would strive to improve their national and international image to maintain popular support and legitimacy. In the cases of Park Geun-Hye and Lee Myung-bak’s administrations, they underwent this process through illegitimate means of cultural censorship.

Another potential answer that warrants further research is that these people in power have ideological political goals that stretch back to South Korea’s days of dictatorship.

This answer rings true especially for Park Geun-hye as many commented that her administration followed the legacy of dictatorship her father, Park Chung-hee, continued as both Park Geun-hye and Park Chung-hee were conservative and their censorship targeted leftleaning artists. Park Geun-hye discouraged investment and exposure of left-leaning films, art, and literature with the assistance of her conservative cabinet. Again, Kim Kichoon gave direct orders to perpetrate censorship as he was quoted ordering the former Presidential Secretary for Political Affairs, Shin Dong-cheol, to correct “the current imbalance between left and right-wing groups in terms of receiving government subsidies…to support the impoverished right” (Yuk, 2019, p. 37).

In questioning how these repeated events of cultural censorship reflect upon South Korea’s democracy, it must be taken into account that democracy is not a one and done event, it is a “constant process of democratization” (Yuk, 2019, p. 42). While the democratization movements of the 1980s including the Gwangju Democratic Uprising did lead to what appears to be democratic systems of government, it does not guarantee that it will fully function as one. Combined with the past of colonialism and dictatorship, South Korea has had a relatively longer period of undemocratic rule than democracy. Of course, this does not mean South Korea is an underlying authoritarian state under a façade of democracy, but that it may involve a “hybrid democracy” of “underpinning

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FIGURE 3. Repainting of “Sewol Owol” by Hong Songdam zoomed into the top left, 2014.

democratic institutions” with “pervasive undemocratic practices” (Yuk, 2019, p. 42). Rather than having outright censorship of art, there are now more clandestine ways to enact contemporary censorship via manipulating cultural organizations, cutting investment and subsidies, and surveilling artists. While the censorship of Minjung art specifically censors left-leaning art, these clandestine methods of censorship can be applied regardless of political orientation of the artwork or the artist. The arts are a useful tool for ideological propaganda, or lack thereof. By censoring left-leaning material, the South Korean government has been able to limit the open discourse on democracy. Constitutionalizing cultural censorship does not make it ideologically or morally correct, it only eases the actor’s ability to repress the production of culture.

CONCLUSIONS: CHALLENGES AND PROSPECTS Over the past five decades, South Korea has undergone a series of changes in politics and society; however, one factor that has remained constant is the continuation of state sponsored cultural censorship. As observed in the censorship of art, media, and film from the days of dictatorship to modern day South Korea, historical processes of cultural suppression are lasting legacies. This process has repeated itself in the complex relationship between Minjung art, the Gwangju Uprising, and the government of South Korea. Although the ideals fought for physically and represented in artwork were essential in creating a functional democracy in South Korea, the state still continues to limit the expression of

political art. There are three possible answers to why a democratic state would engage in cultural censorship.

First, the desire for those in power to retain their power may motivate them to limit criticism against them.

Second, politicians in power have similar ideological connections to South Korea’s dictatorships that seek to uphold conservative, right-wing ideals over left-leaning ones. Third, despite South Korea’s role in the global economy and reputation as a democracy, it is in fact a hybrid democracy that reflects an incomplete transition from its days of dictatorship to a democracy. These three answers I provide are not mutually exclusive, nor are they exclusive of other possibilities that may answer this question. There is proof that all three answers can explain the reasoning behind modern cultural censorship, especially when investigating the most recent exposure of censorship under former President Park Geun-hye.

Minjung art has been a critical tool of democratic expression to provide political commentary and better represent all Koreans, not just the privileged and wealthy, and not just those in the South. Modern cultural repression has adapted to use subtler techniques, yet its hypocrisy runs rampant especially after the exposure of Park Geun-hye’s blacklist scandal. Over a thousand civilians in Gwangju fought and died for the rights to democracy under a repressive dictatorship, the very rights that later allowed South Korean citizens impeach their president Yet, the successive administrations following in the footsteps of dictators continued the trend of censoring artists, especially left-wing artists that contributed to the monumental move toward democratization.

The impacts of censorship on Minjung artists do

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not just impact their livelihoods, but they also affect artists psychologically. Artists that are censored often lose opportunities for funding or exhibitions that help them make a living, therefore motivating them to selfcensor. This in turn affects the larger scope of political engagement through art, minimizing the chances that political criticisms appear through artwork. Connecting the impacts of self-censorship and state censorship to the case of Minjung art, the movement could have died down in the 21st century due to various reasons. One may be that after the democratization of South Korea, there was no real need for Minjung art to remain in the mainstream as the main goals of the movement were presumed to have been achieved. A second is that Minjung artists have been censored or self-censored themselves to the point that Minjung art is unrecognizable by its consistent themes, imagery, and motifs. The arrests and subsequent torture and jailing of artists such as Hong Song-dam and Shin Hak-chul served to be powerful examples that should have empowered Minjung artists to continue with their work, yet the impact of Minjung art has been diminished in the past years. Another reason is that Minjung art longs to be forgotten as it is tightly intertwined with a painful moment in South Korean history. The Gwangju Uprising and the events during the Chun Doo-hwan dictatorship are highly contested and painful, even embarrassing, memories for citizens to recall. Despite the falling out of Minjung art in recent years, the activism and ideals held

by Minjung artists will remain relevant to South Korea as long as the state continues to compromise discourse on democracy and citizens are willing to participate in this discourse. Modern agendas such as gender equality, LGBTQ+ rights, and environmental movements have the potential to take up Minjung art tactics to motivate the masses to join in their causes as citizens did in Gwangju in 1980.

The extreme relevancy of Minjung art and ideals motivate my research to continue in the future whether formally through an institution or independently. If continued, research into women Minjung artists and modern sects of Minjung art will be considered.

Additionally, future plans for research include visits to South Korea to conduct in-person research in Gwangju to observe the Biennale and interview artists to get their perspectives on Minjung art. It is important to bring attention to modern censorship in the arts as the unadulterated production of art is often taken for granted.

Park Geun-hye’s unexpected exposure belatedly uncovered the artistic censorship that has continued since South Korea’s days of dictatorship. This blacklist scandal called attention to the power of the state in the production of arts and culture and proved how discreetly and silently modern censorship can present itself.

Without artistic freedom and the ability to engage in democratic discourse, South Koreans will continue facing difficulties reconciling with their difficult past.

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About the Author Vivian is a sophomore from Corona, California majoring in International Affairs with a concentration in International Environmental Studies and minoring in Spanish. She was an Undergraduate Research Fellow with GW’s Institute for Korean Studies which allowed her to research cultural censorship in South Korea. She is also interested in researching the intersection of geography, culture, and politics across East Asia and Latin America. Vivian serves on the executive board of GW Mock Trial and GW Taiwanese American Student Association, as an intern with Blue Knot Strategies, and a research assistant. She enjoys volunteering with GW UNICEF’s volunteering committee in Washington D.C. and at home in Southern California.

Mentor Details This article was prepared with mentorship from Dr. Immanuel Kim. Dr. Immanuel Kim earned his Ph.D. in Comparative Literature at the University of California, Riverside. He is a Department Chair and Kim-Renaud Associate Professor of Korean Literature and Culture Studies in the Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures at George Washington University. His research focuses on North Korean literature and cinema, specifically looking into representations of women, sexuality, and memory in North Korean literature from the 1960s to the present day.

51 KEYWORDS: language of religion, art history, linguistic anthropology DOI: https://doi.org/10.4079/2578-9201.4(2021).01

The Legenda Aurea: Aurea: From Holy Mediator to Icon of Idolatry CAITLIN CHAN ART HISTORY & INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS, ESIA ‘21, cchan21@gwu.edu

ABSTRACT The Legenda Aurea is a collection of hagiographies and apocryphal stories compiled by Dominican friar Jacopo de Voragine around 1290 A.D. The book’s colorful retellings translate easily to artistic rendering, with countless paintings and frescoes through the ages drawing inspiration from its pages. One of the Legenda Aurea’s most significant triumphs, however, remains the visual syntax of sequential images that emerged from the narrative structure of the text, allowing the illiterate population of Christians to access the narrative foundations of the Christian faith. This paper investigates the rise and fall of the Legenda Aurea in both popular regard and religious authority. The ascendance of the Legenda Aurea in Europe during the late Middle Ages will be assessed by analyzing how its original popularity engendered an easily accessible visual syntax of apocryphal images while still retaining religious authority. The sharp decline in the Legenda Aurea’s reputation and legitimacy will be studied through the text’s translation from Latin to the vernacular English by a publisher known for printing irreverent tales of fiction. The Legenda Aurea may have made Christianity more accessible than ever in the Middle Ages; however, the unique way in which this accessibility was born — through the development of a visual syntax while leaving the Latin word intact — allowed the text’s authority to remain protected. Once the source language of the translation shifted from Latin, the language of the Church, to the English vernacular, this authority was lost and the high regard for the Legenda Aurea ruined.

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INTRODUCTION The integral text of the Legenda Aurea must be explored, if contemporary scholars ever wish to obtain a fuller understanding of both Christian artwork of the Middle Ages, as well as the mindset of the people who would have experienced these religious objects. This collection of hagiographies, or biographies of saints, compiled by Dominican friar Jacopo de Voragine was first printed around 1290 A.D. The text contains a wealth of knowledge regarding the iconography of Christian medieval art, for the stories lend themselves more to artistic rendering than the Bible itself. While the sheer amount of information available in the Legenda Aurea alone might make it an invaluable source of inspiration, the text’s retellings of Biblical stories with substantial narrative embellishment and even pure creative addition truly make even the Bible itself less fruitful when it comes to artistic source material. One of the Legenda Aurea’s most significant triumphs, however, remains the visual syntax of sequential images that emerged from the narrative structure of the text, allowing more people — notably those who were illiterate, which was, at the time, most of the population — to

achieve an understanding of the Bible and narrative foundations of the Christian faith than ever before.

This paper investigates the rise and fall of the Legenda Aurea in both popular opinion and religious authority. The ascendance of the Legenda Aurea in Europe during the Middle Ages will be examined by examining the role of its original popularity on the development of a visual syntax of apocryphal images by artists such as Giotto di Bondone. Looking at the fresco cycles of the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua, Italy will allow an understanding of the ways in which the Legenda Aurea opened up Christianity to the many who were illiterate, by giving them a sort of visual literacy. The sharp decline in the Legenda Aurea’s reputation and legitimacy will be studied through the text’s translation from Latin to the vernacular English by a publisher known for printing irreverent tales of fiction. The Legenda Aurea may have made Christianity more accessible than ever in the Middle Ages; however, the unique way in which this accessibility was born — through the development of a visual syntax while leaving the Latin word intact — allowed the text’s authority to remain protected.

Once the translation from Latin, the language of the Church, shifted from images beheld in a holy space to the English vernacular, this authority was lost

THE GW UNDERGRADUATE REVIEW • VOLUME 4 and the high regard for the Legenda Aurea ruined.

VISUAL REPRESENTATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY IN THE MIDDLE AGES Representations of Biblical stories or holy Christian figures are almost always steeped in contention and controversy. As a religion that forbids the worship of false idols as one of its core tenets, Christianity has long struggled with questions of representation and visual mediation between worshipper and God. Yet, perhaps one of the most well-known treasures of the Christian tradition has been its production of exquisite art objects over the religion’s long history, most of which adorn holy spaces like chapels, cathedrals, and other places of worship. In the Byzantine era, one of the most outspoken criticisms framed artistic representation as a form of lying, and therefore a sin (Evans, Holcomb, & Hallman, 2001). If a depiction of an object or person was naturalistic and meant to imitate life, the rendering ultimately was always a trick of sorts, for it could never be life itself. As a result, Byzantine art can be characterized by its stylistic flatness, and complete refusal to create a true-to-life image. This connection between religious zeitgeist and attitude toward artistic representation extends past simply the Byzantine case, and can be examined to obtain a more comprehensive picture of any time and religion.

At different times, Christian authorities have found ways to defend religious artwork from the accusation of idolatry. In Europe during the Middle Ages, the primary defense of religious art against claims of idol worship was the argument for their status as supplementary devotional objects to aid understanding. Throughout the 1400s, Christian preachers would lay out in their sermons a framework for the reactions that should be elicited by successful religious art: the biblical education of unlearned worshippers, the visual reminder of Christ’s glory, and the excitement of devotional passion through a more sensory experience (Baxandall, 2011, p. 23).

Christian viewers of religious artwork in the Middle Ages had clear directives and criteria on the basis of which to evaluate their religious aesthetic experiences. How did artists of the time take up this mantle and infuse their work with these new and widespread ways of seeing?

Many responded with mining new source material for educational, glorious, and exciting religious imagery, particularly the Legenda Aurea.

A common misconception about medieval Christian art is that the tableaux in altarpieces or devotional paintings are faithful depictions of the text of the Bible. While the Bible is certainly used as an anchoring reference, many works pull largely from the details listed in the stories of the Legenda Aurea. One might be surprised by the scarcity of description the Bible gives for many of the scenes of the life of Christ after looking at a medieval depiction of the same subject. A comparative analysis of the content

52 offered by the Bible and that offered by the Legenda Aurea can help in attaining a working understanding of how the Legenda Aurea’s text was especially appropriate for the extraction of recognizable and charged icons to use in artistic representations.

FRESCO CYCLES AT THE SCROVEGNI CHAPEL The type of artwork that best showcases the richness of the Legenda Aurea’s text, as well as the book’s unique effects on visual storytelling, is that of the fresco cycle.

Fresco cycles, as the name implies, are fresco paintings divided up into distinct segments. Fresco cycles are typically found in chapels, or other small enclosures, in which there is room for the series to wrap around the walls, or perhaps even so that the scenes can all be viewed from one point in the room. This mode of visual artistry gained in popularity in Europe towards the Late Byzantine era and truly picked up during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (Banxandall, 2011). The fact that this spike coincides with the Legenda Aurea’s creation and subsequent increased dissemination is significant. Fresco cycles, while usually commissioned or financed by the wealthy elite, were almost always found in public religious spaces. They were intended for the viewing pleasures of many people in the context of worship. Because of this mandate of accessibility to a broad viewing public, fresco cycles from the Middle Ages frequently depicted as their subject matter the more widely known Biblical stories of the time. These characteristics make fresco cycles the perfect form of artwork against which to apply a comparison of the Legenda Aurea and the Bible as source materials.

The Scrovegni Chapel in Padua, Italy provides a case study, as the chapel was consecrated in 1305, just fifteen years after the original printing of the Legenda Aurea. By that time, the text was widely known throughout Italy and beginning to make its way throughout Europe. The site is famous for the frescoes adorning every inch of the interior, conceived of and painted by one of the progenitors of the Italian Renaissance, Giotto di Bondone. Not only are the chapel frescoes’ iconographic themes clearly drawn right from de Voragine’s words, but the scenes also present a novel, straightforward visual program, reflecting the same narration structure that runs through the stories of the Legenda Aurea. The stories expressed in the fresco cycle are that of the life of the Virgin Mary and the life of Christ.

Because of the infamy of the Scrovegni Chapel, as well as the widespread knowledge and depiction of these two featured narratives in the western Christian canon, the site acts as a representative of the interaction between religious iconography and the text of the Legenda Aurea.

To analyze the dialogue between the Legenda Aurea and the icons depicted in the Scrovegni Chapel fresco cycle, a few scenes can be examined closely in relation to their probable textual sources. The cross-analysis of the scenes’

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source information available in the Bible with that of the Legenda Aurea can help to establish how de Voragine’s text was better fitted to an easily understandable visual rendering of Christian narratives in the Middle Ages.

The Scrovegni Chapel is dedicated to the Virgin Mary, and as such, features one of the most extensive early depictions of the Virgin’s life on its walls. To develop such a narrative program that would fulfill those three objectives of religious art laid out by the Church— educating the unlearned, reminding devotees of Christ’s glory, and inciting religious passion— the artist Giotto turned to the Legenda Aurea. Of Mary’s life and personal history, little is mentioned in the Bible proper. Most of the descriptions of the Virgin are limited to her relationship to Christ and her role as the mother of the holy messiah. The gospel of Matthew details a straightforward genealogy of Joseph and his union to Mary, as well as a few lines of description regarding the annunciation, a scene in which the Virgin receives the news that she will bear the son of God (Matthew 2:1-23, King James Bible). The gospel of Luke expands slightly on the annunciation, including the exchange between Mary and the messenger of god, the angel Gabriel (Luke 2:1-10, King James Bible). This is precious little content from which to pull an entire narrative storyline, especially one that has the power to explain, remind, and arouse.

When compared to the Bible’s threadbare account of the Virgin’s life, the Legenda Aurea’s chapter, “The Birth of the Virgin” looks like a tell-all (de Voragine, 1290 AD). After providing an extensive genealogy that traces Mary’s origins back to King David of the Old Testament, de Voragine’s account tells of her parents, Joachim and Anna. There is no mention of these characters in the Bible; however, the Legenda Aurea takes the liberty of giving the Virgin’s parents a backstory. These two figures are described as righteous and holy people, who are of old age but with unfruitful desires to have a child. The story follows the couple on their travels to Jerusalem for a holy feast. However, when Joachim approaches the altar to make an offering, he is met with outrage by the priest, who censures Joachim’s sterility and inability to increase the people of God — traits that made him unfit to sacrifice at the holy altar. After this public denouncement, Joachim resigns to live in the fields with the shepherds, ashamed to face his kinsmen at home. During Joachim’s self-exile, an angel appears to him in a dream, telling of the daughter he will soon beget, as well as her divine fate. To prove his credibility, the angel tells Joachim that upon his return to the city, his wife Anna will be waiting for him at the Golden Gate of Jerusalem. This prediction proves to be true, and soon, the Virgin Mary is born.

DEVELOPING A VISUAL SYNTAX Giotto, the famed artist of the Scrovegni Chapel, took advantage of the linear narrative structure of the

Legenda Aurea’s chapter on the birth of the Virgin, and from it, was able to develop a corresponding pictorial rendering. The titles of the panels in this portion of the fresco cycle are telling: Rejection of Joachim’s Sacrifice, Joachim among the Shepherds, Annunciation to St. Anne, Joachim’s Sacrificial Offering, Joachim’s Dream, Meeting at the Golden Gate (Figures 1-6). When examining the transitions between each panel, one can see that they link the scenes through a clear, linear progression in time, helping to create a visual syntax. This change in the presentation of images allowed viewers to “read” images in the same way one might read the story itself in text.

The idea of “reading” a sequence of images as a linear narrative is far more revolutionary than one might initially anticipate. A few essential modes of cognition must serve as the foundation for understanding. One must be able to establish that there is a common semantic theme underlying all the panels. Additionally, one must be able to place the panels in order through time, identifying each one as a syntactic unit and then deducing the relationship of time having passed between each. Also, in terms of extrapolating a standard directional order to read the images, one could only achieve this through repeated exposure to visual displays whose narratives unfolded in the same direction. Furthermore, recurring figures in the panels must be understood as the same character appearing at different points in time. Once the basics of comprehension have been achieved, one must also elicit from the sequence a coherent narrative and understanding. To fully appreciate what a shift in viewing practice this would have constituted, consider the previous official view of religious artistic representation in the Byzantine era. Artistic representations of Christian figures and scenes were intended to be flat and static -- almost abstracted. This is far from the dynamic, naturalistic depictions in the Scrovegni Chapel.

The easy translation of the Legenda Aurea’s linguistic narrative structure into a visual narrative structure through the formation of a religious visual syntax helped the Catholic Church in the 1400s (Cohn, 2012). Just like the Scrovegni Chapel, countless other chapels and religious spaces around Europe began to favor fresco cycles that could visually narrate Christian stories over static, stylized depictions of religious figures. The new iconography that arose appeared far truer to life, for its intention was not to capture the essence of a holy entity like its forbearer, but rather to create in the viewer a sense of reality, like watching a scene play out before one’s eyes. Integral to this new view of artistic portrayal was the idea of fortifying comprehension. As mentioned, the education of those unlearned in the stories of Christ was one of the primary objectives of religious artwork in the Middle Ages. In their universal capacity to communicate a string of events relating to the Bible or the lives of saints, illustrated scenes from the Legenda Aurea could reach the non-Latin speaking or illiterate demographics

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FIGURE 1. Rejection of Joachim’s Sacrifice FIGURE 2. Joachim among the Shepherds

FIGURE 3. Annunciation to St. Anne of the population.

THE RELIGIOUS AUTHORITY OF LATIN AND THE LEGENDA AUREA When the Legenda Aurea was first published, Latin was indisputably the holy language of the Catholic Church.

Only a select few could read and understand the sacred Word of God in the early Middle Ages; however, despite the proselytizing nature of the Christian religion, this

FIGURE 4. Joachim’s Sacrificial Offering gatekeeping mechanism was by design. Many of the Church’s elite believed the Word must be protected from the congregants for their own good; the unique abilities of the priesthood to access and interpret Latin were signs of their own divinity (Wabuda, 2002). In their custodianship of the holy language, religious elites could further consolidate their hold on authority.

The Legenda Aurea occupied an interesting middle ground between the sacred and profane. Its content was

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no doubt religious, for stories of the Bible were retold in its pages alongside the biographies of saints. As such, the book was originally printed in Latin. Despite its initial availability in the elite sacred language of Christianity, the book enjoyed a definitive populist bent in its sheer widespread appeal. Jacopo de Voragine intended the Legenda Aurea to serve as a reference book for his fellow Dominican monks; however, the book’s uses soon expanded, with many clergymen beginning the regular practice of reading its chapters aloud to their congregations during services. While this may have increased the notoriety of the book, those who could not speak Latin were still not able to understand the tales. In this void, the communicative force of the Legenda Aurea’s artistic representations exercised their full power.

The iconic depictions of the Legenda Aurea in fresco cycles like that of the Scrovegni Chapel filled a significant gap in understanding amongst the illiterate population of the laity without compromising the holiness of the text itself when it was still printed only in Latin. While Latin was the language of the religious elite, the visual language of icons could be understood by almost anybody who was exposed to the narrative sequences of artworks frequently enough. Associations between various saints and their stories were fortified through the images of the tales unfolding in clear artistic renderings of the scenes.

The associations that first emerged in fresco cycles with popular subjects like the life of the Virgin, the life of Christ, or the life of St. Francis or St. George, soon became decontextualized and further strengthened as bounded objects of representation. For example, the lily flower came to be known as a sign for the Virgin Mary

FIGURE 5. Joachim’s Dream

because of its repeated depiction in narrative sequences about her life. In the Bible, there are no mentions of lilies in relation to Mary; this reference is entirely drawn from the Legenda Aurea, which tells of Joseph’s selection by God as the husband of Mary when he wins a competition among Nazareth’s men to flower a lily plant for her hand in marriage. This object in Mary’s narrative was taken to represent Mary in her entirety, a metonym of the holy Virgin. Because of the many recognizable and easily rendered identifying objects scattered throughout the Legenda Aurea, many other metonyms similar to the Virgin Mary’s lily were borne out of the time between the book’s first printing around 1290 BCE to the early 1400s, including the dragon for Saint George, or the stigmata wounds for Saint Francis. Once decontextualized, these signs accrued their own authority and were subject to new religious rituals to facilitate their specific veneration, such as offerings at shrines or pilgrimages to various sites or works of art.

At the start of the fifteenth century, as the Legenda Aurea’s stories and offspring of artistic output spread, the text ascended to the position of the second most printed book in Europe, after only the Bible; today, more than 900 Latin manuscripts of the text still survive (Reames, 1985). Yet, the sixteenth century saw the dramatic plunge of the Legenda Aurea’s status, with objections from both Protestants and Catholics, degrading it to the point of derision. In fact, the word “legend” took on the somewhat mocking meaning of an inflated or untrue story of the past because of the stinging blows to the reputation suffered by Jacopo de Voragine’s once highly regarded compilation. Thus, the question of how the book so

FIGURE 6. Meeting at the Golden Gate

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WILLIAM CAXTON AND TRANSLATION INTO VERNACULAR ENGLISH By the mid-1400s, as the narrative religious iconography rooted in the Legenda Aurea began to permeate most aspects of Christian life and ritual, other cultural changes were taking root, most pertinently the growing movement pushing for vernacular translations of Christian texts. Encouraging these arguments for the democratization of Christian knowledge was the invention and subsequent spread of the printing press.

Various figures were emerging as formidable proponents for translation and wide dissemination, among them, the prolific English printer, William Caxton. One of Caxton’s great projects was translating the Legenda Aurea from Latin to his vernacular English, which he completed in 1483. While Caxton’s tremendous efforts were met with commercial success — before 1500, sixty-nine vernacular editions were already printed — his other offerings may have devalued the authenticity of the Legenda Aurea (Reames, 1985).

Caxton was widely associated with his printing of many works of fiction by the people of the Middle Ages, in particular, Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales; with Caxton’s affiliation to a fictional work that seems to parody religious archetypes on a Christian pilgrimage, the translator and his reputation most likely contributed to a shift in attitudes toward the Legenda Aurea that pushed the text closer to the genre of entertainment (Ring, 2017). While the simple linear narrative structure of the saintly tales may have once lent itself well to a clear visual translation, the same attribute became more of a disadvantage once the text was published along fictional narratives that followed the same formula for easy and entertaining reading. The accessibility of the Legenda Aurea ultimately became a double-edged sword. Where this accessibility had once given the text a wide appeal -- when the norm was that of the Word being protected from the congregation -- it now was calling into question the Legenda Aurea’s authenticity.

Not only did Caxton’s reputation harm the Legenda Aurea, his translation itself counterintuitively weakened the religious impact of the text due to the new context of use and direct interpretation, allowing for a critical eye towards the content and corresponding imagery. As mentioned previously, the original context in which the Latin printing of the Legenda Aurea would have been received by the Christian laity was oral recitation during a church service. For those who could not understand Latin — which would have been most of the congregation — a convenient mode of mediation between themselves and religious narratives would have been the clear and communicative iconography available in artistic renderings (Ring, 2017). When the only path of linguistic

56 understanding was Latin, the pictorial middlemen of fresco cycles or iconic artworks would have been a helpful aid for understanding. However, with the advent of print capitalism and the vernacular-ization of holy texts in the late fifteenth century and all through the sixteenth, there was no longer a need for this mediation to supplement lack of direct access (Anderson, 2016). Instead, devotees could read the Legenda Aurea for themselves. With this bypassing of any intermediary body to get to God, devotees were empowered to evaluate the text of the Legenda Aurea and its resulting images with the full force of a vernacular understanding behind them.

CHANGES IN AUTHORITY With the new use contexts of the vernacular translation of the Legenda Aurea, two essential sources of authority from which the traditionally recited Latin text had once drawn were now absent: the sacrament of the Latin language itself, as well as the oration by a priest in a church. Before, the Legenda Aurea would have been in the same language as the Word of God. From the late thirteenth century to the late fifteenth, the traditional authority afforded to those texts printed in the language of the Lord would have been immense. As with any sacred language, the connections to religious forbearers and the accumulations of authority through time provided Latin with the undeniable weight of a holy history. Not only did the text lose this convenient link to traditional authority accrued over centuries, but the language of Latin itself had come under fire in the late 1400s as the popularity of the Reformation movement began to increase. Many now started to view the language not as that of God but the language of the elite, acting as yet another barrier between man and the divine.

In addition to the authority once afforded to the Legenda Aurea through Latin alone, the performative aspect of reading the text out loud during a church service would have ensured another measure of legitimacy.

Built into the performative ritual structure of a church service, the text would have been enhanced by not only the oral recitation, but the physical surroundings as well.

The distinct church setting would already have given the receivers of the text the atmosphere of religiosity, a sphere in which even mundane activities could become holy. Once the Legenda Aurea was made available to be read directly in contexts outside of the physical structure of the church or the abbey, the decontextualization was unsuccessful, in the sense that it suffered a loss of authority after removal from original discourse rather than accruing more authority.

While the inherent authority sourced from the Latin language and the church setting was sapped from the vernacular translation of the Legenda Aurea, significant strides were made in improving comprehension of and accessibility to the Christian stories; yet, these

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advancements had negative impacts on public reception of the once lauded iconography that arose from the text. The vernacular translation of the Legenda Aurea brought the text to the people. Rather than the previous dynamic of a divine authority bestowing knowledge upon a lowly, unlearned recipient through the mediator of a priest, now, the people could approach the text on more equal footing. Before, had a Christian worshipper not understood Latin, as previously argued, the iconography and narrative depictions in artistic renderings would have been the primary medium of understanding. Because of their educational character, these depictions would have served as a rudimentary pictorial translation. Now, rather than approaching these religious scenes without any clear understanding of the referents of the visual signs, most people were able to view the iconography having read the stories on which these artworks were based. With this knowledge came criticality. The eye of the everyday Christian in the sixteenth century was far more attuned to the religious basis for the works of religious art, and no longer viewed the works solely for their educational content.

Because religious artwork no longer needed to fulfill the once primary objective of educating a broad illiterate populace, its other two functions were now brought forth: the visual reminder of Christ’s glory, and the excitement of devotional passion through a more sensory experience. The original intent of many of these artworks was to create an easily read visual narrative, and because of this, one of the most important factors of a work was its lifelikeness; however, this feat of artistic skill was now superfluous to the other objectives. Now, due to this uncanny resemblance to life, as well as to the buildup of ritual practices that had emerged from the practice of viewing for narrative understanding both began to appear similar to idol veneration.

In the sixteenth century, as the fury of the Protestant Reformation rose, one of the most aggressive strains of the movement was characterized by a vehement iconoclasm. Adherents believed that any pictorial representations of God or Biblical figures were violating the holy commandment banning the worship of false idols. The argument against these representations was similar to that of the Byzantine opposition to naturalistic depictions; if one’s religious passion is aroused by a pictorial representation, perhaps it is the artwork inspiring this feeling rather than the true holy spirit.

CONCLUSION A confluence of factors damned the Legenda Aurea to its current position in history, that of a once widely influential book that has now been reduced to an entertaining collection of tales. The original Latin text was integral to the formation of a visual language of religious iconography, achieved through the segmented, linear narrative structure utilized by de Voragine throughout.

Christians without a working knowledge of Latin could “read” the pictorial narratives in the works of religious art inspired by the text. The codification of these signs soon backfired, however, when William Caxton’s 1483 translation into the English vernacular both lessened the traditional authority of the text and endowed a population previously dependent on this visual language of signs with a fuller understanding of the source material, and thus a more critical eye towards the artistic depictions.

Overall, the historical cultural significance of the Legenda Aurea cannot be disputed. The text had wide-reaching influences on practices of Christian worship in the Middle Ages. While respect for the book may have plummeted beginning in the sixteenth century and onwards, today, there has been a resurgence of appreciation for de Voragine’s creativity and mass appeal.

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REFERENCES 1. Baxandall, M. (2011). Painting and experience in fifteenth century Italy: A primer in the social history of pictorial style. Oxford University.

2. Blake, N. (2008). Caxton, William (1415x24–1492), printer, merchant, and diplomat. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/ odnb9780198614128-e-4963 3. Cohn, N., Paczynski, M., Jackendoff, R., Holcomb, P. J., & Kuperberg, G. R. (2012). (Pea)nuts and bolts of visual narrative: Structure and meaning in sequential image comprehension. Cognitive Psychology, 65(1), 1–38. doi: 10.1016/j.cogpsych.2012.01.003 4. Evans, H., Holcomb, M., & Hallman, R. (2001). The arts of Byzantium. The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, 58(4), 1-68. doi:10.2307/3269176 5. Gombrich, E. (1966). Ritualized gesture and expression in art. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological Sciences, 251(772), 393-401. Retrieved from www.jstor.org/stable/2416751 6. Reames, S. L. (1985). The Legenda Aurea: A reexamination of its paradoxical history. University of Wisconsin.

7. Ring, M. (2017). Translating the Legenda Aurea in early modern England. Studies in Church History, 53, 118–131. doi: 10.1017/stc.2016.8 8. Ryan, W., & Duffy, E. (2012). The birth of the blessed Virgin Mary. The Golden Legend: Readings on the Saints, 535-544. Princeton University. www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt7stkm.136 9. Seybolt, R. (1946). The Legenda Aurea, Bible, and Historia Scholastica. Speculum, 21(3), 339-342. doi:10.2307/2851378 10. Wabuda, S. (2008). Preaching During the English Reformation. Cambridge University.

About the Author Caitlin is a senior majoring in Art History and International Affairs. She grew up in Closter, New Jersey. Her research interests include aesthetics and institutional critique. Caitlin has previously served as a curator at Gallery 102 and an intern at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden.

She is a past first-place winner of the Eckles Research Prize, and she recently served as a moderator for GW’s UW Capstone Conference. Her current research project is her senior thesis on Lee Lozano, a conceptual artist active in New York in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Mentor Details Dr. Kuipers is a linguistic anthropologist interested in the role of language in the description and interpretation of social life, particularly how authoritative discourse shapes institutionally defined activities in clinics, courtrooms, classrooms and religious settings. He is Director of GW’s Discourse Laboratory. Beginning in 1978, Dr. Kuipers began nearly three years of ethnographic and linguistic research into a distinctive style of poetic ritual speech among the Weyewa people of the eastern Indonesian island of Sumba. Through intensive recording, transcription and analysis of ritual performances, he examined how the mastery and use of a parallelistic style of ceremonial discourse established the cultural authority of individuals, lineages and sacred spaces. Beginning in 1990’s, he analyzed the role of language ideologies in the rapid decline of ritual speech on Sumba, and the rise of the Indonesian national language as the language political and religious authority. Since 2000, he has carried out extensive video ethnographic analyses of the use of authoritative language in psychiatric clinics, Indonesian courtrooms, and U.S. science classrooms.

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KEYWORDS: Africa, counterterrorism, Sahel, violent extremism DOI: https://doi.org/10.4079/2578-9201.4(2021).06

Stopping Violent Extremist Organizations (VEOs) in the Sahel: Guns, Votes, or Cash?

KEELY DION INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS AND FRENCH, ESIA ‘21, keelydion@gwu.edu

ABSTRACT This thesis analyzes the strategies implemented by state governments in the Sahel, foreign powers, and regional/international organizations to mitigate the growing threat of violent extremist organizations (VEOs) in the region. Current efforts to combat VEOs in the Sahel have generally involved three distinct dimensions: military operations, governance reforms, and economic development initiatives. Military responses to violent extremism aim to limit the operational capacities of VEOs through intelligence and resource raids, while protecting civilians in affected regions. Governance reforms refer to policies implemented by African states to address key political grievances that allow extremists to advance their anti-establishment narratives. Economic development and international aid are initiatives that aim to financially empower citizens in Sahel nations and reduce the economic attractiveness of VEO recruitment.

These strategies will be evaluated with reference to three case studies, considering the operations of three major VEOs in the region: AQIM, Boko Haram, and Ansarul Islam. The evaluation criteria will include each VEO’s level of recruitment, the level of violence in the region, and the amount of governance-related grievances. The case study with the lowest levels of these criteria will be categorized as the optimal conflict mitigation against VEOs in the Sahel. The findings of the thesis conclude that the optimal strategy to stop VEOs in the Sahel must prioritize government capacity building and economic development, combined with short-term military operations to provide security to civilians and vulnerable communities.

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INTRODUCTION Over the past decade, militant Islamist group activity has skyrocketed on the African continent According to the U.S. Africa Center for Strategic Studies (2019), there has been a ten-fold increase in violent events perpetrated by these groups. Militant Islamism is an example of violent extremism which, distinct from state violence, is normally perpetrated by insurgent, non-state actors. Violent extremism is defined by William Stephens et al. (2019) as “more behavioral than idealistic…in that it places violence as a means, rather than the holding of extreme values.” Violent extremist organizations (VEOs) are groups of non-state actors that incite fear through violence in pursuit of political change (D’Amato, 2018, p. 157). Though VEOs are also present in North and East Africa, the Sahel (a region of western and north-central Africa spanning from Senegal to Sudan) is an area of acute violent extremist activity, which has exponentially increased since 2007.

This research focuses on countries in this region with the highest levels of VEO activity: Mauritania, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, and Chad. Sahelian VEOs are mostly categorized by their jihadist ideology, seeking to organize both government and society in accordance with Islamic law. The presence of VEOs

has led to increased violence against civilians, battles with the region’s states, and displaced populations in the region. Though VEO activity is heavily concentrated in the Sahel today, its most prominent groups have their roots outside the region.

Sahelian jihadism originated from the VEOs in the Algerian civil war during the 1990s. There, groups were categorized by sophisticated recruitment tactics and gained a significant following. These VEOs later migrated from northern Algeria to the southern region and then across the wider Sahel (Ghanem-Yazbeck et al., 2018). AQIM was originally called the Algerian Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC) and fought against the Algerian state during the civil war in support of an established Islamic state (Ghanem-Yazbeck et al., 2018). In 2007, the GSPC pledged allegiance to al-Qaeda and transformed into al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), calling for rebellion against “impious” governments in Algeria, Libya, Morocco, Tunisia, Mali, and Mauritania (Ghanem-Yazbeck et al., 2018).

As Algerian security forces pushed the group further into the Sahel, AQIM expanded its influence across porous borders and past under-staffed militaries in the south (Ghanem-Yazbeck et al., 2018). The group eventually participated in the 2012 Taureg rebellion in Mali alongside the National Movement

THE GW UNDERGRADUATE REVIEW • VOLUME 4 for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA), and took control of northern cities like Timbuktu while implementing Sharia law (De Castelli, 2014). In 2013, French forces eventually ousted AQIM from northern Mali through Operation Serval, but the group still holds significant influence in Mali and countries like Mauritania and Burkina Faso (De Castelli, 2014, p. 64). The group’s ability to cooperate and collaborate with other VEOs has proven useful for the expansion of regional jihadism; for example, several members of Boko Haram, a prominent VEO in Niger and Chad, were recruited by jihadists and trained by AQIM during the early 2000s (De Castelli, 2014). Thus, the spread of jihadism from Algeria set the precedent for the creation of other VEOs in the greater Sahel region.

In addition to AQIM, Boko Haram is another major VEO in the Sahel. The group primarily operates in Nigeria but has increasingly spread in neighboring Niger, Chad, and Cameroon, especially around the Lake Chad Basin (Center for Strategic and International Studies, 2016).

Boko Haram formed as early as 1995 as a separatist community that sought to enforce “hardline Islamic principles” in Nigeria (Blanquart, 2012). Its operations ran peacefully until a government crackdown in 2009 killed 800 Boko Haram members and resulted in the group’s radicalization (Blanquart, 2012). Just as AQIM expanded its operations through loosely-patrolled borders, Boko Haram did the same and moved eastward into the Sahel.

As these two prominent groups have spread jihadism throughout the Sahel, more VEOs have materialized in unstable regions. Ansural Islam, for example, is one of the greatest security threats in Burkina Faso, established in 2016 by Ibrahim Malam Dicko in the Soum province bordering Mali (The International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), 2019). Dicko is rumored to have travelled to northern Mali where he trained alongside other prominent VEO leaders, further illustrating the influential nature of VEOs in the Sahel (Cummings, 2017). The growing presence of VEOs has led to higher rates of violence each year. In 2020 alone, there have been 867 violent events in Mali (battles, remote violence/explosions, and violence against civilians), 559 in Burkina Faso, 343 in Niger, and 103 in Chad, resulting in 1876 total fatalities in the region over the past year (Raleigh et al., 2010). According to the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED), this violence will likely intensify in the coming years (Skretteberg, n.d.).

Evaluating conflict mitigation strategies in the Sahel is necessary to stop the operations of VEOs in the region.

Working towards this goal is not only an issue of political stability, but one of human rights. VEO operations in the Sahel have led to a humanitarian crisis resulting in the displacement and forced migration of 3.1 million refugees in Mauritania, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, and Chad (UNHCR: The UN Refugee Agency, 2020).

Current efforts to combat VEOs in the Sahel generally involve three distinct dimensions: military operations,

60 governance reforms, and economic development initiatives. Military responses to violent extremism aim to limit the operational capacities of VEOs through intelligence and resource raids, while protecting civilians in affected regions. Governance reforms refer to policies implemented by African states to address key political grievances that allow extremists to advance their antiestablishment narratives. Economic development and international aid are initiatives that aim to financially empower citizens in Sahelian nations and reduce the economic attractiveness of VEO recruitment.

Military responses have been largely spearheaded by African militaries combined with regional, multilateral, European, and American forces. The major operations are currently the G5 Sahel Joint Force, United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali (MINUSMA), Operation Barkhane led by France, the European Union Training Mission in Mali (EUTM), and the European Union Capacity Building Mission in the Sahel civilian missions (EUCAP Mali & Niger) (Stoicescu, 2020). The United States played a more prominent role earlier in the decade with its 2013 military assistance to French Operation Serval, although it still has less than 1,000 troops stationed in Niger (Delaporte, 2020). Today, the U.S. is looking to reduce its military footprint in Africa as France takes the lead in the Western response to insecurity in the Sahel (Delaporte, 2020). Besides military operations, policies for governance reform and economic development have been proposed by African states and regional organizations like the African Union, though few have been implemented.

Government responses have varied, though most aim to address crime and local security dynamics in each country. The main policies implemented by Sahelian states include the creation of the anti-crime Pôles économiques and Office National de Répression du Trafic de Drogue et de Stupéfiants by Mali, local peace committees in Niger, and the “Emergency Program for the Sahel” in Burkina Faso.

In terms of international aid and economic development, each state currently afflicted by VEOs in the Sahel is considered one of the poorest countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, and each is highly dependent on foreign aid. Hence, state governments have instituted economic development policies to strengthen military capacity and enhance civilian security, develop national healthcare and education, reduce unemployment, and provide basic public services.

This thesis analyzes the strategies implemented by state governments in the Sahel, foreign powers, and regional/international organizations to mitigate the growing threat of VEOs in the region. Specifically, it assesses the effects of past military operations, policies of governance reform, and/or grants of humanitarian aid.

These strategies will be evaluated with reference to three case studies which consider the operations of AQIM,

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Boko Haram, and Ansarul Islam. The evaluation criteria will include each VEO’s level of recruitment, the level of violence in the region, and the amount of governancerelated grievances. The data used to determine these evaluation criteria comes from the U.S. Department of State, ACLED, Freedom House, the World Bank, the Global Fragility Index, the Afrobarometer, and the Happy Planet Index. The case study with the lowest levels of these criteria will be categorized as the optimal conflict mitigation against VEOs in the Sahel.

Most scholarly literature concludes that military force alone will not effectively stop VEOs in the long term. My analysis also posits that the military-heavy approach to the Sahel has not only proven ineffective, but has been counterproductive, exacerbating VEO activities. My analysis will highlight strategic gaps within counterterrorism activities in the Sahel and policy implications for the future. In order to do this, this thesis will discuss optimal strategies for conflict mitigation against Sahelian VEOs, including which actors should lead counterterrorism efforts in the Sahel, the specific programs that should be used to implement the chosen strategy, and where efforts should be specifically concentrated. On the basis of the case studies, I conclude that states in the Sahel must prioritize government capacity building and economic development to address

the political grievances of their citizens, which support the anti-establishment narrative of VEOs and facilitate recruitment in local communities.

The limitations of this analysis include the variability of VEO violent events due to the absence of claimed attacks, as well as the use of academic literature and media articles. The research could have also benefited from incountry interviews with local communities, but would have required further funding and organization outside of the realistic circumstances of this project. Future research could usefully consider the role of corruption and illicit economies in Sahelian states and their effects on VEO activities.

CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW VEO activity in the Sahel has drastically increased over the past decade. For the purposes of this analysis, the increase of violent attacks perpetrated by AQIM, Boko Haram, and Ansarul Islam in Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, and Niger increased from 15 events in 2010 to 615 events in 2020 (Raleigh et al., 2020). Just in the past year, the Sahel has seen the most rapid increase in violent extremist activity in Africa, with a near doubling of events involving militant Islamist groups every year since 2015 (Africa Center for Strategic Studies, 2020). VEOs expand

Personnel Deployed

African Troops Deployed/ Trained

15,900

8,250

1,070

2017present

5,000

5,000

130

Sahel

2014present

4,500

n/a

797

EU military training mission

Mali

2013present

580

12,000

34

EU civilian EU Capacity Building Mission in capacity building the Sahel (EUCAP Mali) mission

Mali

2015present

140

6,000

38

EU civilian EU Capacity Building Mission in capacity building the Sahel (EUCAP Niger) mission

Niger

2012present

200

13,000

36

Mission

Mandate

Location

United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stablization Mission in Mali (MINUSMA)

UN Ch. VII Peace Operations

Mali

G5 Sahel Joint Force

UN endorsed/AU endorsed

G5 Sahel countries

Operation Barkhane (France)

UN endorsed

EU Training Mission in Mali (EUTM)

Dates 2013present

TABLE 1. *Note: France has since established a significant military presence of about 5,100 soldiers in the region (Abboud, 2020).

Annual Budget ($ mil)

THE GW UNDERGRADUATE REVIEW • VOLUME 4 and thrive in the vacuum of state power that afflicts many states in the Sahel (Walther & Leuprecht, 2015, p. 2). With non-state armed conflict increasing rapidly since the 2010s, rebellions, religious extremism, and transnational organized crime have taken hold of the region (Walther & Leuprecht, 2015, p. 2). The tactics used in these insurgencies have specifically targeted civilians, resulting in mass killings, rape, enslavement, and mass forced displacement (Caparini, 2016, p. 23). The ongoing conflict in the Sahel has spread across multiple African countries due to porous borders and the mobility of VEOs (Caparini, 2016, p. 23). The issue has become an international geostrategic threat to the West and its global “War on Terror” and a priority for affected African nations (Ismail, 2013, p. 228). Major Western powers such as the United States and France have established capacity-building programs for African militaries in the Sahel, supplying training and logistics as well as operational materials (Ismail, 2013, p.

228). As of 2019, the entities in Table 1 have major military operations deployed in the Sahel region (Africa Center for Strategic Studies, 2019).

Additionally, the G5 Sahel countries (Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, and Niger) have made the troop commitments for their military operations (Africa Center for Strategic Studies, 2019), shown in Table 2.

What factors contribute to strengthening VEOs in the Sahel?

Following the collapse of the Gadhafi regime in Libya in 2011, as well as the fall of the Malian state and subsequent implementation of the Islamic caliphate in 2012, VEOs were able to gain greater power and influence in the Sahel

62 (Ismail, 2013, p. 228). This analysis will define the growing influence of VEOs by higher levels of recruitment, higher levels of violence, and higher levels of political grievances within a given country. Existing literature suggests various reasons for why violent extremism festers in the Sahel, including inter-group tensions over socioeconomic privileges, perceived or actual marginalization in politics, and provisions of social services by radical groups (Ismail, 2013, p. 228). Others suggest that military campaigns are to blame; in response to the French Operation Serval in 2013, Sahelian VEOs adapted so that they were better able to exploit rural insurrections and anti-French sentiment (Cherbib, 2018, p. 281). Their main tactic was presenting themselves as protectors of the local populations from “a foreign military force supported by corrupt Sahel governments (Cherbib, 2018, p. 281).”

What are the limits of military operations against VEOs? Scholars suggest that military operations and coercive force alone will not produce long lasting effects for countering violent extremism (CVE) in the region (Ismail, 2013, p. 228). While military operations may “reduce the risks to military personnel on the ground and remove VEO leaders from the battlefield, they simultaneously reinforce grievance narratives of such organizations and the ‘‘collateral damage’’ angers local populations and host governments alike (Aldrich, 2014, p. 524).” Research concludes that military interventions normalize the use of force to manage and suppress instability, rather than addressing key drivers of a conflict (Charbonneau, 2019, p. 310). When considering French military operations in the Sahel, one study argued that French counterterrorism

Commitment to G5 Sahel Joint Force

Total Armed Forces

Deployed to UN or Other Peace Operations

Mali

1,100 soldiers; 200 gendarmes

15,570

50 to UN missions

Burkina Faso

550 soliders; 100 gendarmes

9,100

2,100 to UN missions

Niger

1,100 soldiers; 200 gendarmes

14,200

975 to UN missions; 1,000 to the MNJTF

Chad

550 soldiers; 100 gendarmes

30,300

1,500 to UN missions; 2,000 to the MNJTF

Mauritania

550 soldiers; 100 gendarmes

17,000

1,050 to UN missions

Country

TABLE 2. *Note: The Multinational Joint Task Force (MNJTF) is the alliance of Lake

Chad Basin countries combatting Boko Haram and the Islamic State of West Africa in the Nigeria, Niger, Chad, and Cameroon border areas.

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initiatives have largely failed in their stabilization goals, highlighting the futility of highly militarized security policy (Powell, 2017, p. 57). Other shortcomings of military operations include increased civilian casualties due to collateral damage, difficulty of identifying VEO targets, major financial costs, and dealing with the symptoms of a conflict rather than its causes. By maintaining a military presence in the Sahel, France and other foreign powers discourage African governments from addressing the deeper political causes of the conflict, thus prolonging violent extremist operations (Powell, 2017, p. 57). For these reasons, Sahelian VEOs cannot be defeated by military offenses alone.

How important are governance reforms as a remedy to VEOs? Other than exasperations by the military, research has found that intra-state conflict is influenced by the quality of state governance (Brinkerhoff, 2011, p. 132).

Some key issues between state and society include authoritarian rule, exclusion and oppression of minority groups, unequal access to jobs, and weak capacity to address political contestations (Brinkerhoff, 2011, p. 132).

Several stabilization and reconstruction missions have implemented an element of governance reform into their initiatives, attempting to strengthen three main responsibilities of the state: safety and security, provision of public services, and legitimate exercise of authority (Brinkerhoff, 2011, p. 132).

An issue of concern is that most conflict-affected countries have adopted a standardized template of democratization to create good governance (Brinkerhoff, 2011, p. 132). More often than not, this model is associated with the liberal peace agenda, which aims to promote liberal democratic governing systems and marketoriented economic growth (Paris, 2010, p. 347). Some popular areas of focus include fair elections, legislative development, governmental infrastructure, civil-society participation, eliminating corruption, and reforming the central institutions of the state (Brinkerhoff, 2011, p. 132).

Unfortunately, significant effects on government policy can be limited. In terms of the liberal peace model, its limitations include inadequate attention to domestic institutional conditions for successful democratization, insufficient local ownership over the strategic direction of such operations, and poor strategic coordination among the various international actors involved in these missions (Paris, 2010, p. 347). Governance reform does not need to be spearheaded by multilateral organizations or foreign powers, and should be implemented by African governments themselves; these governments can focus primarily on listening to and addressing citizen grievances, empowering local populations to play a role in governance, and ensuring equal representation of communities at both the local and national level. This

way, VEOs will lose legitimacy and the state will be empowered to address security threats with the support of its citizens.

Is economic development and humanitarian aid the answer to VEOs? Research also suggests that economic empowerment of fragile communities can reduce the spread of VEOs. Although poverty does not have a direct causal relationship with violent extremism, poorer countries are the most affected by terrorism (Kessels & Nemr, 2016, p. 12). In 2015, the UN Security Council described the security-development nexus as “closely interlinked and mutually reinforcing and key to attaining sustainable peace (Kessels & Nemr, 2016, p. 12).” Some research has established a link between high rates of unemployment and poverty in Nigeria and the sustained levels of insecurity with Boko Haram (Ayegba, 2015, p. 94). Therefore, addressing economic disparity through job provision, vocational training, information diffusion techniques, and employment growth “may embed local residents into local networks and institutions and inoculate them against incentives from insurgent groups (Aldrich, 2014, p. 524).” Additionally, stronger civic engagement through employment creates ties to legitimate local governments and encourages civilians to support efforts to keep out VEOs (Aldrich, 2014, p. 524).

Other research has found that large-scale investments in Africa create conditions for increased conflict, which further undermines business, development, and security (Ganson & Wennmann, 2015, p. 14). When violence escalates, businesses are able to exploit the country’s weak rule of law and divisive politics for economic gain (Ganson & Wennmann, 2015, p. 14). Local investments and management of conflict are more effective in reducing violence (Ganson & Wennmann, 2015, p. 14). In terms of large multilateral agencies that provide foreign aid to fragile states, research has found that there is a significant lack of coordinated action between the groups, leading to ineffective attempts to achieve higher levels of state stability (Faust et al., 2013, p. 407). If coordinated, “development assistance can play an important role in strengthening community resilience against violent extremism and reducing many of its enabling factors, including relative deprivation and marginalization (Kessels & Nemr, 2016, p. 12).”

Which actors should lead the response?

Some argue that the strategic response to VEOs in the Sahel should be an African-led effort, supported by entities like France, the EU, and the UN in strategic information operations, state capacity building, and development (Traore, 2018, p. 508). Within this mindset emerges the idea of “African solutions to African

THE GW UNDERGRADUATE REVIEW • VOLUME 4 problems (Duursma, 2017, p. 590).” Previously, academic literature had largely suggested that interventions by African third parties were largely ineffective in resolving conflicts (Duursma, 2017, p. 590). Recent studies have shown, however, that compared to non-African third party interventions, African third parties are more likely to settle peace agreements, which are also more likely to be durable (Duursma, 2017, p. 590). Mixed mediation efforts, in which there is no coordination between African and non-African third parties, but in which African third parties take the lead, are found to be even more effective (Duursma, 2017, p. 590). This is because African third parties tend to lack the material resources needed to conduct peace mediations alone (Duursma, 2017, p. 590).

The essential feature of African third-party interventions, however, is a high degree of legitimacy stemming from an African solutions norm (Duursma, 2017, p. 590).

African peace operations, specifically through the African Union (AU), have seen a significant increase in collaboration with the United Nations (UN) in recent years; currently, the AU contributes more than 50% of all UN peacekeepers (De Coning, 2017, p. 145). Research suggests that the Eurocentric conflict management strategies employed by African peacemakers must be reconsidered to better adapt to the contexts of internal conflicts in Africa, as “the exclusive reliance on modern laws focusing on punishment, establishing guilt and retributive justice has tended to destabilize rather than restore social relations (Babatunde, 2019, p. 165).” When combined with traditional African approaches to conflict management, such as consultation with elders to appeal to youths and indigenous reconciliatory rituals, Western methods can be revived, adapted, and strengthened to create enduring peace, security, and development in Africa (Babatunde, 2019, p. 165).

CHAPTER 2: AQIM In order to evaluate which proposed conflict mitigation strategy is the most effective in countering Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), this chapter considers how past military operations, government policies, and humanitarian aid have affected the group’s recruitment rates, level of violence, and level of grievances. After providing a short background on AQIM, I outline past strategies that have been used to counter the organization since 2007. Finally, these strategies are analyzed to see whether they had any effect on the VEO’s activities.

Background AQIM’s origins lie in the Armed Islamic Group (GIA), Algerian rebels who violently opposed secular state rule during the 1990s (Laub & Masters, 2014). Brutal tactics employed by select rebels caused some of the leadership to break away and form the Salafist Group for Call and Combat (GSPC) in 2002 (Laub & Masters, 2014). After

64 joining with Al-Qaeda in 2006, GSPC changed its name to AQIM, a regional VEO that has since adopted an antiWest stance and rhetoric (U.S. Department of State: Bureau of Counterterrorism, 2020). Combining with AlQaeda may have contributed to AQIM’s legitimacy and facilitated recruitment (Laub & Masters, 2014). Led by Abdelmalek Droukdel, AQIM’s platform calls to overthrow apostate African regimes and replace them with an Islamic caliphate (U.S. Department of State: Bureau of Counterterrorism, 2020).

2007 marked a high point for AQIM’s violent attacks in Algeria, before it expanded into neighboring countries, most notably, Mali (Laub & Masters, 2014). Regionally, the group’s platform is to expunge Western influence from North Africa and the Sahel; topple secular governments in countries like Mauritania, Mali, and Niger; and institute Sharia law and fundamentalist principles of governance (Laub & Masters, 2014). AQIM identifies its main opponents as the current governments of African states, as well as western European powers in close proximity to the region, particularly France (Laub & Masters, 2014).

Primarily using tactics such as raids, assassinations, and suicide bombings of military, government, and civilian targets, AQIM has collaborated with other regional VEOs such as Boko Haram, sharing both arms and funds (Laub & Masters, 2014). To raise funds, AQIM conducts kidnappings for ransom and trafficking of arms, vehicles, cigarettes, persons, and narcotics, making it Al-Qaeda’s wealthiest affiliate group (Laub & Masters, 2014). In 2014, the UN estimated that AQIM had roughly a $15 million yearly budget and has generated over $100 million over the past decade; the group’s expenditures are “opaque, but appear to go mostly towards paying its fighters, funding and developing a network of loyal tribes and other terrorist groups, and spreading its influence by providing governance (Fanusie & Entz, 2017).”

In 2012, AQIM helped the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA) topple the government of Mali, taking control of the country’s northern region (Laub & Masters, 2014). Instead of collaborating with the Taureg, AQIM largely dominated the north and implemented harsh Sharia law. Despite being forced from power by France’s 2013 Operation Serval, AQIM has continued activities there and in neighboring regions, primarily in Burkina Faso and Niger. For example, in 2019, AQIM claimed responsibility for an attack on a UN camp in northern Mali, killing 10 peacekeepers and wounding 25 others (U.S. Department of State: Bureau of Counterterrorism, 2020). In 2017, AQIM joined with partner VEOs Ansar Dine and Macina Liberation Front (MLF) to form a unified organization, Jamaat Nusrat alIslam wal Musilmeen (JNIM), though AQIM maintains its authority within the larger group (Stanford University, 2018).

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Military Operations against AQIM (2007-Present) In addition to national military campaigns against AQIM spearheaded by individual Sahelian states, there have also been wider international efforts. These involve bilateral military campaigns, such as by France and the United States, regional initiatives, such as by the G5 Sahel, the African Union, and the European Union, and a multilateral mission led by the United Nations.

France – In early 2013, at the request of the Malian government, France launched Operation Serval to provide immediate military assistance against the AQIM threat, retaking captured cities such as Gao, Timbuktu, and Kidal while pushing militants further into the north (Laub & Masters, 2014). In 2014, France transformed Operation Serval into Operation Barkhane in order to stabilize VEO security threats across the greater Sahel region, collaborating with the G5 Sahel. Operation Barkhane is currently manned with 5,100 French soldiers stationed in Mali, Niger, and Chad, and has trained 13,000 G5 Sahel soldiers in shooting practice, rescue and combat coordination tactics, and counter-improvised explosive devices (République Française: Ministère des Armées, 2020). On June 5, 2020, the French government announced that it had killed Abdelmalek Droukdel, the emir or leader of AQIM, as well as many of his inner circle (Campbell, 2020).

United States – After the creation of Africa Command (AFRICOM) in 2007, the U.S. conducted several military operations in the Sahel, particularly in Mauritania, Chad, Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger (Adams, 2020). In the Sahel, the U.S. military does not have direct action authority to conduct unilateral counterterrorism operations, but instead provides security assistance to partner nations as they work to counter VEOs in the region; this includes support to the G5 Sahel Joint Force (U.S. Department of Defense, 2019). These operations have included training and military exercises, supplying arms to local militaries, flight operations and logistical support, drone flights for both attack and intelligence missions, bombing, limited ground combat missions, and support to French operations in the Sahel (U.S. Department of Defense, 2019). Though the U.S. is looking to reduce its military footprint in Africa as a whole, AFRICOM currently stations 7,200 personnel on the continent (U.S. Department of Defense, 2020).

The G5 Sahel and the African Union – In response to the Taureg rebellion, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) created the ECOWAS mission in Mali (MICEMA) in 2012 to support Malian armed forces, though the mission never advanced past planning stages (Theroux-Benoni, 2013). Following this, the African Union and ECOWAS endorsed the African-led International Support Mission to Mali (AFISMA), a regional military operation which was supported by the United Nations and eventually transitioned into the MINUSMA mission

in 2013 (Oluwadare, 2014, p. 15). Later in 2017, the G5 Sahel Joint Force—a military partnership between Burkina Faso, Mali, Mauritania, Chad, and Niger—was authorized by the African Union Peace and Security Council to coordinate counterterrorism operations between the five countries (Cooke et al., 2017). In the same year, the United Nations endorsed the Joint Force, and the European Union committed to providing 50 million euros in support (United Nations: Meetings Coverage and Press Releases, 2017). The G5 Sahel has also received military support from France’s Operation Barkhane, as well as $111 million in bilateral support from the United States, though the U.S. has expressed that UN assessed contributions are not a viable source of funding for the Joint Force and that “it is unlikely to continue indefinitely at its current level (U.S. Department of State: United States Mission to the United Nations, 2020).” Currently, the G5 Sahel has about 5,000 troops deployed with a budget of $130 million; Mali and Niger commit the most soldiers to the Joint Force (1,100 each), followed by Burkina Faso, Chad, and Mauritania (550 each) (Africa Center for Strategic Studies, 2019).

The European Union – The EU Training Mission in Mali was authorized in 2013 to train, educate, and advise the Malian military to contribute to the restoration of their military capacity (European Union: External Action, 2020). The mission’s goal is to address security threats within their borders and work with the G5 Sahel to reduce regional terrorism (European Union: External Action, 2020). The EU has a budget of approximately 167 million euros allotted for Sahelian support, under which both the EU Capacity Building Missions in the Sahel, EUCAP Niger (est. 2012) and EUCAP Mali (est. 2015) contribute to combating crime and instability in both countries (European Union: External Action, 2020). Between the three missions, 920 EU troops are deployed and 31,000 African soldiers have been trained (Africa Center for Strategic Studies, 2019).

United Nations – In April 2013, the United Nations authorized the military peacekeeping mission in Mali, otherwise known as MINUSMA (Cooke et al., 2017). The mission aims to “facilitate the implementation by Malian actors of a comprehensive politically-led strategy to protect civilians, reduce intercommunal violence and reestablish State authority, State presence and basic social services in Central Mali.” (United Nations: MINUSMA, 2020). It also “urges the Malian authorities to: disarm without delay all militias; encourage the intensification of reconciliation initiatives with a view to prevent violence and promote peaceful co-existence amongst the communities.” (United Nations: MINUSMA, 2020).

Though it was authorized to deploy 12,640 military personnel for the mission, MINUSMA was operating at half-staff with only 6,300 personnel until 2014 (Cooke et al., 2017). Currently, MINUSMA has 15,900 deployed military personnel, trained 8,250 African soldiers, and has a budget of $1,070 million (Africa Center for Strategic

THE GW UNDERGRADUATE REVIEW • VOLUME 4 Studies, 2019).

Malian policy to delegitimize AQIM Even before the Taureg rebellion in 2012, Mali’s previous president, Amadou Toumani Touré, recognized the severity of AQIM’s activities. In 2010, he stated that “certain local elected officials [were] well acquainted with drug traffickers, bandits, and even terrorists.”

(Goïta, 2011, p. 2). In response to the spread of AQIM into Mali from Algeria, the Malian government adopted a law in 2008 that “criminalises acts which can lead to the perpetration of terrorist offenses such as public provocation, incitement to commit terrorist acts and terrorist recruitment.” (Sidibé, 2012, p. 53). It also created a program to fight organized crime, establishing anticrime structures such as the Pôles économiques and the Office National de Répression du Trafic de Drogue et de Stupéfiants (Sidibé, 2012, p. 53).

Despite the president’s promises to address the issue, officials tended to remain silent when faced with AQIMsetbacks (Goïta, 2011, p. 2). Moreover, the government released AQIM prisoners in response to demands and threats to kill hostages (Goïta, 2011, p. 2). On August 18, 2020, President Touré was ousted by a military coup, and the transitional government has expressed interest in holding dialogues with AQIM ever since (Le Point Afrique, 2020). However, it is still unclear if the new Malian government will take a more offensive position against AQIM in the future or build upon the past government’s legislative approach to counterterrorism.

International aid to counter AQIM Mali is one of the poorest countries in sub-Saharan Africa, ranking 184 out of 189 countries on the 2019 Human Development Index (HDI), and VEO operations have only worsened the Malian economy. The 2012 Taureg rebellion brought Mali’s economy to a halt, slowing industrial activity, construction, and the public work sector (European Parliament Directorate-General for External Policies, 2014). Due to the deterioration of the security situation, the tourism industry also took a major hit (European Parliament Directorate-General for External Policies, 2014). In response, the Malian government’s development policy framework aimed to support “local communities to meet their most basic needs and access basic social services” by creating “new infrastructure (health centres, schools, fully equipped boreholes, administrative offices, and tied accommodations) for the benefit of local communities.” (Sidibé, 2012, p. 57). Despite government efforts to pay wages, pensions, and security force expenses and to protect education and health, only about half the public expenditure management reform and development initiatives were implemented (European Parliament Directorate-General for External

66 Policies, 2014).

With such difficult economic conditions, Mali is extremely dependent on international aid. It has been suggested that “aid has become something of a selfperpetuating system in Mali, generating employment while the dollars are turned on, but failing to create the conditions for sustainable economic growth, poverty reduction or institutional development.” (The New Humanitarian, 2013). Nonetheless, total humanitarian aid received in Mali has increased from about $1.021 billion in 2007 to $1.492 billion in 2018 (The World Bank, 2018).

Mali outlined its development expenses in its World Bank-backed Growth and Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper, which spanned between 2012-2017; the top three expenses listed were strengthening Mali’s military capacity (170 million euros), improving national education (112 million euros), and developing quality healthcare for all (112 million euros) (International Monetary Fund (IMF), 2013).

Evaluation Criteria for Responses to AQIM Level of recruitment – AQIM recruitment levels have shifted significantly over the past decade. AQIM’s members are ethnically and socially diverse, composed of fighters from all over the Sahel (Boeke, 2016, p. 923).

Several combatants are extremely young, some even prepubescent; during AQIM’s control over northern Mali in 2012, hundreds of child soldiers were recruited into the organization, which was easily facilitated as AQIM was the governing authority at the time (Boeke, 2016, p. 923).

Though France stalled AQIM recruitment temporarily through Operation Serval, AQIM began successfully recruiting again from 2015 onward (Boeke, 2016, p. 923).

By 2016, “Malians had reportedly replaced Algerians as the most prominent nationality within the group,” illustrating the growing influence of the VEO in Mali over time (Counter Extremism Project, 2019). As of 2018, there were about 1,000 fighters within the VEO (U.S. Department of State: Bureau of Counterterrorism, 2018).

A key recruiting tool that AQIM utilizes is financial compensation as an incentive; information that helps target MINUSMA can earn a local Malian $750. In a country where the minimum wage is less than $50/month, AQIM is able to recruit several combatants searching for economic stability (Boeke, 2016, p. 923).

Level of violence – ACLED data on violent attacks which AQIM perpetrated between January 1, 2007 and December 14, 2020, reveals that the level of violence has significantly increased. The following data uses battles, explosions/ remote violence, and violence against civilians as event types, and is limited to AQIM/JNIM affiliated events in Mali, Mauritania, Burkina Faso, and Niger (Raleigh et al., 2010).

Level of governance-related grievances – According to various governance indices including Freedom

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FIGURE 2. AQIM Level of Violence (2007-2020) House, the World Bank, the Global Fragility Index, and the Afrobarometer, Mali suffers from a low capacity for good governance, which indicates higher levels of public grievances within the country.

Freedom House: Mali was rated “partly free” in 2020 and was given a score of 41/100 on the freedom scale (0 being not at all free, and 100 being completely free) (Freedom House, 2020). The freedom scale considers factors such as the electoral process, political pluralism and participation, the functioning of government, freedom

of expression and belief, associational and organizational rights, rule of law, and personal autonomy and individual rights (Freedom House, 2020). This rating has worsened over the past few years, as the country scored 45/100 in 2017, 44/100 in 2018, and 44/100 in 2019 (Freedom House, 2020).

See Figure 3: World Bank: The “Government Effectiveness” and “Control of Corruption” indicators have both worsened over time.

See Figure 4: Global Fragility Index: The “Group

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FIGURE 3. World Bank Indicators for Mali (2007-2020)

*Note: Scale is from -2.5 to 2.5 (-2.5 being the least effective and 2.5 being the most effective) (The World Bank, 2020).

FIGURE 4. Global Fragility Index Indicators for Mali (2006-2020) Grievances”, “State legitimacy”, and “Public Services” indicators have worsened over time (Global Fragility Index: The Fund for Peace, 2020).

Afrobarometer: Public dissatisfaction with Malian governance has also worsened during this period.

According to a 2009 Afrobarometer survey, 62% of the population believed that the economic situation in Mali was “mostly bad” (Afrobarometer, 2009). In 2012, following the Taureg rebellion, 75% of the population believed that the country was “headed in the wrong direction” (Coulibaly & Bratton, 2013). According to a 2020 Afrobarometer survey, 14% of the population believes that the country is “headed in a good direction,” while an overwhelming 86% believes that the country is “headed in

a bad direction” (Afrobarometer, 2020). Additionally, 81% of the population believes that the economic situation in Mali is “mostly bad” (Afrobarometer, 2020). From these surveys, it is evident that the population’s perception of both Mali’s governance and economy has significantly deteriorated.

Conclusion Based on these evaluation criteria, military operations have proven the most effective in countering AQIM. However, they were only effective in the short-term.

Operation Serval was successful in forcing AQIM out of its occupied territory in Mali, resulting in lower levels of

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recruitment in 2013, and lower levels of violence in 2014 and 2015. Since 2016, AQIM attacks have exponentially increased and recruitment levels are at an all-time high.

Therefore, military operations alone cannot address the AQIM problem in Mali and have in fact exacerbated the VEO’s activities. Considering that economic disparity is a major source of Malian grievances, as well as an incentive to join AQIM, economic development in Mali must also be emphasized as a counterterrorism strategy. To do this, stronger leadership on behalf of the Malian government is needed to reduce the influence of AQIM; international aid could be restructured to address public grievances relating to unemployment, infrastructure, corruption, and lack of public services. Additionally, the willingness of the new government to engage in dialogue with AQIM indicates an opportunity for an effective peace process to be discussed. On the other hand, government engagement with AQIM could further legitimize the group as a powerful entity in the region.

CHAPTER 3: BOKO HARAM In order to evaluate which proposed conflict mitigation strategy is the most effective in countering Boko Haram, this chapter considers how past military operations, government policies, and humanitarian aid have affected the group’s recruitment rates, level of violence, and level of grievances. After providing a short background on Boko Haram, I outline past strategies that have been used to counter the organization since 2007. Finally, these strategies are analyzed to see whether they have had any effect on the VEO’s activities.

Background Boko Haram was founded in 2002 by Muhammed Yusuf in northeastern Nigeria (Britannica, 2020). The Islamic sectarian group was created to combat corruption and injustice in Nigeria, by instituting Sharia law and limiting Western influence. The group blames Westernization for Nigerian corruption, and the name Boko Haram itself means “Westernization is sacrilege,” showcasing the group’s anti-western ideology (Britannica, 2020). Boko Haram became significantly more violent in 2009 following a clash with Nigerian police, resulting in the extrajudicial killings of more than 700 Boko Haram members, plus the deaths of Yusuf and other group leaders (Britannica, 2020). Angered by the excessive force of the Nigerian government, Yusuf’s successor Abubakar Shekau vowed to avenge the deaths of their fallen soldiers(Britannica, 2020). From 2010 onward, Boko Haram perpetrated numerous attacks against Nigerian state forces and police, in addition to violence against civilians. In 2015, the group pledged allegiance to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), changing their name to the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP), also known as ISWA (Britannica, 2020). The group underwent a fissure in

2016, when Yusuf’s son Abu Musab al-Barwani created a new faction of the group due to his disagreement with Shekau’s indiscriminate killings of civilians (Britannica, 2020). Al-Barwani’s group is referred to as ISWA, while Shekau’s group is still called Boko Haram, though this is also used to refer to both groups (Britannica, 2020).

Although some progress was made by the Nigerian and regional joint forces in reducing the capabilities of Boko Haram, the group has had particularly high levels of violence since 2018 (Britannica, 2020).

Despite originating in Nigeria, Boko Haram’s activities spread to neighboring countries, among them Cameroon, Niger, and Chad. For the purposes of this analysis, the focus will be on the affected Sahelian countries, Niger and Chad. Before 2014, Niger closely monitored the Boko Haram insurgency but believed it was mostly a Nigerian problem (International Crisis Group, 2017). This changed when the group began to expand into Nigerien territory and recruit young Nigerien citizens to their cause. Niger joined the efforts of the Multinational Joint Task Force (MNJTF), a security collaboration between Nigeria, Chad, and Cameroon, and now Benin, to address the Boko Haram threat (International Crisis Group, 2017). Chad, with one of the strongest armies in the region, contributed significant military forces to Nigeria in their fight against Boko Haram, leading to an increase in attacks in their own country (Grove, 2020). Following the influx of Boko Haram violence in 2015-2016, the security situation in Chad improved with the military’s sustained presence and containment strategy that deterred encroachments into Chadian communities (Eizenga, 2020). Despite an initial lull in Boko Haram activity, the number of confrontations between Boko Haram insurgents and the Chadian military has tripled from 7 in 2018 to 21 times in 2019 (Eizenga, 2020).

Military Operations against Boko Haram (2007-Present) In addition to the national military campaigns conducted by Niger and Chad to address the Boko Haram issue, regional, bilateral, and multilateral initiatives serve to counter the group in the region. These efforts are composed of regional initiatives executed by the MNJTF, the G5 Sahel and the African Union, bilateral operations run by France and the United States, and a limited response from the United Nations.

Multinational Joint Task Force (MNJTF) – The MNJTF was initially formed in 1998 between Nigeria, Chad, and Niger to patrol the Lake Chad Basin and address common cross-border security problems (Albert, 2017, p. 25). Repurposed in April 2012, the current MNJTF has been given a counterterrorism mandate to effectively fight against Boko Haramby pooling security resources between Benin, Cameroon, Chad, Niger, and Nigeria (International Crisis Group, 2017). Of the 8,700 troops

THE GW UNDERGRADUATE REVIEW • VOLUME 4 allotted for the mission, Nigeria pledged to provide the most troops (3,250), followed by Chad (3,000) (Albert, 2017, p. 25). The force patrols the common borders of Nigeria, Niger, and Chad, and allows each nation to operate in pursuit of terrorists across state lines (Albert, 2017, p. 25).

The MNJTF was authorized by the African Union in 2015, and the mission has since improved tactical coordination among participating nations, reversed militant gains, freed civilians captured by Boko Haram, and facilitated the delivery of humanitarian aid (International Crisis Group, 2020).

The G5 Sahel and the African Union – In comparison to the VEO crisis in Mali, the African Union has been limited in its response to the Boko Haram threat. This is largely because the Boko Haram problem has only recently been deemed a regional issue; at the initial stages of the insurgency, Nigeria was hesitant to invite outside intervention, with the reasoning that it was a domestic affair (Cooke et al., 2017). Hence, the AU response has been reactive instead of proactive, though it has “implemented a fairly progressive counter-terrorism framework, pushing states to coordinate their responses to close loopholes and shut down potential safe havens.” (Abugbilla, 2017, p. 235). The G5 Sahel also engages in counterterrorism operations against Boko Haram; to reiterate, the Joint Force has about 5,000 troops deployed with a budget of $130 million, Niger committing 1,100 soldiers to the force and Chad committing 550 (Africa Center for Strategic Studies, 2019). The Peace and Security Council of the AU is also developing an African Arrest Warrant for individuals, including Boko Haram members, who are charged with terrorist acts (Abugbilla, 2017, p. 235). The continental body has a multinational task-force of 7,500 troops to combat Boko Haram militants, but would require UN Security Council approval to take action (Abugbilla, 2017, p. 235). Some argue, however, that the African Union lacks the political will, fighting capacity, and financial resources to effectively counter Boko Haram (Abugbilla, 2017, p. 235).

France – Though Operation Barkhane is primarily focused on countering AQIM in Mali, France explicitly included the fight against Boko Haram in its mandate (Griffin, 2016, p. 898). However, unlike its counter-AQIM operations in northern Niger, France has not taken part in direct combat with Boko Haram (Griffin, 2016, p. 898).

France’s inaction on the ground is likely due to three factors. First, the French Army is likely stretched very thin with Operation Barkhane, as there are only 5,100 soldiers to cover such a vast region in the Sahel (Griffin, 2016, p. 898). Second, “there appears to be a hierarchy of threats, as France is concentrated much more on dealing directly with the problems of AQIM and affiliated groups in Mali and Niger; Boko Haram appears to be a secondary priority.” (Griffin, 2016, p. 898). Third, France does not have close bilateral relations with Nigeria, so “there is no reason to believe that Nigeria would tolerate the

70 presence of French troops on its soil”, despite providing ‘intelligence and military support’ to the Nigerian military forces (Griffin, 2016, p. 898).

United States – After the creation of Africa Command (AFRICOM) in 2007, the American military presence has expanded from 2,000 to approximately 7,200 troops in 2018 (Lichtenbaum, 2019). Though the US military presence in Niger has mainly been for intelligence and reconnaissance support, American soldiers have engaged in skirmishes with Boko Haram fighters (Lichtenbaum, 2019). In Chad, the US has participated in military exercises with the Chadian military and conducted drone surveillance missions (Lichtenbaum, 2019). Despite increasing its military presence in Niger and Chad over the past decade, the 2018 National Security Strategy planned to decrease the number of U.S. troops conducting African counterterrorism operations by ten percent over three years (Lichtenbaum, 2019). The US government has alluded to a potential complete pullout of U.S. forces from the continent (Rosand & Sommers, 2020).

United Nations – To date, the UN has not deployed a peacekeeping mission to Nigeria, Niger, Cameroon, or Chad to address the Boko Haram insurgency (United Nations Regional Office for Central Africa, n.d.). Instead, the UN Regional Office for Central Africa initiated an assessment mission in these regions to track and find sustainable solutions to the terrorist threat (United Nations Regional Office for Central Africa, n.d.).

Regional policies to delegitimize Boko Haram Niger and Chad have had vastly different policy responses to counter Boko Haram. Though Chad tracked the Boko Haram issue from a distance in the early stages, the country’s response to date has been lacking politically and is overly reliant on military might. In 2015, the Chadian government held a forum to collaborate with traditional and religious leaders to address insecurity in local communities (International Crisis Group, 2017). Traditional chiefs became de facto state informers regarding Boko Haram activities and assisted with the resettlement of women and children refugees (International Crisis Group, 2017). In terms of the judicial system, there is an “absence of clear policy on the conditions for rehabilitation, reintegration or trial of former Boko Haram members and helpers,” which hinders the potential for surrenders (International Crisis Group, 2017). However, the government could build a reintegration strategy for former combatants based on “several initiatives run by young residents in western Chad to facilitate defections, heal trauma, and help reintegration of former fighters.” (Bukarti, 2020).

Niger, on the other hand, has attempted to use government policy as a counterterrorism tool against Boko Haram. With the support of local communities, “The High Authority for Peace Consolidation (HACP) in

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FIGURE 5. Boko Haram Approximate Recruitment Levels (2007-2020)

Niger has developed peace committees (comité de paix) – presided over by mayors and composed of community members, business people and religious leaders. These committees serve as an important arena for military coordination with civilian populations and also play an early warning role.” (Mahmood & Ani, 2018). Through this policy, relationships between local communities, security actors, and government have been strengthened, “providing a forum to discuss and disseminate pertinent information with regards to the Boko Haram threat, and generate local buy-in.” (Mahmood & Ani, 2018).

International aid to counter Boko Haram Like Mali, Niger and Chad are two of the poorest countries in sub-Saharan Africa, respectively ranking 189 of 189 countries and 187 of 189 countries on the 2019 United Nations Human Development Index (HDI). In Niger, the Boko Haram insurgency has devastated the country’s economy, particularly in the northern regions.

In response, President Mahamadou Issoufou created the four-year “Economic and Social Development Plan (ESDP)” in 2017, which prioritizes the consolidation of democratic institutions, safety of people and assets, national access to water, food and nutritional security, communication and energy infrastructures, development of national education and health sectors, and promotion of youth employment (Republic of Niger, 2017). Overall, this plan aims to develop Nigerien economic growth and sustainable development. In Chad, the government’s “Vision for 2030”, published in 2017, details policies that will guarantee citizens fair access to public services and “[promote] sustainable economic growth.” (Republic of Chad, 2017). Though less explicit in its objectives, the Chadian government has expressed interest in promoting

economic development to combat VEO activities.

Both Niger and Chad rely heavily on international aid.

As of 2016, Niger received $951 million in humanitarian aid, while Chad received $625 million (OECD, 2018).

Niger mostly expends foreign aid within agricultural development and national infrastructure as the economy relies heavily on agricultural production (Hannam, 2018).

Alternatively, Chad “relies on foreign assistance and foreign capital for most of its public and private sector investment.” (Theodora.com, 2020). As the lowest ranking country of the UNDP HDI, Niger relies on humanitarian aid to support expenses on basic goods and services and the national debt. (Cabri, 2020).

Evaluation Criteria Level of recruitment – Boko Haram’s members are ethnically and socially diverse, composed of fighters from Nigeria and neighboring countries like Niger and Chad (Boeke, 2016, p. 923). To recruit members, Boko Haram “lures youths with free Islamic education, informal jobs, interest-free loans, employment schemes, wheelbarrow gifts, sewing machines, motorbikes (achaba), free wives, and a monthly salary.” (Omenma et al., 2020, p. 12). The VEO also uses tactics such as kidnapping and other types of forceful coercion to recruit fighters (Omenma et al., 2020, p. 12). It is uncertain how much Boko Haram recruitment levels have shifted over the past decade, as its exact size is difficult to track. The only change in recruitment levels reported by the US Department of State was when the estimated size of Boko Haram shifted from between “hundreds to a few thousand” in 2013 to “several thousand” in 2014 onward (U.S. Department of State: Bureau of Counterterrorism, 2020). Other organizations such as Amnesty International estimate the

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size of Boko Haram to be up to 15,000 fighters (Amnesty International, 2015). ISWA, Boko Haram’s offshoot group, has been estimated to have 3,500 fighters itself (Warner & Hume, 2018, p. 26). Based on this collective data, it is reasonable to estimate that Boko Haram was composed of “several thousand” fighters in 2019 (U.S. Department of State: Bureau of Counterterrorism, 2020).

Level of violence – ACLED data on violent attacks which Boko Haram perpetrated between January 1, 2007 and December 14, 2020, reveals that the level of violence has significantly increased. The following data uses battles, explosions/remote violence, and violence against civilians as event types, and is limited to Boko Haram/ ISWA affiliated events in Niger and Chad (Raleigh et al., 2010).

Level of governance-related grievances – According to various governance indices including Freedom House, the World Bank, the Global Fragility Index, and the Afrobarometer, Niger and Chad both suffer from a low capacity for good governance, which indicates higher levels of public grievances within the countries.

Freedom House: Niger was rated “partly free” in 2020 and was given a score of 48/100 on the freedom scale (0 being not at all free, and 100 being completely free) (Freedom House, 2020). Chad, on the other hand, was rated “not free” in 2020, and was given a score of 17/100 (Freedom House, 2020). To reiterate, the freedom scale considers factors such as the electoral process, political pluralism and participation, the functioning of government, freedom of expression and belief, associational and organizational rights, rule of law, and

personal autonomy and individual rights (Freedom House, 2020). These ratings have worsened for both countries over the past few years; Niger scored 49/100 in 2017-19, and Chad scored 18/100 in 2017-18 and 17/100 in 2019 (Freedom House, 2020).

See Figure 7: World Bank: The “Government Effectiveness” indicator has worsened over time for both countries. The “Control of Corruption” has somewhat improved in Niger since 2007, but has roughly stayed the same in Chad.

See Figure 8: Global Fragility Index: In Niger, the “Group Grievances” and “State legitimacy” indicators have generally improved over time, while the “Public Services” indicator has worsened (Global Fragility Index: The Fund for Peace, 2020). In Chad, the “Group Grievances” indicator has steadily improved over time, while the “State legitimacy” indicator improved over time but drastically worsened in 2018-2019, and the “Public Services” indicator continues to worsen (Global Fragility Index: The Fund for Peace, 2020).

Afrobarometer: Public dissatisfaction with Nigerien and Chadian governance has also worsened during this period. According to a 2014 Afrobarometer survey, 59% of the population believed that the status of Niger was “headed in the right direction,” while 36% of the population believed that the country was “headed in the wrong direction.” (Afrobarometer, 2014). In 2019, these statistics flipped, as 33% of the population believed that the country was “headed in the right direction,” and 67% believed that the country was “headed in the wrong direction” (Moumouni & Amadou, 2019). Additionally, 54%

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FIGURE 7A. World Bank Indicators for Niger (2007-2020)

*Note: Scale is from -2.5 to 2.5 (-2.5 being the least effective and 2.5 being the most effective) (World Bank, 2020).

FIGURE 7B. World Bank Indicators for Chad (2007-2020)

*Note: Scale is from -2.5 to 2.5 (-2.5 being the least effective and 2.5 being the most effective) (World Bank, 2020).

of the population believes that the economic situation in Niger is “bad” or “very bad,” while only 27% of citizens are satisfied with their living conditions (Moumouni & Amadou, 2019). From these surveys, it is evident that the population’s perception of Niger’s governance and economy has significantly deteriorated.

Unfortunately, there is no Afrobarometer data for Chad. However, The Happy Planet Index (HPI), which currently measures individual wellbeing, life expectancy, and inequality of outcomes to estimate an average citizen’s level of happiness, qualifies Chad as the lowest scoring country with a ranking of 140/140 (Happy Planet Index, 2020). Therefore, it is reasonable to assume that

there are significant grievances among citizens within the country.

Conclusion Based on the previous evaluation criteria, military operations have not proven effective in countering Boko Haram. The MNJTF is the only major military effort working to combat Boko Haram in Niger and Chad, and bilateral military operations are limited due to France’s preoccupation with AQIM in Operation Barkhane and the US’s low involvement. There is similarly no peacekeeping mission that has a mandate to address instability in Boko Haram territories. Because of this, levels of violence

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FIGURE 8A. Global Fragility Index Indicators for Niger (2006-2020)

FIGURE 8B. Global Fragility Index Indicators for Chad (2006-2020)

have skyrocketed in both countries since 2013 and continue to worsen. Hence, the current status of military operations cannot address the Boko Haram problem in Niger and Chad; a more coordinated effort by foreign and multilateral entities is needed to support African armed forces. Considering the amount of political and economic grievances in both countries, economic development must also be emphasized as a counterterrorism strategy; although both countries have written development plans for the next couple years, the policies should be more specific and focus on providing for the basic needs of its citizens. Additionally, stronger leadership on behalf of the Nigerien and Chadian governments is needed to

reduce the influence of Boko Haram. Considering that the Nigerien state has already implemented local peace committees to try and deter Boko Haram influence, more policy is needed to address public services and the wellbeing of citizens, which could reduce the financial attractiveness and social protection of joining the VEO. Chad could do the same by implementing a reintegration policy for ex-Boko Haram fighters, reducing the sentiments of indefinite commitment to the group.

CHAPTER 4: ANSARUL ISLAM In order to evaluate which proposed conflict mitigation strategy is the most effective in countering Ansarul Islam,

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this chapter considers how past military operations, government policies, and humanitarian aid have affected the group’s recruitment rates, level of violence, and level of grievances. After providing a short background on Ansarul Islam, I outline past strategies that have been used to counter the organization since 2007. Finally, these strategies are analyzed to see whether they have had any effect on the VEO’s activities.

Background Ansarul Islam is a jihadist group that was founded in 2016 by Malam Ibrahim Dicko in northern Burkina Faso (Estelle, 2019). The group has its origins in the Al-Irchad religious network founded by Dicko in 2012 (Stanford University, 2018). Dicko, a radicalized Burkinabé preacher from the northern Soum Province, fought alongside AQIM associates in Mali during the Taureg rebellion. Returning to Burkina Faso, he established Ansarul Islam in 2016 and launched an insurgency against security forces in his region (Estelle, 2019). The group claims to desire the reconstruction of the ancient Djeelgodji empire, a primarily Fulani kingdom that disappeared following the French colonization of the 19th century (Stanford University, 2018). Since then, Ansarul Islam has assumed de facto control of many parts of northern Burkina Faso (Estelle, 2019). After Dicko was killed in a 2017 air raid, leadership was transferred to his brother, Jafar Dicko (Cummings, 2017). From 2016 onward, Ansarul Islam perpetrated numerous attacks against Burkinabé state forces and police, in addition to violence against civilians (Stanford University, 2018). One of the strategies of the group is to eliminate Burkinabé citizens who oppose their practices, as well as intermediaries who collaborate with the state (Le Cam, 2017). However,some have called the VEO a “self-defense group” as it claims to protect communities where it has popular support (Stanford University, 2018).

The group has also received support from several VEOs operating in bordering regions, particularly from Ansar Dine, the Macina Liberation Front (MLF), Katibat Serma, JNIM, and AQIM (Stanford University, 2018). These groups provide financial assistance in addition to manpower and logistical expertise of weapons (International Crisis Group, 2020). Although some progress was made by the G5 Sahel and French military in reducing the operational capacity of Ansarul Islam, the group has continued to incite particularly high levels of violence since 2016.

Military Operations against Ansarul Islam (2016-Present) In addition to the national military campaign conducted by Burkina Faso to address the Ansarul Islam issue, regional, bilateral, and multilateral initiatives serve to counter the group in the region. These efforts are composed of regional initiatives executed by the G5

Sahel and African Union, bilateral operations run by Côte d’Ivoire, France, and the United States, and a limited response from the United Nations.

The G5 Sahel and the African Union – Though Ansarul Islam is not as large as Mali’s AQIM, the G5 Sahel forces still operate in Burkina Faso to eliminate the VEO threat in the country. With 5,000 troops deployed, the G5 forces are 90% operational in the Mali/Burkina Faso “West” portion of the Sahel (Cline, 2020). Specifically, Burkina Faso commits 550 soldiers to the G5 Sahel out of its 9,100-member armed forces (Africa Center for Strategic Studies, 2019). As previously stated in the AQIM case study, an additional multinational task-force of 3,000 troops to combat VEOs in the Sahel has been proposed by the African Union, but would require UN Security Council approval (Africa Center for Strategic Studies, 2019).

Côte d’Ivoire - In response to VEO operations along their shared border region, Burkina Faso and Côte d’Ivoire launched a joint operation against jihadists in May 2020 (Reuters, 2020). The joint operation was composed of 1,000 Ivoirien soldiers participating on their side of its 580-kilometer border with Burkina Faso (Reuters, 2020).

The operation is also indicative of regional anxieties and anticipation of a VEO spill over into coastal West Africa (Reuters, 2020).

France – Though Operation Barkhane is primarily focused on countering AQIM in Mali, France has recently increased its military presence in Burkina Faso. Most recently in 2019, France launched a Barkhane operation ‘Bourgou 4’ in the Burkinabé border region with Mali and Niger (Wilkins, 2019). Before this, France provided air support to the Burkinabé military, and small numbers of French troops operated in the country, although the majority of its forces were deployed in Mali, Niger, and Chad (Wilkins, 2019). Despite this, “Ansaroul Islam’s strategy has also been impacted by the activities of French counterterrorism forces operating under Operation Barkhane. An attack on Ansaroul Islam’s largest base… in April 2017 led to the deaths of over twenty militants.

Ansaroul Islam was forced to disperse along the MaliBurkinabe border, operating in smaller cells.” (Stanford University, 2018).

United States – In Burkina Faso, some of AFRICOM’s 7,200 troops provide intermittent training for Burkina Faso’s security forces, focusing on counter-IED operations and first aid for civilians and soldiers (Mednick, 2020).

Other training includes hostage-negotiation, borderpatrol tactics, and community engagement strategies (Mednick, 2020). By scaling back its greater presence in Africa, the US has repositioned some of its air support, logistics, and maintenance from Burkina Faso to the AFRICOM base in Djibouti (Mednick, 2020). This trend is likely to continue if US foreign policy remains unchanged from its position to reduce its military footprint in Africa.

United Nations – To date, the UN has not deployed a peacekeeping mission to Burkina Faso to address the

THE GW UNDERGRADUATE REVIEW • VOLUME 4 Ansarul Islam insurgency. Instead, the UN approved MINUSMA to expand its operations into Burkina Faso along its border with Mali to fight jihadist groups, including Ansarul Islam in the north.

Regional policy to delegitimize Ansarul Islam Ansarul Islam attacks are fueled by strong local dynamics (International Crisis Group, 2017). In response, the Burkinabé government established the “Emergency Program for the Sahel” which, based on the National Plan for Economic and Social Development, “aims to respond to the political and social challenges that have resulted from fundamentalism and terrorism.” (Benedikter & Ouedraogo, 2018). The $835 million dollar program ran from 2017 to 2020, and was designed to support socio-economic development, public security and defense, and local governance and infrastructure, as well as communication between these sectors (Benedikter & Ouedraogo, 2018).

The program was reported to have made progress in most focus areas, though it could improve with the acceleration of public policy implementation, financial support for the benefit of water quality, sanitation, and healthcare, and the strengthening of overall civilianmilitary collaboration (Benedikter & Ouedraogo, 2018).

International aid to counter Ansarul Islam Like the aforementioned case studies, Burkina Faso is one of the poorest countries in sub-Saharan Africa, ranking 182 of 189 countries on the 2019 United Nations Human Development Index (HDI). The expansion of VEOs like Ansarul Islam and the Boko Haram insurgency have weighed on the country’s economy, costing about $20 million in recovery from terrorist activities (UNDP, 2019). In response, President Roch Marc Christian Kaboré created the four-year “National Plan for Economic and Social Development” (PNDES) in 2016, which aims to “to structurally transform the Burkinabe economy to achieve a strong, sustainable, resilient, inclusive growth, generating decent employment for all and eliciting improved social welfare.” (Government of Burkina Faso, 2016). Burkina Faso also relies heavily on international aid, and received $1.023 billion as of 2016 (OECD, 2018). The government mostly spends foreign aid on stabilization operations and security sector reform, malaria treatment, and humanitarian protection, assistance, and solutions (Foreignassistance.gov, n.d.).

The World Bank categorizes Burkina Faso as a “lowincome...country with limited natural resources” in which “cotton is the most important cash crop, while gold exports have gained importance in recent years.” (World Bank, 2019). Burkina Faso is currently the fastest growing producer of gold and the fifth largest gold producer on the continent, behind South Africa, Ghana, Tanzania, and Mali (Engels, 2018). Since 2009, gold mining has become

76 the most lucrative export in Burkina Faso, passing cotton; 59% of total export revenue comes from the gold extraction industry (Engels, 2018). Recently, there have been increasing protests in Burkinabe villages where gold mines are being created or expanded. Locals protest on account of agricultural land loss , the impact of the mines on air and water quality, and the unkept promises of mining enterprises concerning the employment of local workers and their investments in social infrastructure and construction (Engels, 2018). This public dissatisfaction is directly linked to the government regulation of mining operations in Burkina Faso, which creates an opportunity for grievances to be exploited by rebel jihadist groups.

According to the Economist, “many [Burkinabe] are fighting for farmland or against government corruption but “adopt the ‘jihadist’ label because they happen to be Muslim.”” (BBC News, 2019). These economic difficulties can exacerbate tensions in Burkina Faso, and they set the stage for insurgency to erupt because of a weak and unresponsive government.

Evaluation Criteria Level of recruitment – Ansarul Islam recruits heavily based on Burkinabé grievances concerning lack of jobs and infrastructure (BBC News, 2019). It is uncertain how Ansarul Islam recruitment levels have shifted over the past five years, as their exact size is difficult to track and they rarely take credit for attacks. Nearly 80 to 90 percent of all terrorist attacks in Burkina Faso go unclaimed, which could be a strategic choice of VEOs like Ansarul Islam as it “keeps the profile of insurgent [group] lower, potentially avoiding the focused attention of the Burkinabe military and international security actors.” (Wilkins, 2019). The group was estimated to have about 200 fighters in 2017 (Stanford University, 2018). From the lack of information, it is difficult to determine whether the VEO’s size has significantly changed.

Level of violence – ACLED data on violent attacks which Ansarul Islam perpetrated between January 1, 2007 and December 14, 2020, reveals that the level of violence significantly increased between 2016-2018, but was minimal in 2019-2020; this may be attributed to low levels of attacks claimed by Ansarul Islam over the past two years. The following data uses battles, explosions/ remote violence, and violence against civilians as event types, and is limited to Ansarul Islam affiliated events in Burkina Faso (Raleigh et al., 2010).

Level of governance-related grievances – According to various governance indices including Freedom House, the World Bank, the Global Fragility Index, and the Afrobarometer, Burkina Faso suffers from a low capacity for good governance, which indicates higher levels of public grievances within the country.

Freedom House: Niger was rated “partly free” in 2020 and was given a score of 56/100 on the freedom

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SPRING 2021 • THE GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY 250 200 150 100 50 0 2017-2020 Estimated Size of VEO

FIGURE 9. Ansarul Islam Approximate Recruitment Levels (2007-2020)

70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0 2007

2008

2009

2010

2011

2012

2013

2014

2015

2016

2017

2018

2019

2020

FIGURE 10. Ansarul Islam Level of Violence (2007-2020)

scale (0 being not at all free, and 100 being completely free) (Freedom House, 2020). To reiterate, the freedom scale considers factors such as the electoral process, political pluralism and participation, the functioning of government, freedom of expression and belief, associational and organizational rights, rule of law, and personal autonomy and individual rights (Freedom House, 2020). This rating has worsened in the country over the past few years, with a score of 63/100 in 2017 and 60/100 in 2018-19 (Freedom House, 2020).

See Figure 11: World Bank: The “Government Effectiveness” indicator has improved over time, while

the “Control of Corruption” has roughly stayed the same since 2007.

See Figure 12: Global Fragility Index: In Burkina Faso, the “Group Grievances” and “State legitimacy” indicators have generally improved over time, while the “Public Services” indicator has stayed roughly the same (Global Fragility Index: The Fund for Peace, 2020).

Afrobarometer: Public dissatisfaction with Burkinabé governance has also worsened during this period.

According to a 2017 Afrobarometer survey, 55% of the population believed that the status of Burkina Faso was “headed in the right direction,” while 43% of the

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FIGURE 11. World Bank Indicators for Burkina Faso (2007-2020)

*Note: Scale is from -2.5 to 2.5 (-2.5 being the least effective and 2.5 being the most effective) (World Bank, 2020).

FIGURE 12. Global Fragility Index Indicators for Burkina Faso (2006-2020) population believed that the country was “headed in the wrong direction” (Afrobarometer, 2017). In 2020, these statistics flipped, as 35% of the population believed that the country was “headed in the right direction,” and 64% believed that the country was “headed in the wrong direction” (Afrobarometer, 2020). Additionally, 64% of the population holds a negative perception of the government’s attempts to improve poverty conditions in Burkina Faso, and 67% of citizens have a negative perception of the government’s job creation policies (Afrobarometer, 2020). From these surveys, it is evident that the population’s perception of Burkinabé governance and economy has deteriorated significantly over the past five years.

Conclusion Based on these evaluation criteria, military operations have not proven effective in countering Ansarul Islam.

The G5 Sahel and Burkinabé armed forces are the only major military efforts working to combat Ansarul Islam in Burkina Faso, and bilateral military operations are limited due to France’s preoccupation with AQIM in Operation Barkhane and the US’s low involvement. There is similarly no peacekeeping mission that has a mandate to address instability in Burkina Faso, despite limited support from MINUSMA. Because of this, levels of violence skyrocketed between 2016-2018; though ACLED data does not report high levels of Ansarul Islam attacks during the 2019-2020 period, it is reasonable to assume that the group allows

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the attacks to be claimed by larger VEOs in the region, such as JNIM or ISGS, in order to fly under the radar.

Hence, the current status of military operations cannot address the Ansarul Islam problem in Burkina Faso; a more coordinated effort by foreign and multilateral entities is needed to support the Burkinabé military. Considering the amount of political and economic grievances in both countries, stronger leadership on behalf of Burkina Faso’s government is needed to reduce the influence of Ansarul Islam, and economic development must be emphasized as a counterterrorism strategy: agricultural development and humanitarian assistance should be the government’s priorities, working towards the aim of reducing job and food insecurity in the country.

CONCLUSION The results of the three case studies show that the conflict mitigation strategies used to counter VEO activities in the Sahel between 2007 and 2020 were mostly ineffective: levels of recruitment remained unchanged or rebounded after a short period, levels of violence exponentially increased, and levels of grievances in each country worsened over time. It can therefore be deduced that military operations against VEOs may be effective in the short term, such as the case with Operation Serval in Mali, but prove ineffective in stopping VEOs in the long term. The case studies also showed that while some efforts have been made to address terrorism through state policies, past efforts have not proven effective in addressing the key grievances of local communities in each country. International aid and development initiatives, though crucial, have not significantly improved economic conditions in Mali, Niger, Chad, or Burkina Faso, allowing VEOs to capitalize on financially destitute regions for recruitment.

Considering these findings, the optimal strategy to stop VEOs in the Sahel must prioritize government capacity building and economic development, combined with short-term military operations to provide security to civilians and vulnerable communities. As military operations may “reinforce grievance narratives of [VEOs] and ‘‘collateral damage’’ angers local populations and host governments alike,” (Aldrich, 2014, p. 524) reducing the military presence of France and the United States will decrease VEOs ability to capitalize on anti-Western sentiment,lowering levels of recruitment (Cherbib, 2018, p. 281). Instead of managing and suppressing instability, a new strategy should address the key drivers of the conflict (Charbonneau, 2019, p. 310).

Noting that violent extremism festers when there are intergroup tensions over socio-economic privileges, perceived or actual marginalization in politics, and provisions of social services by radical groups

(Charbonneau, 2019, p. 310), governance reform will effectively strengthen safety and security, provision of public services, and legitimate exercise of authority (Brinkerhoff, 2011, p. 347). Though some dispute the effectiveness of the liberal peace model, the case studies show that Sahelian grievances focused on corruption, governmental infrastructure, and services could be addressed through strengthened liberal democracy. To be successful, governance reform must give attention to domestic institutional conditions for successful democratization, support local ownership over the strategic direction of such operations, and emphasize strategic coordination among the various international actors involved in these missions (Paris, 2010, p. 347). This effort must be spearheaded by African governments with international support.

Addressing economic disparity through job provision, vocational training, information diffusion techniques, and employment growth will “embed local residents into local networks and institutions and inoculate them against incentives from insurgent groups.” (Aldrich, 2014, p. 524). This can be done through increased coordinated action between international aid groups, as “development assistance can play an important role in strengthening community resilience against violent extremism and reducing many of its enabling factors, including relative deprivation and marginalization.” (Kessels & Nemr, 2016, p.

12). However, it must be the responsibility of the Sahelian governments to implement economic development initiatives to retain state legitimacy. Overall, Eurocentric conflict management strategies must be combined with traditional African approaches, such as consultation with elders to appeal to youths and indigenous reconciliatory rituals, so that counterterrorism efforts can be revived, adapted, and strengthened to create enduring peace, security, and development in Africa (Kessels & Nemr, 2016, p. 12).

These conclusions have implications for policymakers in the Sahel, but also for foreign, regional, and multilateral entities who engage in counterterrorism operations in the region; foreign assistance should support state capacity building and economic stimulation in the Sahel, rather than narrowly focusing on military force. Guns alone will not stop VEOs from taking over the region, but a combination of votes and cash will create lasting changes to eliminate terrorists at their roots and build sustainable peace in the region.

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Peace and Conflict Studies Journal, 27 (1), 12. https:// nsuworks.nova.edu/pcs/vol27/iss1/2/ 108. Traore, Y. (2018). Countering Violent Extremism in

115. Wilkins, H. (2019, November 6). France announces troop deployment to Burkina Faso. Aljazeera.

Retrieved November 28, 2020. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/11/6/france-announces-troop-deployment-to-burkina-faso 116. Wilkins, H. (2019, December 13). Mystery behind Burkina Faso violence hampering response to crisis.

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117. Worldwide. (n.d.) Foreignassistance.gov. Retrieved November 29, 2020. https://www.foreignassistance.gov/explore 118. Worldwide Governance Indicators. (n.d.). The World Bank. Retrieved October 29, 2020. Ivory Coast army joins Burkina Faso in anti-djihadist operation. (2020, May 24). Reuters. Retrieved November 28, 2020. https://www. reuters.com/article/us-ivorycoast-burki na-security-idUSKBN2300QA

About the Author Keely is a Senior from Medway, Massachusetts majoring in International Affairs and French. Her research interests focus on African security and conflict resolution, specifically the dynamics of ethnic, religious, and regional conflicts on the continent. Keely currently works as a research assistant to a former U.S. Ambassador to Burundi and has completed internships in the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Conflict and Stabilization Operations, the Eurasia Center, World Service Authority, and The Borgen Project. She is a coxswain on the Varsity GW Women’s Rowing team, as well as a member of the Sigma Iota Rho honors fraternity for international affairs.

Mentor Details Paul D. Williams is a professor of International Affairs and Associate Director of the M.A. Security Policy Studies program at the Elliott School of International Affairs. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Wales, Aberystwyth. His research expertise includes peace operations; emerging security threats; war and peace in Africa; and conflict resolution. From 2012-2018, Professor Williams was a Non-Resident Senior Adviser at the International Peace Institute in New York. He has also worked as a Visiting Fellow for the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars and as a Visiting Professor at universities in countries such as Ethiopia, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Australia.

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KEYWORDS: Islam, women, contagious diseases, COVID, sexism DOI: https://doi.org/10.4079/2578-9201.4(2021).03

Women, Disease, and Colonialism: The Complex Role of Women in Perceptions of Contagious Diseases in Islamic History LAUREN KIKER PSYCHOLOGY AND HISTORY, CCAS ‘23, lkiker25@gwu.edu

ABSTRACT From the outbreaks of the bubonic plague in the Middle Ages to the COVID-19 pandemic, women in Islamic history have been entangled in contagious disease perceptions. An examination of theories developed by scholars at the onset of the Bubonic Plague and cholera outbreaks reveals connections between infections and women, with the unique ability of women to inspire lust linked to these diseases. Perceived to be contagious centers of corruption, women may have been blamed for their role in contagious diseases as a result of departing from the social norm. Developed in the Middle East in front of a backdrop of changing social structures and used in India to target outcasts, perceptions of contagious diseases were utilized to maintain social norms when societies were faced with a terrifying new threat. However, as these outbreaks became regular occurrences, focus shifted to blaming colonial governments for mismanaging epidemics.

No longer deemed centers of contagion, the treatment of women became a flashpoint for growing anticolonial sentiment, used as a rallying cause to provoke riots. The modern COVID-19 pandemic showcases a continuation of this theme, with media outlets and government officials debating and taking different stances on the use of traditional face coverings by Islamic women as replacements for facemasks despite no published medical research. These connections between women and contagious disease perceptions reveal an interesting but under researched theme that requires much more attention in order to develop a complete picture of this complex aspect of women’s history.

Currently at the center of modern discourse, contagious diseases prove to be an inescapable force in history, leaving no community completely untouched by an epidemic or outbreak. From the earliest plague incidences, to the cholera epidemics, and the modern COVID-19 pandemic, contagious diseases have permeated Islamic history and produced a complicated set of social, economic, and demographic changes. When facing these new challenges, history proves that it is not unusual for communities to channel anxiety and fears into more comprehensible loci, such as the blaming of Jewish communities in Germany after World War I or the persecution of witches throughout Europe at various times of hardship. In the context of contagious diseases, women have a long history of being used as one of these loci, both as corrupters responsible for spreading diseases and victims of failures to combat outbreaks, creating a complicated dynamic in women’s history of blame, persecution, and victimization. Undoubtedly one of many factors, women play an important role in plague perceptions, supported by their involvement in these perceptions stretching from the first outbreaks of the Black Death in the mid-fourteenth

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century to modern COVID-19 discussions, surviving many changes in social dynamics, government structures, and medical innovations. Simultaneous to their involvement, the perceptions of women in contagious diseases are inconsistent, shifting from corrupt centers blamed for causing the disease to sympathetic victims of colonial mismanagement, due to shifts in how the diseases are viewed by the community.

With a debated origin and transport method, the Black Death’s introduction into the Middle East and Islamic history brought with it complex perceptions of contagious diseases. One of these complexities centers on the role of women in the Bubonic Plague, with some scholars viewing women as corrupted beings who produced and spread the plague. One theory maintained that the Evil Eye was to blame and women’s unique ability to use the Evil Eye put them at the center of plague perceptions, with the belief that women could corrupt the air around others with their gaze, resulting in infections of the bubonic plague (Stearns, 2011). Menstruation was also seen as a way women spread the plague and connected with Evil Eye, as contact with menstruating women was connected to the spread of diseases, such as

THE GW UNDERGRADUATE REVIEW • VOLUME 4 leprosy (Salmon & Cabre, 1998). Further, scholar Lūqā urges men not to lust after women, as the contamination by women was capable through thought, and viewing pornography or being in a lustful mental state could result in plague infections (Stearns, 2011). The relevence of these connections between women, sex, corruption, and plague perceptions can be seen in the political reaction towards women as a result. In Egypt, legislation was passed to ban all women from the streets in order to limit their presence and, therefore, ability to corrupt (Dols, 1977). This points to the prevalence of the belief in women’s ability to corrupt in connection to the plague.

With a new and terrifying plague, women made easy targets with already available theories, such as the aforementioned Evil Eye, adapted to further implicate women in the spread of the unfamiliar illness. However, centering blame on women for the spread of the Black Death was not random and can be seen to have occurred alongside a change in demographics and social structures.

As the Black Death continued to spread through communities, death tolls increased, especially for nonnative women, such as concubines, and, consequently, the average level of concubines in households rapidly decreased (Rapoport, 2007). This resulted in social changes as men took concubines instead of, rather than along with, wives, and these women gained new levels of respect for their piety and a limited degree of economic agency, providing supplementary income to the household through spinning cloth (Rapoport, 2007).

These developments reveal a connection between social changes occurring at the time and plague perceptions, as shifts in social hierarchies produced a need to reestablish a sense of social control over women. While the first plague outbreaks in the Middle East show the beginning of the theme of women being entangled in plague perceptions, blame for the plague in connection to deviation from the social norm can be seen again within Islamic history, along with other areas, such as Europe, indicating a larger pattern of blame as a form of social control.

Outside of the Middle East, the Black Death continued to impact Islamic history in other regions, such as India, where perceptions towards women and colonial governments would entangle with plague outbreaks to create complex and tense social environments. Making itself officially known in Bombay in 1896, the Black Death in Southeast Asia entered an already complicated social and political scene, with British colonial governments tersely coexisting with indigenous social and political structures (Catanach, 1999). These Black Death outbreaks in India during the nineteenth century were seen as new and unpredictable, as the history of the disease had little presence in the public mind and was deemed the naya bimari, or new disease (Catanach, 1999). This connects the mentality of those in the Middle East during the initial Black Death outbreaks and those in India during these

88 more modern outbreaks, as both groups were confronted with a scary and unprecedented disease with no known cause or cure.

Also similar to medieval Muslims, explanations into the origins of the plague and the reason for its devastating effects began to include women, in an attempt to give reason to the destruction. Scholars turned to vice and sin as an explanation for the origin of the plague, with Sayad Ramzan Ali of Rohtak claiming that when unmarried women became pregnant out of sin and performed an abortion, remains of the fetus in the womb started to rot and produced the plague (Catanach, 1999). This source also discloses an interesting belief, that married women should be kept away from widows and unmarried women, revealing the theory that plague could spread from the sin of one woman to another (Catanach, 1999).

Perceptions of women in contagious diseases during the nineteenth century outbreak of the plague show continuity with perceptions of women during medieval outbreaks, with women seen as centers of corruption that could contaminate those around them due to sexrelated sins. Both of these perceptions came out of similar contexts, with communities facing a new disease that had devastating effects, but little evidence points to women being put at the center of blame due to social change in India, unlike earlier plague outbreaks.

However, as the “newness” of the plague outbreaks in India wore off and instead became expected occurrences, shifts in focus began to take place, with people less concerned about the origins of the Black Death, and more interested in the colonial government’s mismanagement of the outbreaks. The British colonial government’s response to plague outbreaks were illtimed, with denial of outbreaks preventing adequate measures being taken in the critical period (Catanach, 1999). When action was taken, attempts to separate sick individuals and force them into hospitals, called “plague huts,” along with various “plague rules,” such as regulations on burial practices, caused public unrest, including anti-European riots (Catanach, 1999). Tensions in India with colonial governments had been building since European involvement in Southeast Asia and were presented in previous conflicts, such as the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857, with many accounts referencing these conflicts in comparison to unrest due to plague outbreaks (“The Trouble,” 1897). These underlying tensions and the British colonial government’s decision to enact largely ineffective legislation that violated social customs, such as separating sick individuals from their families and legislating burial practices, combined to result in plague perceptions focusing more on the colonial government’s failure, rather than blaming women for causing the plague.

While anti-colonialism took the forefront in plague perceptions, with governments blamed for mismanaging plague outbreaks, women still remained entangled in

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these accusations, which swiftly contributed to even more anti-colonialism. Newspaper articles reporting on anti-English sentiment in India during the 1897 plague outbreak quote a source as saying “the plague authorities are simply butchers… neither Hindus or Mohammedans will tolerate the persecution of their wives… it is the misfortune of the people that the honor, religion, and modesty of women… should be violated under the Enlightened English government” (“The Troubles,” 1897).

Along with this, Sir Antony MacDonnell, a British colonial official in the North-western Provinces, reported that an angry crowd of Muslims told him that “they would never permit the segregation of their women or the administration of European drugs to their families” (Catanach, 1999). Similarly, the large riots covered in Bombay during the 1898 outbreak were said to be related to an attempt by a European medical student to examine a Muslim girl, resulting in the burning of plague huts and convictions of over 200 protesters (Catanach, 1999). Despite the shift away from perceptions of women as centers of plague, women still found themselves entangled in plague discourse as those pushing for anticolonialism used the mistreatment of women to provoke unrest during the epidemics. Instead of corrupt centers of sin, Muslim women were now viewed as the sympathetic victims of European impotence and mistreatment during plague outbreaks. While this marks a distinct break in continuities of who was blamed for the plague, the spotlight never moved from women entirely -- it only shifted in nature.

Showcasing a similar shift in perceptions of women in contagious diseases, cholera epidemics in the nineteenth century caused devastating effects throughout Middle Eastern and Southeast Asian countries. Similar to the Black Death in India, cholera epidemics occurred at the same time as growing discontent with colonial governments and only resulted in an increase in tensions.

However, early perceptions of cholera did not focus on colonial governments, but rather attributed outbreaks to many different causes, including women -- specifically those believed to be witches. This perception often resulted in violent attacks and murders, commonly of older women who had previously been suspected of witchcraft (Harrison, 2020). The targeting of those already considered social outcasts may indicate that these perceptions of women’s role in cholera developed as a way to channel public fear and paranoia over the illness into a direction that would assist in maintaining social norms for women. This shows a degree of continuity with perceptions of women in the plague during the early outbreaks in the Middle East, as women were put in the spotlight as corrupters and spreaders of plague at the same time social change gave women more economic and social power, suggesting that blame for epidemic diseases may be utilized by societies to maintain or revert to more comfortable social norms.

Alongside connections of blame as a form of social control, anticolonial sentiment began to shift blame for cholera epidemics from women causing the outbreaks, to colonial governments for their mishandling, similar to the Black Death in India. While early cholera outbreaks in India are hard to connect with concrete pushes against colonial governments, once cholera outbreaks reached Europe in the nineteenth century during the second epidemic, the reaction of colonial governments changed from bare-minimum to implementing coercive measures (Harrison, 2020). Legislation aimed at regulating the Haji also caused discontent with the British colonial government, specifically legislation that used gendered terms to ensure that women were searched, going against social customs of women being kept from public view by male family members (Tagliacozzo, 2014). The British government’s lack of effective response along with the overbearing nature of the legislation shifted the blame from women to colonial governments, but the gendered nature of some of the legislation ensured that the role of women in the perception of contagious diseases would continue to be unique. This development closely parallels shifts in perceptions of contagious diseases in India during Black Death outbreaks, with the normalizing of outbreaks shifting the focus of perceptions away from explaining why the outbreaks were happening to why outbreaks were not being handled better.

Even in the twenty-first century, complex perceptions of Muslim women can be found in contagious disease outbreaks. The COVID-19 pandemic is unprecedented, affecting people on a larger scale than past epidemics and therefore calling for more public cooperation than prior outbreaks. Facemasks have proven to be an important form of public cooperation but some Muslim women are put in the center of a debate over the use of traditional facecoverings. With little official medical guidance, some sources deem a niqab as a suitable alternative to facemasks, and even report that Muslim women who wear traditional face coverings in non-Muslim majority nations feel more acceptance from the public (Khan, 2020). However, other sources report that traditional face coverings are not adequate protection against COVID-19, largely in reaction to a far right conspiracy that masks are ineffective due to high rates of COVID-19 in Muslim majority nations where women wear traditional facecoverings (Caldera, 2020). While there remains very little scientific evidence or medical advice on the subject, some countries with legislation banning face coverings in public, such as France and Belgium, have continued to uphold this legislation when it comes to the traditional face coverings of Muslim women while simutanously passing legislation to require all citizens to wear face masks (Perolini, 2020). This again shows women at the center of contagious disease perceptions and, despite increased medical knowledge and research capacity, confusion over how the disease spreads has pushed

THE GW UNDERGRADUATE REVIEW • VOLUME 4 women into the spotlight yet again.

While continuities of perceptions of women in contagious disease discourse have been discussed, the important question of why women are involved has not been answered and stands very little chance of gaining a concrete answer. Violations of social norms and blame for contagious diseases seem to go together for some, but not all, cases. This theme does draw interesting connections outside of Islamic history, with contagious diseases in Europe showing similar patterns of women, specifically witches, being blamed and hunted. However, much more research needs to be done to establish if women, social change, and contagious diseases have the same dynamic in European history as they do in Islamic history. Even if this connection can be fully established, it still does not completely answer the question of why women were involved in plague perceptions. Possible explanations could center on the fact that women made easy targets due to their common presence and often inferior social status or because of other reasons still to be discovered. However, even if the subject of women in plague perceptions does receive the necessary attention and research that it deserves, a conclusive answer to why women were involved will likely remain elusive due to the complex and shifting nature of women’s involvement in perceptions of contagious diseases.

Despite the reason why women were involved in disease perceptions being unclear, the fact remains that women were important flashpoints in contagious disease perceptions, viewed in connection with outbreaks in the Islamic world of Black Death, cholera, and COVID-19.

Originating with early outbreaks of the Black Death in the Islamic world during the Middle Ages, women became tied into plague perceptions through theories involving lust and sex as centers of corruption and infection (Stearns, 2011). The connections between women and the plague were not made accidentally, but rather served as a tool to implement social control in the face of changing social hierarchies or to target individuals already violating social norms. However, as outbreaks of these diseases began to become more frequent, the focus shifted from blaming women for causing the outbreaks, to blaming colonial governments for mishandling outbreaks. Despite this shift, women were still involved in these contagious disease perceptions, viewed now as sympathetic victims of colonial mistreatment and used to stoke preexisting tensions. While the modern COVID-19 outbreak differs in some ways, Muslim women are still caught in discourse as debates over the effectiveness of traditional facecoverings are carried out by largely nonmedical sources. Additionally, the perceived increase in social acceptance is put at odds with oxymoronic legislation banning Muslim women from wearing traditional facecoverings, while requiring them to wear face masks.

With limited pre-existing research, these connections are speculative but reveal a theme in women’s history

90 that deserves much more attention than the current scholarship provides.

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REFERENCES 1. Caldera, C. (2020, July 19). Fact check: Post makes faulty assertions about women and face coverings in Muslimmajority countries. USA Today. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/07/19/fact-checkburqas-and-niqa-not-comparable-face-masks/5408236002/ 2. Catanach, I. J. (1999). South Asian Muslims and the plague 1896-C.1914. South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, 22(1), 87–107. https://doi.org/10.1080/00856408708723376 3. Dols, M. W. (1977). The Black Death in the Middle East. Princeton University Press.

4. Harrison, M. (2020). A dreadful scourge: Cholera in early nineteenth-century India. Modern Asian Studies, 54(2), 502–553. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0026749X17001032 5. Khan, T. (2020, August 24). For Muslim women in niqabs, the pandemic has brought a new level of acceptance.

Vanity Fair. https://www.vanityfair.com/style/2020/08/muslim-women-niqabs-pandemic 6. Perolini, M. (2020). Is a face mask used to fight Covid-19 really that different from a niqab? Amnesty International. https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2020/05/face-masks-and-niqabs/ 7. Rapoport, Y. (2007). Women and gender in Mamluk society. Mamluk Studies Review, 11(2), 1-48. https://doi. org/10.6082/M1X34VM5 8. Salmón, F. & Cabré, M. (1998). Fascinating women: The evil eye in medical scholasticism. In R. French, J. Arrizabalaga, A. Cunningham, & L. Garcia-Ballester (Eds.), Medicine from the Black Death to the French disease, (pp. 53–84). Ashgate.

9. Stearns, J. K. (2011). Infectious ideas contagion in premodern Islamic and Christian thought in the Western Mediterranean. Johns Hopkins.

10. The trouble in India; Outburst of anti-English feeling in the native press of Bengal and Bombay. Plague officials blamed warnings that the scenes of 1857 are imminent — Censorship may be revived — Probable move for an Islam crusade. (1897, July 4). New York Times (1857-1922). https://www.nytimes.com/1897/07/04/archives/thetrouble-in-india-outburst-of-antienglish-feeling-in-the-native.html 11. Tagliacozzo, E. (2014). Hajj in the time of Cholera: Pilgrim ships and contagion from Southeast Asia to the Red Sea. In J.L. Gelvin (Ed.), Global Muslims in the age of steam and print, (pp. 103-20). University of California.

About the Author Lauren is a junior from Tega Cay, South Carolina majoring in Psychology and History. Her research interests are in women’s history, including the history of sexual morality, and postpartum mental health disorders. Lauren is a research assistant at the Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Project, an alumna of the Global Connections Living and Learning Community, and a member of GWU’s Active Minds chapter.

92 KEYWORDS: neural crest, cranial placodes, transcription, Xenopus DOI: https://doi.org/10.4079/2578-9201.4(2021).04

The Developmental Effects of Six1 Mutations on the Otic Expression of Putative Target Genes in Xenopus Embryos SARAH AHSAN 1, HIMANI DATTA MAJUMDAR 2, TANYA MEHDIZADEH 3, ANDRE TAVARES 4, SALLY A. MOODY 5 1 2 3 4 5

BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES, CCAS ‘21, sarahahsan@gwu.edu DEPARTMENT OF ANATOMY AND CELL BIOLOGY, hmajumdar@gwu.edu LABORATORY FOR CLINICAL AND DEVELOPMENTAL STUDIES, tanya_414@gwu.edu DEPARTMENT OF ANATOMY AND CELL BIOLOGY, tavaresa@gwu.edu DEPARTMENT OF ANATOMY AND CELL BIOLOGY, samoody@gwu.edu

ABSTRACT Point mutations in the SIX1 gene play a major role in branchio-oto-renal spectrum disorders (BORSD), a birth defect that leads to mixed hearing loss. Permanent malfunction of the middle and inner ear can be attributed to the malformation of the ear’s ossicles and middle ear space, as well as hypoplasia in inner ear structures. As the Six1 gene is heavily involved in the regulation of cranial placode development that gives rise to the ear, the morphological presentation of BORSD can be explained by the interaction between Six1 mutants and their target genes. Using affected tissues, including the cranial neural crest and otic placode, one can trace the involvement of the mutant Six1 gene to its interactions with neural crest cells and branchial arch progenitor cells. Within these cellular regions, there are proposed candidate genes that are targets of Six1: prdm1 and eya2. Four BORSD mutations were engineered in the Xenopus Six1 gene (V17E, Y129C, R110W, and W122R), which is 100% identical to the human SIX1 gene in two mutated regions of the Six1 protein. Mutants were expressed in a wild-type background in Xenopus laevis embryos in order to find any alteration in the expression of the target genes. Results were consistent with previous studies: Six1 mutants were transcriptionally deficient and had deleterious effects in otic development. However, interactions between specific mutants and target genes varied, resulting in variable phenotypic expression in the otocyst.

•

INTRODUCTION Branchio-oto-renal Spectrum Disorders Branchio-otic (BOS) and branchio-oto-renal (BOR) syndromes are the second most prevalent birth defects involving hearing loss. With three in 500 newborns affected by hearing loss at birth due to genetic causes (ASHA, 2005), it is essential to diagnose congenital hearing loss as early as possible in order to implement early interventions and treatment. Six1 and Eya1 were identified to be causative genes of BOS/BOR (Moody et al., 2015).

Branchio-oto-renal spectrum disorder (BORSD) is characterized by malformations of the outer, middle, and inner ear, which are associated with mixed hearing impairment. Furthermore, BORSD newborns may possess renal malformations such as mild renal hypoplasia and bilateral renal agenesis, defects that eventually require dialysis. BORSD patients often display abnormalities of the pinnae, a part of the external auditory canal derived from nonneural ectoderm. Such abnormalities expressed a

high prevalence of preauricular pits (82%), lop ear malformation (36%), and preauricular tags (13%) — these factors contribute to conductive hearing loss, preventing sound from entering through the external region into the middle ear, but can be treated through reconstructive surgery or implants (Smith, 2018).

However, mixed hearing loss entails a combination of conductive hearing loss (involving the middle and/or external ear) and sensorineural hearing loss (impacting the cochlea in the inner ear), turning our attention to permanent malfunction of the middle and inner ear. Middle ear anomalies found in BORSD patients include malformation and malposition of ossicles, often in conjunction with a reduced size of the middle ear space. Inner ear abnormalities involve hypoplasia of the cochlea and lateral semicircular canal, as well as the enlargement of the cochlear and vestibular aqueducts (Smith, 2018). These findings can be explained through developmental anatomy, as the middle ear cavity and auditory tube is derived from developmental changes in the first

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and second pharyngeal arches (Carlson, 2014). Adjacent to the pharyngeal arches is the otic placode, which gives rise to the otic vesicle and contributes to the formation of the entire inner ear (Figure 1). The otic placode forms a sac-like invagination adjacent to the second pharyngeal arch’s neural crest cell (NCC) stream (Sandell, 2014), ultimately creating an otocyst that contains the membranous labyrinth of the inner ear (Alsina &Whitfield, 2017). Emigration of adjacent NCCs is imperative for the saturation of melanocytes in the cochlea, enabling proper inner ear function to process sound. These molecular processes are regulated by the expression of key regulatory genes, in which their mutations can result in the malformation of the otic vesicle and resulting ear structures.

Six1 Mutations Diagnosing BORSD spans beyond physical examination.

Genetic screening for heterozygous pathogenic variants of Six1 (along with Eya1) can serve as an effective indicator of the developmental disorder. BORSD is a common type of autosomal dominant syndromic hearing loss, in which affected individuals have a 50% chance of passing the condition to their children with 100% penetrance.

Mutations in two genes have been identified as causative in about half of BOS/BOR patients: the gene encoding the Six1 homeodomain-containing transcription factor, and its cofactor protein, Eya1 (Moody et al., 2015).

Six1 plays a key role in the regulation of cranial placode development (Brugmann & Moody, 2005), highlighting the gene’s necessity for inner ear function. Both Six1 and Eya1 are expressed in developing cranial placodes, including the otic placode that gives rise to the inner ear, and form a Six1-Eya1 transcription factor complex. Investigation of the Six1-Eya1 complex interactions shows that four mutant versions of the Six1 gene inhibit Eya1 protein binding: V17E, Y129C, R110W, and W122R (Figure 2). These inhibitory mutations interact with the N-terminal SIX domain (SD) which binds to cofactor proteins like Eya1; and the homeodomain (HD), which binds to DNA. The V17E mutation eliminates interactions between Six1 and Eya1, preventing both translocation of Eya1 to the nucleus and the activation of Six1-mediated transcription. Similarly, R110W was reported to decrease the Six1-Eya1 interaction and lead to transcriptional activation deficiency (Shah et al., 2020; Kochhar et al., 2008). Within the HD, the Y129C mutation in the N-terminal region significantly reduces DNA binding (Patrick et al., 2009). The W122R mutant lies between the HD and the sixth alpha-helix and is suggested to negatively impact DNA binding (Moody et al., 2015). Therefore, all four mutations affect the interactions between the Six1 and Eya1 proteins and consequently could impact the regulation of additional genes that are involved in inner ear development.

Morphologically, it has been found that Six1 loss-of-

FIGURE 1. Diagram of a human embryo at 28 days.

A. The location of the otic vesicle, soon to give rise to the inner ear. B. Location of the pharyngeal arches, giving rise to the ears, jaws, tonsils, and thymus. (Moore and Persaud, 2007)

function mutations have reduced otic development, resulting in the loss of inner ear hair cells and malformation of sensory epithelium patterning. In contrast, Six1 gainof-function studies have resulted in expansion of placode domains at the expense of the neural crest and epidermis (Brugmann et al., 2004). Furthermore, Shah et al. (2020) elucidated morphological and molecular effects of the mutants: each Six1 mutant changed otic vesicle size as well

THE GW UNDERGRADUATE REVIEW • VOLUME 4 as the expression of selected transcription factor genes that were determinants of inner ear patterning. In order to explore the role of Six1 in early inner ear development, mutations of the gene encoding the transcription factor must be evaluated with the consequential expression of its downstream targets. Thus, this study assessed the effects of Xenopus Six1 mutants on two downstream genes involved in ear development, prdm1 and eya2, in which changes in expression level would indicate malformation in ear development.

SIGNIFICANT ROLES OF THE DOWNSTREAM TARGETS IN EAR FORMATION

94 where it was found to be expressed in pharyngeal arch progenitors and otic vesicles in an in-situ hybridization study done on zebrafish (Wilm &Solnica-Kerzel, 2005).

Due to Prdm1’s interactions with progenitor and neural crest cells in the pharyngeal arches, it is likely to be expressed in otic placode pathways as it forms the otic vesicle. It is probable that with a loss-of-function mutation at Six1, prdm1 will cease to be downregulated and progenitor cells will not be able to retain their identity in differentiation. This could provide an explanation for hypoplasia of structures formed from the membranous labyrinth in the inner ear.

Eya2

Prdm1 The Prdm1 protein, alternatively known as Blimp1, is a transcription factor that plays a role in defining neural lineages, embryo patterning, and subsequent organogenesis. Studies in chick embryos showed that Prdm1 undergoes stage-specific binding to regulatory regions of neural and sensory progenitor genes in early neural plate and sensory progenitor cells (Prajapati et al., 2019). Prdm1 was also established to have a role in histone modification in Xenopus, having DNA binding ability and methylation activity throughout neural cell differentiation processes (Eguchi et al., 2015). This particular gene limits the function of the gastrula organizer and in turn regulates morphogenetic development and cell fate specification during early axes-determining stages (Wilm & SolnicaKerzel, 2005). However, Prajapati et al. (2019) show how downregulation of the prdm1 gene by Six1 is essential for cells to maintain their neural identity. Prdm1’s activity later plays a role in the development of the pharyngeal arches,

The Eya2 protein is a transcriptional coactivator and phosphatase that is involved in ectodermal patterning in embryos. Six1 and eya1/2 genes are first expressed in the preplacodal ectoderm from which cranial placodes derive. Studies have suggested that Six1 and eya2 both promote preplacodal gene expression and suppress neural crest cell fates (Christophorou et al., 2009). Results from Christophorou et al. (2009) highlighted eya2’s role as a coactivator of Six1, ultimately giving rise to the placode precursor identity while simultaneously repressing neural-specific genes. Due to Six1’s dominant-inhibitory mutations, the disruption of the Six1-Eya1 interaction and fail to localize Eya1 to the nucleus. For example, the V17E mutation in the SD was found to inhibit DNA binding due to steric hindrance, disrupting the binding structure between the Six and Eya proteins. It was also found that R112C destabilizes Six1 by reducing the alphahelical structure, also resulting in decreased binding

FIGURE 2. The amino acid sequence of Six1 expressing the single point

mutation variants of interest, boxed in red. (Moody et al., 2015)

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(Patrick et al., 2009). These particular mechanisms would explain how several types of Six1 mutants (including V17E, Y129C, R110W, and W122R) would be unable to induce transcriptional activity when co-expressed with eya2. In a nuclear localization assay study (Patrick et al., 2009), not only was the V17E mutant unable to localize full-length eya2, but it also failed to stabilize in the presence of the Eya2 protein. Findings have shown that when the Eya2 protein is co-expressed with Six1, it is able to stabilize Six1 protein levels (whereas the Six1-Eya2 complex was found to increase Six1 expression). With the codependent relationship between eya2 and Six1, co-expression studies can explain how Six1 mutants affect otic placode development, a region where eya2 plays a role in cell fate.

METHODS

In vitro synthesis of mRNAs and antisense RNA probes RNA transcripts encoding Six1 wild-type (Six1WT; Brugmann et al., 2004), Six1WT fused to the VP16 activation domain (Six1VP16; Brugmann et al., 2004), Six1WT fused to the En2 repressive domain (Six1EnR; Brugmann et al., 2004), the four Six1 mutants (V17E, Y129C, R110W, and W122R; Shah et al., 2020), and nuclearlocalized βgalactosidase mRNA (used as a lineage tracer) were synthesized in vitro using manufacturer’s protocols from Ambion’s mMessage mMachine Kit. The Six1 wild-type and mutant DNA plasmids were linearized using ASC1 restriction enzyme by isolating sequences from their bacterial pCS2 vector. The reaction required ASC1 to be added to a solution containing the plasmid DNA, a CutSmart buffer, and nuclease-free water; the solution’s reaction proceeded in an incubator at 37 degrees Celsius for optimal enzymatic function. After two hours, the solution was collected for gel electrophoresis in order to confirm that the DNA was linearized. The DNA was purified according to a standard protocol (mMessage mMachine Kit, Ambion) and its concentration was determined by Nanodrop, making it ready for mRNA transcription. mRNA transcription is a sensitive enzymatic synthesis process that requires the SP6 RNA polymerase enzyme to be added to a solution containing the linearized DNA template, nucleoside triphosphates (NTPs), a reaction buffer, and nuclease-free water. The reaction takes place at 37 degrees Celsius for two hours for maximal transcription. Once the transcription reaction was complete, DNAase was added to digest any remaining DNA in the solution. This was followed by the addition of lithium chloride to precipitate the RNA at -20 degrees Celsius overnight. The mRNA was visible as a pellet the next day and was washed and dried according to protocol (mMessage mMachine Kit, Ambion). mRNA concentration was taken using Nanodrop. This protocol was used for

Six1 wild-types, variants, and the β-galactosidase mRNA (β-gal).

Plasmids encoding eya2 and prdm1 were commercially purchased (Origene Technologies, Inc.) and were sequenced in both directions to confirm their identity. The DNA plasmids were then used to produce digoxigeninlabeled antisense RNA probes (in vitro) for the in-situ hybridization assay according to the Ambion MEGAscript protocol.

Obtaining embryos and performing microinjections Fertilized Xenopus laevis embryos were obtained by gonadotropin-induced natural mating of adult frogs (Moody, 2000; 2018). Embryos were picked at the 2-cell stage to accurately identify the dorsal and ventral animal blastomeres based on their pigmentation; these particular blastomeres are progenitors of the neural crest and cranial placodes that give rise to the middle and inner ear, respectively (Klein, 1987; Miyata et al., 1987; Moody, 2018; Moody and Kline, 1990). Embryos were placed in a dish of 3% Ficoll solution to prevent injury during injections. By the 8-cell stage, the dorsal and ventral animal blastomeres (D1 and V1, respectively) were microinjected with 1 nanoliter of solution: either one of the Six1 mRNAs (wild-type, fusion protein, or mutant), or a 1:1 mixture of two lissamine-tagged antisense morpholino oligonucleotides (MO) functioning to inhibit translation of endogenous Six1 (Six1-MO; Brugmann et al., 2004).

There were two concentrations for each Six1 variant solution: 150 picograms and 400 picograms (pg). Each solution (including wild-type) contained 100 ng/nl of β-Gal and nuclease-free water, essential for visualization of expression in the in-situ hybridization assay. Embryos were treated with Ficoll after injections to promote healing of the injection site, and then were cultured in diluted Steinberg’s solution until embryos were fixed at otic vesicle stages.

Histochemistry, in-situ hybridization and analyses Embryos were grown until otic vesicle stages (stages 26-32; Nieuwkoop and Faber, 1994) as well as earlier stages at which the target genes eya2 and prdm1 are expressed (stages 18-26). They were then fixed in a step-wise protocol (Yan et al., 2009) with 4% paraformaldehyde (in 0.1M MOPS, 2mM EGTA Magnesium, and 1mM MgSO4).

Following that, the embryos were then stained with a β-Gal solution incubated at 37 degrees Celsius and dehydrated in preparation for in-situ hybridization (ISH).

The β-Gal stain would indicate an injected and noninjected side of the embryo for proper qualitative analysis of gene expression levels after the ISH. ISH was conducted using the digoxigenin-labeled

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FIGURE 3. The β-gal staining of a stage 26 embryo injected with the V17E

mutation on one side. The ISH results showcase the difference in expression of Eya2 in the control and mutant-injected side. The purple staining of the otocyst, indicated by the black arrow, was used as a measure of relative Eya2 expression. The red arrows point to the decrease in expression of Eya2 in the presence of the V17E mutant, hence the decreased definition of the otocyst (Mehdizadeh, 2018).

antisense RNA probes that specifically locate the expression of their respective targets, eya2 and prdm1, in the embryos. The tagged RNA probe hybridizes with the endogenous mRNA of the target gene and thereby stains the gene expression domain using an antibody against digoxigenin. Samples were then bleached with a hydrogen peroxide-formamide solution to reduce pigmentation in the skin.

For qualitative analysis, the intensity and size of each gene’s expression domains in the otocyst were compared between the injected side containing mRNA and the un-injected, control side of the same embryo (Figure 3).

ISH assays were repeated a minimum of three times on embryos from three different sets of outbred parents.

Qualitative scores for each Six1 mutant were determined by at least two of the authors. The frequencies of changes in gene expression between control and injected sides were subjected to a Chi-square test to determine the significance of the changes (p < 0.05).

RESULTS ISH analysis observed a change in otocyst eya2 and prdm1 expression in the presence of four different mutations of the Six1 gene. Relative expression was measured on a score of “increased,” “decreased,” or “no change” in the otocyst — which was discerned through purple β-Gal staining. A decrease in target gene expression indicates an inhibitory effect of the mutant Six1 allele, whereas an increase in target gene expression

would suggest otherwise. Results were observed under two concentrations of the Six1 mutants, 150 picograms (Figure 3a; Figure 4a) and 400 picograms (Figure 3b; Figure 4b).

Figure 3a showcases the effects of 150 picograms (pg) of Six1 variants on the expression of eya2 in the otocyst, in which there was a total of 74 Six1 wild-type (Six1WT), 96 V17E mutant, 55 R110W mutant, 60 W122R mutant, and 50 Y129C mutant embryos. For the V17E mutant, 71.9% of the embryos faced reduction of eya2 expression in the otocyst. For the R110W mutant, 27.3% of the embryos had reduced eya2 otic expression, whereas 3.6% had increased expression. 28.3% of the W122R mutants and 30% of the Y129C mutants faced eya2 reduction in the otocyst. Notwithstanding, 3.3% of the W122R mutants and 2% of the Y129C mutants had an increase in eya2 expression in the otocyst.

Figure 3b also represents eya2 expression in the otocyst, but in embryos injected with 400 pg of the Six1 variant. There were 108 Six1WT, 92 R110W, 82 W122R, and 119 Y129C mutant embryos. As a result, 76.1% of R110W, 75.6% of W122R, and 83.2% of Y129C embryos had decreases in eya2 otic expression. None of the mutants had an increase in eya2 expression.

Transitioning to the next target gene, Figure 4a shows embryos injected with 150 pg of Six1 variants and their observed relative otic expression of prdm1. Overall, there were 94 Six1WT embryos, 121 V17E, 58 R110W, 55 W122R, and 74 Y129C mutant embryos. For the V17E mutant, 85.95% of

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FIGURE 4A. Eya2 Expression versus Six1 Mutants and WT (150 pg)

Changes in eya2 expression in the otic vesicle: mRNA conc. 150 pg.

Each bar shows the percentage of embryos in which eya2 expression changed (increased, decreased, no change) for each Six1 mutant and its wild-type at 150 pg. Each bar’s number is the N number of embryos used per variant.

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FIGURE 4B. Eya2 Expression versus Six1 Mutants and WT (400 pg)

Change in eya2 expression in the otic vesicle : mRNA conc. 400 pg.

Each bar shows the percentage of embryos in which eya2 expression changed (increased, decreased,no change) for each Six1 mutant and its wild-type at 400 pg. Each bar’s number is the N number of embryos used per variant.

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FIGURE 5A. Prdm1 Expression versus Six1 Mutants and WT (150 pg)

Change in prdm1 expression in the otic vesicle : mRNA conc. 150 pg.

Each bar shows the percentage of embryos in which eya2 expression changed (increased, decreased, no change) for each Six1 mutant and its wild-type at 150 pg. Each bar’s number is the N number of embryos per variant.

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FIGURE 5B. Prdm1 Expression versus Six1 Mutants and WT (400 pg)

Change in prdm1 expression in the otic vesicle: mRNA conc. 400 pg.

Each bar shows the percentage of embryos in which eya2 expression changed (increased, decreased, no change) for each Six1 mutant and its wild-type at 400 pg. Each bar’s number is the N number of embryos per variant.

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the embryos faced reduction of prdm1 expression in the otocyst. 25.9% of the R110W mutants had a decrease in prdm1 otic expression, whereas 12.1% of the mutants had increased expression. For the W122R mutant, 20% of the embryos had decreased prdm1 otic expression, whereas 9.1% had increased expression. Of the Y129C mutants, 13.5% had decreased prdm1 expression while 6.8% had an increase.

Figure 4b depicts the Six1 variants at 400 pg, for which there was a total of 77 Six1WT embryos, 78 R110W, 107 W122R, and 62 Y129C mutant embryos. The R110W mutant had 41% of its embryos decrease in prdm1 otic expression, but 20.5% had increased expression. In the W122R mutants, 58.9% had decreased prdm1 expression in the otocyst, while 22.4% had an increase. Lastly, the Y129C mutant had 59.7% of its embryos decrease in prdm1 expression, whereas 32.3% had an increase in otic expression.

DISCUSSION Otic expression of target genes require Six1 transcriptional activity Six1 can act as both a transcriptional activator and repressor depending on the presence of specific cofactors (Brugmann et al., 2004). Evaluation of the two potential targets for otic expression, prdm1 and eya2, show interactions between Six1 binding sites and cofactors that interfere with Six1-Eya1 transcriptional activation.

The possible effects of decreased levels of endogenous Six1 protein on expression of target genes were tested using translation-blocking antisense morpholino oligonucleotides (Six1-MO). Injecting the morpholinos in the neural crest and cranial placode precursor blastomeres reduced expression intensity of each target gene in most of the embryos: 83.1% of 124 eya2 embryos and 96.7% of 60 prdm1 embryos had significant reduction in expression. These results indicate that each target gene requires the Six1 protein in order to be normally expressed.

To test whether the two target genes were activated or repressed by Six1, the Six1EnR mRNA (a repressor) and the Six1VP16 mRNA (an activator) were injected for evaluation of their otic expression compared to Six1WT embryos.

It was found that Six1EnR represses eya2 expression at the same frequency as the Six1WT (p > 0.05), whereas Six1VP16 induced a significant increase in eya2 expression compared to the Six1WT (p < 0.0001). The data suggest that endogenous Six1 expression has a repressive effect on eya2. However, prdm1 presented slightly different results. While Six1VP16 induced a significant increase in prdm1 expression compared to Six1WT (p < 0.00001), Six1EnR produced indistinguishable results involving an increase and decrease in expression (p > 0.25). These results indicate that prdm1 is possibly an indirect target of Six1.

BOR mutations significantly affect otic expression of target genes Six1 variants — V17E, R110W, Y129C, and W122R — have been shown to cause specific, yet variable, disruptions to the expression of neural border zone, neural crest, and pre-placodal ectoderm genes (Shah et al., 2020). Shah et al.

(2020) demonstrated significant morphological changes in the Xenopus tadpole inner ear due to the four variants; changes included reduction in the volume of otoliths, otic cartilaginous capsule, and hair cell-containing sensory patches. Building off such findings, this study focused on eya2 and prdm1 expression in the otic vesicle (OV) domain and compared the injected, mutant side of the embryo (at two different concentrations: 150 pg and 400 pg) with the un-injected control side.

V17E-150 reduced the OV expression of eya2 at a frequency similar to the Six1 wild-type at 150 pg (Six1WT-150; p > 0.10; Figure 4a). In contrast, V17E150 reduced prdm otic expression at the much higher frequency of 89.95%, compared to Six1WT-150 at 61.7% (p < 0.001; Figure 5a). The other variants — R110W-150, W122R-150, and Y129C-150—reduced eya2 OV expression less frequently than the wild-type but expanded OV expression more frequently compared to Six1WT-150 or V17E-150 (p < 0.00001; Figure 4a). These results indicate that, unlike the other variants, V17E has a different interaction mechanism with eya2. Furthermore, higher doses of the variants (400 pg) induced a higher frequency of broader prdm1 OV expression compared to Six1WT-400 (p < 0.00005; Figure 5b). Unlike eya2, the otic expression of prdm1 in the R110W-400 mutant was significantly different from the W122R-400 and Y129C-400 variants (p < 0.01, p < 0.001, respectively; Figure 5b), whereas the latter two variants had comparable results. Therefore, it is likely that V17E and the other three BOR mutations interact with prdm1 through different mechanisms, and that the two mutations thought to prevent DNA binding (W122R and Y129C) have similar effects.

CONCLUSION It was hypothesized that eya2 and prdm1 were significant target genes that play a role in BOS/BOR syndromes, as they were found to interact with Six1 and its formation of the Six1-Eya1 complex in previous studies. Six1 point mutations have been shown to have an inhibitory effect on Six1-Eya1 complex formation and its subsequent localization to the nucleus due to disruption in DNA binding, which ultimately has deleterious effects on overall ear development. This study confirmed the role of Six1 transcriptional activity in the expression of its target genes, eya2 and prdm1. Endogenous Six1 has a repressive effect on eya2, while having a more indirect impact on prdm1 expression. In the Six1 variant experiments, it is clear mutations that disrupt DNA

THE GW UNDERGRADUATE REVIEW • VOLUME 4 binding to the homeodomain and cofactor binding to the SIX domain have reductive effects on the expression of Six1’s target genes.

Data analyses support the hypothesis, as a majority of embryos showed significant reduction in expression of eya2 and prdm1 in each mutant. Further statistical analysis uncovered similarities between the W122R and Y129C mutants in reduction scores, possibly due to their shared role in the inhibition of DNA binding in the Six1-Eya1 complex. V17E was also shown to have different interactions with eya2 than other mutants.

Lower concentrations of R110W, W122R and Y129C had expanded otic vesicle expression, whereas V17E did not. Furthermore, higher concentrations of R110W had significantly different prdm1 expression in comparison to Y129C and W122R, possibly elucidating the differences between cofactor binding disruption and DNA binding. It is clear that R110W, W122R and Y129C showcase different interactions with prdm1 than with eya2, given the higher frequencies of increase in prdm1 expression. However, further investigation is needed to evaluate the differences in interaction mechanisms between Six1 and each target gene in order to confirm their involvement in BORSD. Our original study is in the process of evaluating additional candidate gene targets, including tspan13, spry1, zbtb16, and novel cofactor pa2g4. Preliminary findings on eya2 and prdm1 illustrate how dynamic the interactions are between different genes, creating greater phenotypic variability. This is quite reflective of what is seen in clinical settings, as there are variable presentations of BORSD in patients. While changes in gene expression are expected to result in anatomical deformations and dysfunction (such as the Six1 mutant decreasing otic vesicle volume, inducing hearing loss), the phenotype itself depends on the location of the mutation and which additional genes and cofactors it interacts with. Mutations of only two genes, Six1 and Eya1, have been confirmed to be causative of only half of the total BORSD cases. Therefore, investigating additional genes is imperative for comprehensive genetic screening of atrisk newborns. Earlier diagnosis will allow for swift and immediate interventions and therapies for hearing loss, such as cochlear implants and otologic surgery, which are important for preventing difficulties in language acquisition and even socialization (Moody et al., 2015).

Furthermore, once a child is diagnosed with BORSD, their kidney function must be closely monitored, especially since they may require kidney transplants and/or dialysis. Expanding our understanding of Six1 mutants and their interactions with putative gene targets will enhance genetic screening, highlighting the importance of continuing such research.

100 REFERENCES 1. Alsina, B., & Whitfield T. T. (2017). Sculpting the labyrinth: morphogenesis of the developing inner ear. Seminars in Cell & Developmental Biology, 65, 47–59. doi:10.1016/j.semcdb.2016.09.015.

2. American Speech-Language-Hearing Association.

(2005). The prevalence and incidence of hearing loss in children. Audiology Information Series.

3. Brugmann, S. A., & Moody, S. A. (2005). Induction and specification of the vertebrate ectodermal placodes: precursors of the cranial sensory organs. Biol Cell, 97, 303-319. doi:10.1042/BC20040515 4. Brugmann, S. A., Pandur, P.D., Kenyon, K.L., Pignoni, F., & Moody, S.A. (2004). Six1 promotes a placodal fate within the lateral neurogenic ectoderm by functioning as both a transcriptional activator and repressor. Development, 131, 5871-5881. doi:10.1242/ dev.01516 5. Carlson, B. M. (2014). & Piranit N. K. Human Embryology and Developmental Biology. Saunders/ Elsevier.

6. Eguchi, R., Yoshigai, E., Koga, T., Kuhara, S., Tashiro, K. (2015). Spatiotemporal expression of Prdm genes during Xenopus development. Cytotechnology, 67(4) 4, 711–719. doi:10.1007/s10616-015-9846-0.

7. Kochhar, A., Orten, D. J., Sorensen, J. L., Fischer, S. M., Cremers, C. W. R. J., Kimberling, W. J., Smith, R. J. H. (2008). SIX1 mutation screening in 247 BranchioOto-Renal Syndrome families: a recurrent missense mutation associated with BOR. Human Mutation, 29(4), 565–565. doi:10.1002/humu.20714.

8. Mehdizadeh, T. (2018). The developmental effects of Six1 point mutations on the expression of eya2 in Xenopus embryos [Bachelor’s Honors Thesis]. The George Washington University.

9. Moody, S. A. (2015). Discovering hearing loss genes.

Pan European Networks: Science and Technology, 16, 170.

10. Moody, S. A., Neilson, K.M., Kenyon, K.L., Alfandari, D., & Pignoni, F. (2015). Using Xenopus to discover new genes involved in Branchiootorenal Spectrum Disorders. Comp Biochem Physiol C Toxicol Pharmacol, 178, 16-24. doi: 10.1016/j.cbpc.2015.06.007 11. Moore, Keith L., et al. (2008). The Developing Human: Clinically Oriented Embryology. Saunders/Elsevier.

12. Nieuwkoop, P. D., & Faber, J. (1994). Normal table of Xenopus laevis (Daudin): A systematical and chronological survey of the development from the fertilized egg till the end of metamorphosis. Garland Publishing, 252.

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13. Patrick, Aaron N., Cabrera, J. H., Smith, A. L., Chen, X. S., Ford, H. L., & Zhao, R. (2013). Structure-function analyses of the human SIX1-EYA2 complex reveal insights into metastasis and BOR syndrome. Nature Structural & Molecular Biology, 20, 447-53. doi: 10.1038/nsmb.2505 14. Patrick, A. N., Schiemann, B. J., Yang, K., Zhao, R., & Ford, H. L. (2009). Biochemical and functional characterization of six SIX1 Branchio-oto-renal syndrome mutations. J Biol Chem, 284, 20781-20790. doi:10.1074/ jbc.M109.016832 15. Sandell, L. (2014). Neural crest cells in ear development. Neural Crest Cells: Evolution, Development and Disease. doi:10.1016/c2012-0-00698-9.

16. Shah, A. M., Krohn, P., Baxi, A. B., Tavares, A. L. P., Sullivan, C. H., Chillakuru, Y. R., Majumdar, H. D., Neilson, K. M., Moody, S. A. (2020). Six1 proteins with human Brachio-Oto-Renal mutations differentially affect cranial gene expression and otic development. Disease Models and Mechanisms. doi:10.1242/dmm.043489 17. Smith R. J. H. (1999). Branchiootorenal Spectrum Disorder. GeneReviews [Updated 2018 Sep 6].

18. Wilm, T. P. (2005). Essential roles of a zebrafish prdm1/blimp1 homolog in embryo patterning and organogenesis.

Development, 132(2), 393–404. doi:10.1242/dev.01572.

About the Author Sarah Ahsan is a senior from Dhaka, Bangladesh majoring in Biological Sciences with a minor in Human Anatomy. Working as an undergraduate research assistant at the Moody Lab, her research interests lie in developmental anatomy and fetal health with the goal of pursuing a medical career in obstetrics and gynecology. She is a Co-Director of Campaigns at GWU GlobeMed. With a passion for sexual and reproductive health, Sarah is also a grant writing intern for One Tent Health and a volunteer-in-training at HIPS.

Mentor Details Dr. Sally A. Moody is Professor and Chair of the Department of Anatomy and Cell Biology at the GW School of Medicine and Health Sciences.

She earned her Ph.D. in Neuroscience from the University of Florida and served a postdoctoral fellowship in Developmental Neurobiology at the University of Utah until 1983. After 9 years on the faculty of the University of Virginia, she moved her laboratory to GWU in 1992. For more than 30 years, Dr. Moody’s laboratory has focused on issues specific to the development of the nervous system, including cranial sensory structures, with the aim to uncover mechanisms that regulate neural cell fate and causes of birth defects.

102 KEYWORDS: income, taxation, public economics, migration, interstate, econometrics DOI: https://doi.org/10.4079/2578-9201.4(2021).10

Money Moves: An Analysis of Top Margin State Income Taxes and Interstate Migration AMANDA STIEBRIS INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS & ECONOMICS, ESIA ‘21, amandastiebris@gwu.edu

ABSTRACT Income tax increases have historically faced backlash, especially from the wealthy. Consequently, this group has lobbied intensely against these tax changes, arguing that such measures would ultimately hurt the state as they and many others would simply leave and take their tax revenue with them. However, these threats are not necessarily founded as a small number of high income earners leaving does not outweigh the revenue benefits of higher rates. To analyze the impact of top margin income tax rates on domestic migration, this paper examines U.S. Census state-to-state migration flow data alongside the think tank Tax Foundation’s top margin state income tax rates from 2008 to 2018. With this data, the study estimates a linear regression on panel data with time and state fixed effects, controlling for state living costs, employment prospects, income levels, and income tax burden. When these factors are accounted for, top tax rate does significantly negatively affect net state migration. Further, top tax rate exhibits a slightly positive relationship with net migration into the state such that a one percentage point increase in the top tax rate corresponds to nearly a 0.10% increase in state population through domestic migration. These results suggest that policymakers could likely raise taxes without fear of mass emigration or loss in overall tax revenue.

•

INTRODUCTION In September 2020, Jeffrey Gundlach, billionaire and founder of DoubleLine Capital, LP, threatened to leave California in wake of a proposal to increase the state’s top bracket income tax from 13.3% to 16.8% for marginal income over $5 million. He was not alone in this decision; Elon Musk, Joe Rogan, and Ben Shapiro joined him and other loud voices protesting tax increases (Mamudi & Alexander, 2020). These forms of public protest by wealthy individuals are often influential on policy decisions, as policymakers fear not only a growing trend of high-income taxpayers fleeing the state and causing a loss of tax revenue, but also further economic downfalls such as the loss of entrepreneurs creating jobs or moving their businesses out-of-state with them. However, the question remains as to the validity of this fear of outmigration due to increased taxes.

This question is highly prevalent regarding income taxes, as they are tied directly to one’s place of residency; taxpayers can thereby effectively alter their tax burden if they are willing to move, especially on the state level where there are few barriers to migration. As a result, policy makers tend to hesitate in raising state income taxes, which may theoretically create negative incentives that would decrease productivity or tax revenue through emigration. This hesitation is often reinforced when

those with the most wealth and influence threaten to move to avoid unfavorable policies, especially those related to state income taxes.

In the United States, income taxes, both on a federal and state level, are organized on a marginal rate system. This system is based upon the construction of income brackets— income ranges that are taxed at the same rate with the goal of taxing higher income brackets at higher rates.

Additionally, these taxes are marginal, so only the amount of income in a given bracket is taxed at that bracket’s rate. For example, if a person earns an income of $55,000, and their state has two income tax brackets, $0-$50,000 with a rate of 5%, and any income over $50,000 with a rate of 8%, then the person’s first $50,000 in income would be taxed at 5% and the remaining $5,000 would be taxed at 8%.

As of 2019, the top 1% of income earners in California had a minimum income of $514,694 and an average income of nearly $1.7 million (Loudenback, 2019). With these statistics, the imposition of the raise in the top margin income tax rate in California would reach less than 1% of its residents, diminishing the potential financial impact of the tax change on the average Californian. Thus, while this increase may dissuade high-income earners from moving to or staying in the state, lower income earners not affected by this rate change may be drawn to the benefits correlated with higher taxes, such as better social services. As such, the in-migration of

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this group could likely offset the population and revenue loss of high-income earners. However, California’s high top income tax bracket is an outlier in the country. As discussed in this paper, the highest income tax bracket of other states tends to be lower with top bracket rates applied at either one constant rate for all income or at a relatively low bracket level. In such cases, the median income of the state exceeds the top margin tax bracket level, so changes to the top state income bracket tax rate impact a majority of that state’s tax payers and, by extension, their families. Thus, it follows that changes in this tax rate could potentially lead to large effects on interstate migration.

Despite the common belief that people react to negative financial incentives, empirical evidence regarding trends in migration paints a more complicated picture. As Cebula and Alexander (2006) explore in their research, both economic and non-economic variables factor significantly into interstate migration trends within the United States, including income tax. Both Cebula and Alexander’s (2006) study and that of Cohen et al. (2014) argue that state income taxes play a significant role in domestic migration patterns, yet they disagree on whether the relationship is positive or negative.

This paper seeks to expand upon this discussion of whether changes in top margin state income taxes act as a significant factor in interstate migration and, if so, attempts to define the nature of that relationship. In doing so, I isolate the direct relationship between these two variables by controlling for other significant causal factors related to domestic migration. I estimate a linear analysis of the relationship between state income taxes and domestic migration while controlling for other economic incentives for migration such as cost of living, employment prospects, income distribution, and income tax burden. I find that when other economic incentives are captured, the real effect of top marginal state income tax rates on domestic migration is insignificant and slightly positive, meaning that higher tax rates correlate to a small increase in population the following year through domestic migration. Further, increases in this tax rate also exhibit a positive relationship with changes in income tax revenue. Thus, despite the loud cries of dissent from some unhappy taxpayers, policymakers and their states would likely benefit from raising taxes.

EMPIRICAL MODEL This study uses fixed effects of linear regression to analyze the impact of top bracket income taxes on interstate migration. Similar to Cohen et al. (2014), I utilize a linear model of interstate migration and state income tax following the basic form:

However, compared to Cohen and associates, I base the measure of interstate migration on net migration instead of outmigration and take top marginal tax brackets into consideration. By doing so, I account for pull factors in addition to push factors of migration to obtain a more complete image of migration patterns. Pull factors include those aspects of a state that encourage in-migration, such as increased employment prospects, whereas push factors consist of those that would encourage outward migration, such as higher unemployment or costs of living; moreover, the inclusion of tax brackets and rate-bracket interaction allows for the inclusion of the differences in application of the top margin income tax rate and tax burden across states and years, since states like Alabama have a top marginal tax bracket of $3,000, whereas the top bracket in California is $1 million. In this base model, the dependent variable NetMigrPropi(t+1) denotes the net number of individuals migrating into state i, including Washington, D.C., in year t+1 to account for the lagged time of migration as a proportion of the number of thousands of state residents in year t. SITaxit represents the top marginal state income tax rate levied in state i in year t. However, as other factors affect interstate migration in addition to state income taxes, other independent variables and fixed effects for both state and year are added to the model to avoid omitted variable bias.

By controlling for these factors of interstate migration, the direct effect of state income tax on migration can be isolated and analysed for significance. The other independent variables included are to account for other prominent factors in migration, including employment prospects, state income levels, cost of living, and income tax burden. Additionally, as state income taxes are separated by income brackets taxed at different rates, the highest marginal tax bracket in state i, SITBracit, is included to adjust for the differences in the application of the top margin income tax in state i.

Given the interconnectedness of tax rate and tax bracket, SITaxit*SITBracit is also included to account for how overall state income tax burden affects migration.

As areas with high unemployment and low job growth are expected to have a repelling effect on migration while areas with high job growth and low unemployment are expected to attract migration, employment incentives are controlled for in the model by including variables relating to unemployment rates, Unempit, and percent change of the employment level of state i in year t, EmpChit. A state’s wealth is accounted for with the inclusion of both median and mean income. Median income is denoted in the model

by MedIncit, and mean income is proxied by the per capita income of state i, denoted PCIncit. Further, cost of living is encapsulated through two variables, the regional price parity to measure the purchasing power in state i, and the housing price index as a measure of the changes in house costs per state from the year previous, represented

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104 both in-state and out-state migration data from the United States Census Bureau’s (2020c) State-to-State Migration Flows reports for 2009 to 2018. For 2019, I use Census data on domestic net migration from their report State Population Totals and Components of Change: 20102019 (United States Census Bureau, 2019).

In this analysis, state i’s in-migration is the sum of residents currently living in state i who lived in a different state the year before. Alternatively, out-migration for state i is the sum of the residents that lived in state i one year ago who are currently living in a different state. On the assumption that the full effects on migration are only visible after a lagged period of time, this variable is lagged one year, meaning that state income tax in year t are compared to the net state migration in year t+1. To find the proportional growth or decline of a state’s population caused by domestic migration, this net migration in year t+1 is divided by state i’s population in year t and scaled by one million to control for state size. Scaling up the proportion does not impact the significance of any variable but should increase the understandability of the subsequent coefficients of independent variables given how small the original proportions are. For example, the mean net proportional migration shown in Table 1, 3.14, would indicate a net migration as a proportion of 0.0000314 to one against the total population of that state in the previous year. A positive sign for net migration

by RPPit and HPIndexit respectively. Additionally, state and time fixed effects, represented by iand t respectively, are dummy variables included to account for factors unique to each state and year that only vary across state or over time. Thus, the comprehensive model employed in this study is represented by

By using a linear, multivariable model, I am able to determine how changes in state income tax rates directly affect the proportion of net migration into a state once other quantitative variables and differences between states and years are taken into account.

DATA This study utilized multiple data sources to measure the effect of state income tax on interstate migration for all fifty states in the United States as well as the District of Columbia. Raw data on net migration of a state is not publicly available, so the proportion of domestic interstate migration between 2009 and 2019 was calculated manually by subtracting out-state migration from in-state migration for each state and year. I utilize Variable

Mean

SD

Minimum

Median

Maximum

No. Entities

Net Migration Proportion

31.4

9,570

-89,800

748

20,800

561

Top Margin State Income Tax

5.60

2.91

0

5.99

13.3

561

Top Margin Tax Bracket

119,000

228,000

0

17,000

1,080,000

561

Median Income

54,900

9,820

35,100

54,000

86,300

561

House Price Index

348

105

186

317

787

561

Unemployment Rate

6.22

2.23

2.40

6.00

13.6

561

Employment Change

0.478

2.07

-6.80

0.700

6.30

561

Per Capita Income

45,300

8,940

29,900

43,800

81,200

561

Regional Price Parity

97.5

8.56

85.2

96.2

119

561

Percent Change State Income Tax Revenue

3.13

10.8

-34.5

4.10

61.5

440

Percent Change State Income Tax Rate

0.0675

17.9

-40.0

-2.12

66.7

69

TABLE 1. Variable Summary Statistics

Note. Adapted from multiple sources1,20,22-40

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20000 0 −20000 −40000 −60000 −80000

Net In-State Migration as Proportion of State Population (Scaled by 1 Million)

implies that more residents moved into state i than left Thus, per capita personal income roughly measures the mean income of the state. As the calculation for per capita in year t+1.

The state income tax rate and marginal tax bracket income includes non-income earners in the population, in this model are the top individual marginal state it is likely lower than true mean income.

Further, the unemployment rate is seasonally adjusted income tax rate and associated bracket from the Tax Foundation (2013, 2020), a think tank dedicated to to account for seasonal variations in unemployment, but collecting and studying data related to state and federal employment change, per capita income, and the housing taxes. The housing price index, developed by the U.S. price index are not, since they are less tied to seasonal Federal Housing Finance Agency (2020), measures the changes. Regional price parity for all goods data was average annual change in costs of sales or refinancings retrieved from the Bureau of Economic Analysis (2020). on the same property, making it a proxy for changes in Median income data was gathered from the U.S. Census housing costs within a state. The housing price index, Bureau (2020b) Historical Income Tables. The regional employment change, unemployment rate, and per capita price parity is a measure of the relative price level of income all originate from the St. Louis Federal Reserve all goods in a state compared to the national average, Economic Database (FRED) (United States Bureau of allowing for a comparison of price levels and cost of living Economic Analysis & FRED, 2020; United States Bureau across states. This parity is measured as a percentage of Labor Statistics, 2020a, 2020b; United States Census of the national price index where the overall U.S. price Bureau, 2020a). Employment change is measured as the parity index is equal to 100.

Table 1 displays the statistical summaries of each annual average percent change from year t-1 to year t of the employed population in state i. This variable acts as variable represented, including the dependent variable an indicator of the changes of employment opportunities of proportionate net in-state migration. As shown in the within a state over time. Per capita personal income bottom row of Table 1, this study contains 69 observations measures the total income earned by individuals in state for percentage change of state income tax rate. This Net In-State Migration vs. Top Margin State Income Tax Rate (2008-2018) i in year t divided by the total state population in year t. sample size allows for an examination of the relationship between tax rate changes and changes in total state income tax revenue in addition to the relationship between tax rate and migration. Figure 1 shows the initial relationship between net migration and state income tax from 2008 to 2018. As the scatterplot shows, there is no distinctive correlation between the two variables, only a slightly positive trend.

Figure 2 depicts the distribution of top margin state income tax brackets from 2008 to 2018. As visible in the pie chart, 43% of state income taxes have a top margin bracket at or below $10,000, and over half have a top bracket at or below $20,000. Given that the minimum median income for this time period in any state was $35,100, it follows that the majority of taxpayers qualify for their state’s top margin income tax. Figure 3 represents the geographical distribution of top margin income tax rates across the United States. Most states tax these top brackets at or below 8.00% (Figure 3). Thus, not only top margin bracket levels but also tax rates across the United States are relatively low compared to income.

Additionally, this study examines how overall state income tax revenue is affected by the relationship between top margin income tax rates and net migration.

As such, data on total fiscal year individual income tax revenue for each of the fifty states was gathered from the U.S. Census Bureau’s (2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018) State Government Tax 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 Database for years 2008 to 2018. However, the information State Income Tax Rate (%) regarding Washington, D.C.’s income tax revenue totals FIGURE 1. Net In-State Migration vs Margin State was inconsistent in this database, so D.C.’s revenue totals Income Tax Rate (2008-2018) were collected from the Office of the Chief Financial Note. Adapted from multiple sources20,22,40 Officer’s Revised Revenue Estimates reports from 2009 to

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106

FIGURE 2. Top Income Tax Brackets Across United States 2008-2018

Note. Adapted from State Individual Income Tax Rates, 2000-2014,

by Tax Foundation (2013), and State Individual Income Tax Rates for 2020, by Tax Foundation (2020).

FIGURE 3. Tax Rate Distribution by State, 2018

Note. Adapted from State Individual Income Tax Rates for 2020, by Tax Foundation (2020), and created with Mapchart.net.

2019. In both databases, the revenue totals are measured in thousands of dollars, so I multiplied each total by 1,000 to get the official total. Further, to accurately measure the effect of tax changes on revenue changes, both tax rate and tax revenue were transformed into a percent change from year t to year t+1. As shown in Figure 4, the percent change in tax revenue is measured against the percent change in tax rate.

Figure 4 omits all entities for which there was no change in tax rate from the year prior as to highlight the changes to income tax revenue when a change in top margin income tax rate is present. Additionally, as 2008 marks the beginning of data collection, and percent change in revenue and rate are lagged one year, data points for each state and D.C. for 2008 are also omitted from the scatter plot in Figure 4. Only 69 entities contain a change in tax

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rate from the year prior (Table 1). The line in Figure 4 represents the line of best fit for the correlation between changes in tax rate and changes in tax revenue.

RESULTS As shown below in Table 2, when only top margin state income tax is regressed against net in-state migration, the p-value of this regression is less than 0.001, suggesting that there is a statistically significant positive relationship between the two variables, if only with a small coefficient. When taken alone, this result is counterintuitive as it suggests that higher tax rate leads to greater net migration into the state. When the other economic controls are added, the p-value remains below 0.001, so the slightly positive relationship holds as statistically significant as well, even when fixed time effects are applied.

However, once fixed state effects are employed the significance of state income tax on net in-state migration diminishes, although the coefficient remains positive and even becomes increasingly positive as more variables and fixed effects are added (Table 2). A similar pattern occurs with the tax rate-bracket interaction variable. Although the interaction variable is negative, implying that state income tax burden has a negative correlation with net in-

state migration, the inclusion of state fixed effects reveals that the tax burden does not have a statistically significant impact on migration. While the correlation between tax rate-bracket interaction and net migration is negative, the coefficient, at -0.001, is very small, especially given that this coefficient is scaled by one million. Thus, once heterogeneities across states are accounted for, it is not possible to reject the null hypothesis. As such, the model suggests that there is an insignificant relationship between top margin state income taxes and net in-state migration, implying that increases in state income taxes do not cause a substantial outflow of residents from the state.

Additionally, the scatter plot in Figure 4 comparing changes in top margin state income tax rate against changes in state income tax revenues yields a positively sloped line of best fit. This positive correlation suggests that increases in tax rates correspond to increases in total income tax revenue for the state. This trend suggests two possibilities: either top income earners are not leaving the state in large numbers as tax rates on top income brackets are increased, or the net state population growth due to domestic migration is offsetting the tax revenue losses of the high income earners who left the state.

Change in State Income Tax Revenue (%)

60

40

20

0

−20

−25

0

25

50

Change in Top Margin Income Tax Rate (%)

FIGURE 4. Change in Tax Rate vs Change in Tax

Revenue, 2008-2018 Note. Adapted from multiple sources9-20,22,26-36

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108

Dependent variable: Net Migration as a Proportion of State Population (Scaled by 1 Million) (1)

(2)

(3)

(4)

(5)

(6)

286.751** (138.665)

666.099*** (162.179)

550.995*** (163.737)

572.571*** (165.452)

993.661 (630.040)

967.816 (635.075)

Top Margin Tax Bracket

--

0.0070.012* (0.006)

0.013* (0.006)

0.001 (0.007)

0.0005 (0.010)

(0.010)

Top Rate-Bracket Interaction

--

-0.002** (0.001)

-0.001** (0.001)

-0.002** (0.001)

-0.001 (0.001)

-0.001 (0.001)

Median Income

--

--

-0.010 (0.081)

-0.040 (0.085)

0.242** (0.105)

0.233** (0.111)

Per Capita Income

--

--

-0.114 (0.089)

-0.116 (0.096)

-0.101 (0.130)

0.106 (0.249)

House Price Index

--

--

8.355 (5.478)

6.742 (5.682)

-9.098 (11.221)

-14.587 (15.025)

Unemployment Rate

--

--

102.346 (262.964)

148.107 (315.758)

82.494 (265.164)

389.987 (391.547)

Change in Employment Level

--

--

858.370*** (214.825)

1,081.782*** (256.163)

150.107 (163.186)

240.250 (189.191)

Regional Price Parity

--

--

-259.462*** (93.518)

-222.427** (107.695)

-284.663 (320.224)

-338.422 (362.729)

−1,575.763* (875.462)

2,947.223*** (925.552)

24,007.520*** (5,810.714)

21,591.240*** (6,599.563)

16,888.520 (27,555.150)

15,416.060 (29,545.160)

State Fixed Effects

No

No

No

No

Yes

Yes

Time Fixed Effects

No

No

No

Yes

No

Yes

Observations

561

561

561

561

561

561

0.008

0.040

0.108

0.117

0.665

0.669

0.006

0.035

0.094

0.086

0.626

0.622

9,545.359

9,402.737

9,112.602

9,150.337

5,853.811

5,885.501

Top Margin State Income Tax Rate

Constant

R

2

Adjusted R

2

Residual Std. Error

TABLE 2. Regression Results

Note: *p<0.1; **p<0.05; ***p<0.01

ROBUSTNESS CHECKS Given the complex nature of migration, there are several areas of improvement in this study, including alternative ways to build the model. Such areas include assuming the relationship between state income tax and interstate migration is not linear but instead quadratic.

However, as shown below in Table 3, this change does not lead to income tax becoming a factor of significance for migration. Another format this model could take would be analyzing net state migration not as a proportion of total state population but instead as a numeric level—the raw net in-state migration. In this model, while the tax rate is insignificant, the effect of tax rate-bracket interaction on migration is significant with the p-value below 0.001, suggesting a causal effect of income tax burden on the net number of domestic migrants in a state. However, using a numeric value for migration rather than a proportion

skews the interpretation of the relationship between tax and migration. Even when accounting for the state’s residential population, the model would fail to fully encapsulate the magnitude of migration out of, or into, a state. For example, a net in-state migration of 100,000 would have a substantially different meaning if the state were California as opposed to Vermont. Thus, using a proportion of population allows for equal treatment of the effect of tax changes on migration, regardless of state size.

Furthermore, this model could also be run without the interaction between tax rate and tax bracket level, given how small the coefficient of the interaction is. However, the omission of the interaction variable does not lead to significance in tax rate (Table 3). While it does introduce significance to the tax bracket variable, it is important to note that top margin state income tax rate and tax

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SPRING 2021 • THE GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY Quadratic (1)

Net Migration (2)

No Interaction (3)

1,780.309 (1,886.449)

252.841 (1,691.450)

668.402 (507.179)

-60.366 (131.964)

--

--

Top State Income Tax Bracket

-0.003 (0.013)

0.095*** (0.027)

-0.007** (0.003)

Tax Rate-Bracket Interaction

-0.001 (0.002)

-0.013*** (0.003)

--

House Price Index

-13.509 (15.221)

32.421 (40.018)

-15.997 (14.911)

Median Income

0.230** (0.112)

0.335 (0.297)

0.228** (0.111)

Unemployment Rate

399.860 (392.457)

-2,978.174*** (1,042.841)

414.429 (390.151)

Change in Employment Level

238.981 (189.364)

1,006.080** (503.890)

240.732 (189.116)

0.100 (0.249)

-1.902*** (0.663)

0.099 (0.249)

-324.956 (364.213)

-1,778.612* (966.087)

-325.930 (362.237)

11,617.920 (30,712.590)

220,737.900*** (78,690.180)

16,574.970 (29,496.580)

State Fixed Effects

Yes

Yes

Yes

Time Fixed Effects

Yes

Yes

Yes

Observations

561

561

561

0.669

0.895

0.668

0.621

0.881

0.622

5,890.246

15,675.370

5,883.195

Variables Top Margin State Income Tax Rate Top Margin State Income Tax Squared

Per Capita Income Regional Price Parity Constant

R

2

Adjusted R

2

Residual Std. Error

TABLE 3. Alternative Model Regression Results Note: *p<0.1; **p<0.05; ***p<0.01

bracket level are not isolated variables; the combination of the two results in a measure of income tax burden. As such, while the interaction coefficient is relatively small, its inclusion is necessary for the accounting of tax burden.

In regard to the scatter plot depicting the correlation between changes in tax rate and tax revenue, another avenue for study could have been to include all of the entities for which the change in tax rate is equal to zero.

However, as those entities would include changes in state income tax revenue that are unrelated to changes in the tax rate, keeping these entities in the graph would skew the line of best fit. As such, it would become more difficult to interpret the correlation between tax rate and revenue with exogenous variables changing the income tax revenue. By omitting those entities with zero tax rate change, the scatter plot can isolate those instances

where changes in tax rate are relevant to changes in the tax revenue, allowing for a clear interpretation of the slope of the line of best fit.

This model focused primarily on economic controls for migration. This restriction opens up the possibility that the relationship between migration and income tax could change significantly when non-economic factors such as demographics or qualitative factors are considered.

However, historical data for demographic controls such as age and race composition of states is difficult to obtain.l Additionally, as this study focuses primarily on top bracket income tax, there is room for further study on the effect of average effective tax rate on interstate migration. However, due to legal restrictions, data on individual tax payments are not publicly available.

THE GW UNDERGRADUATE REVIEW • VOLUME 4 CONCLUSION Over 50% of the highest margin state income tax brackets in the United States are at or under $20,000 (Figure 2). Comparatively, the minimum state median income and per capita income for 2008 to 2018 is $35,100 and $29,900 respectively. Thus, measuring based on either median or mean income, the majority of American taxpayers are subjected to the top margin state income tax with the exception of states like California, New York, and New Jersey that have top income tax brackets at or over $1 million. As such, in most states, a change in the top margin income tax rate would have a relevant financial impact on the majority of their residents. Thus, it is realistic to assume that changes to the top margin tax rate could have an impact on migration decisions.

However, when other economic incentives, tax brackets, and the heterogeneities of each state and year are taken into account, top marginal state income tax rates exhibit an insignificant effect on net in-state migration. Thus, evidence does not support the argument that raising state taxes would lead to counterproductive results as taxpayers simply move out of the state to avoid the higher taxes. The lack of a significant relationship between net state migration and state income tax rates indicates that negative attitudes towards higher taxes are not by themselves strong enough incentives to provoke large-scale migration when these tax rates are increased.

While the positive coefficient associated with state income tax rates suggests that tax increases are associated with increased migration into the state, it is vital to recognize the small size of the coefficient. Numerically speaking, in this model, the coefficient for top margin state income tax rate is 967.816. This suggests that an increase of the top tax rate by one percentage point would correspond to a 0.097% increase in the state’s population due to domestic migration. This change is equivalent to a net in-migration of almost 968 people per million people in the state. As the coefficient of state income tax rate is only slightly positive and not significant, it is likely that the relationship between income taxes and migration is arbitrary and not causal.

Despite the lack of significance in the relationship between net migration and top margin tax rates, the question remains regarding who is migrating. A primary concern in this field of study is that the few who are migrating between states are top income taxpayers and that their migration out of a state would lead to a decrease in overall income tax revenue. However, the positive correlation between changes in tax rate and changes in total income tax revenue shown in Figure 4 supports the hypothesis that raising state income taxes will not lead to negative economic consequences through outmigration.

Because the relationship between tax changes and revenue changes is positive, it follows that the gains of additional tax revenue from increasing the top marginal

110 tax rate are not offset by a few high tax payers leaving the state to avoid taxes. As a result, the plot in Figure 4 suggests that there is a net positive gain regarding tax revenue for politicians to increase state income tax rates.

Several reasons encapsulate why the results presented in this study differ from previous literature on the topic of tax and migration. Both Cohen and Steindel’s study and Cebua and Alexander’s study focus heavily on noneconomic factors as causes of migration, and the former only reviewed the migration of taxpayers via data from the IRS, a subset of all domestic migration. It is possible that the inclusion of other economic factors not included in previous studies, particularly top marginal tax bracket and rate-bracket interaction, and differing measures of migration, allowed for this difference in results. However, it is also likely that the difference in results is due to the lack of definitiveness of the effect of state income taxes on migration.

The implications of these results could benefit policymakers. As the relationship between state income taxes and net migration cannot be determined to be significant, this opens room for policymakers to use state income taxes as a method for generating revenue to fund social programs. The positive correlation between tax changes and income tax revenue further supports this conclusion as it implies that states both do not lose residents through tax increases and are also successful in raising additional revenue through the increases. These conclusions are evident in practice as well, going back to the initial example of California and the vocal resistance to their upcoming tax change. While some wealthy residents like Elon Musk and Joe Rogan have followed through with plans to move to Texas in attempts to avoid the additional tax burden in California, others like Jeffrey Gundlach have already begun backtracking on their previous statements. As of December 2020, Gundlach has confirmed that, despite his earlier social media posts proclaiming his intention to vacate California directly due to the tax raises, he is not actually planning on packing up and moving out (Garber, 2020). If even those most directly affected by increasing top margin state income taxes are reluctant to uproot their lives and change locations to avoid higher taxes, it follows that those with fewer resources or those unaffected or less affected by top margin state income taxes would be even less likely to do so. As such, despite the wealthy’s flagrant attempts to manipulate tax policy through threats of relocation, their lack of follow-through and ability to influence others to follow their lead reveals an empty hand that policymakers should acknowledge and take advantage of in the discussion of income tax policy.

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13. Office of the Chief Financial Officer. (2013, February 22). Revised revenue estimates for FY 2013-2017.

DC.gov. https://cfo.dc.gov/node/433972

2. Cebula, R. J. & Alexander, G. M. (2006). Determinants of net interstate migration, 2000-2004. Journal of Regional Analysis and Policy, 36(2), 116-123. https:// doi.org/10.22004/AG.ECON.132323

14. Office of the Chief Financial Officer. (2014, February 27). Revised revenue estimates for FY 2014-2018.

DC.gov. https://cfo.dc.gov/node/787532

3. Cohen, R, Andrew, L, & Steindel, C. (2014). State income taxes and interstate migration. Business Economics (Cleveland, Ohio), 49(3), 176–190. https:// doi.org/10.1057/be.2014.25 4. Federal Housing Finance Agency. (2020). Alltransactions indexes (estimated using sales prices and appraisal data): States (not seasonally adjusted). https://www.fhfa.gov/DataTools/Downloads/ Documents/HPI/HPI_AT_state.txt 5. Garber, J. (2020, December 09). Billionaire Jeffrey Gundlach explains what could make him flee California. Fox Business. https://www.foxbusiness. com/markets/billionaire-jeffrey-gundlachexplains-what-could-make-him-flee-california 6. Loudenback, T. (2019, April 25). Here’s the income it takes for a family to be part of the 1% in every state.

Business Insider. https://www.businessinsider.com/ personal-finance/income-family-top-1-percentevery-state-2019-4 7. Loughead, K. (2021, February 17). State individual income tax rates and brackets for 2021. Tax Foundation. https://taxfoundation.org/ publications/state-individual-income-tax-ratesand-brackets/ 8. Mamudi, S., & Alexander, S. (2020, September 27).

Jeffrey Gundlach tells realtors in low-tax states to ‘give me a call’. Bloomberg Wealth. https://www. bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-09-27/ gundlach-tells-realtors-in-low-tax-states-to-giveme-a-call

15. Office of the Chief Financial Officer. (2015, February 27). Revised revenue estimates for FY 2015-2019.

DC.gov. https://cfo.dc.gov/node/1018672 16. Office of the Chief Financial Officer. (2016, February 26). Revised revenue estimates for FY 2016-2020.

DC.gov. https://cfo.dc.gov/node/1143557 17. Office of the Chief Financial Officer. (2017, February 28). Revised revenue estimates for FY 2017-2021.

DC.gov. https://cfo.dc.gov/node/1222821 18. Office of the Chief Financial Officer. (2018, February 28). Revised revenue estimates for FY 2018-2022.

DC.gov. https://cfo.dc.gov/node/1312711 19. Office of the Chief Financial Officer. (2019, February 28). Revised revenue estimates for FY 2019-2023.

DC.gov. https://cfo.dc.gov/node/1388381 20. Tax Foundation. (2013). State individual income tax rates, 2000-2014. https://taxfoundation.org/stateindividual-income-tax-rates/ 21. Tax Foundation. (2019, March 11). State individual income tax rates, 2000-2014. https://taxfoundation. org/state-individual-income-tax-rates/ 22. Tax Foundation. (2020). State individual income tax rates for 2020. https://taxfoundation.org/ publications/state-individual-income-tax-ratesand-brackets/ 23. United States Bureau of Economic Analysis, & Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. (2020). Per capita personal income. Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. https://fred.stlouisfed.org

9. Office of the Chief Financial Officer. (2009, February 25). Revised revenue estimates for FY 2009-2013. https://cfo.dc.gov/node/241512

24. United States Bureau of Labor Statistics. (2020a).

States and Puerto Rico: Seasonally adjusted. Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. https://fred.stlouisfed. org/release/tables?rid=112&eid=1195039

10. Office of the Chief Financial Officer. (2010, February 24). Revised revenue estimates for FY 2010-2014.

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25. United States Bureau of Labor Statistics. (2020b).

Employment level. Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. https://fred.stlouisfed.org

11. Office of the Chief Financial Officer. (2011, February 28). Revised revenue estimates for FY 2011-2015.

DC.gov. https://cfo.dc.gov/node/241442

26. United States Census Bureau. (2008). 2008 State government tax dataset. https://www2.census.gov/ programs-surveys/stc/datasets/2008/08staxcd.txt

12. Office of the Chief Financial Officer. (2012, February 29). Revised revenue estimates for FY 2012-2016.

DC.gov. https://cfo.dc.gov/node/241372

27. United States Census Bureau. (2009). 2009 state government tax dataset. https://www2.census.gov/ programs-surveys/stc/datasets/2009/09staxcd.txt

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28. United States Census Bureau. (2010). 2010 state government tax dataset. https://www2.census.gov/programssurveys/stc/datasets/2010/10staxcd.txt 29. United States Census Bureau. (2011). 2011 state government tax dataset. https://www2.census.gov/programssurveys/stc/datasets/2011/11staxcd.txt 30. United States Census Bureau. (2012). 2012 state government tax dataset. https://www2.census.gov/programssurveys/stc/datasets/2012/12staxcd.txt 31. United States Census Bureau. (2013). 2013 state government tax dataset. https://www2.census.gov/programssurveys/stc/datasets/2013/13staxcd.txt 32. United States Census Bureau. (2014). 2014 state government tax dataset. https://www2.census.gov/programssurveys/stc/datasets/2014/14staxcd.txt 33. United States Census Bureau. (2015). 2015 state government tax dataset. https://www2.census.gov/programssurveys/stc/datasets/2015/fy2015_flat_file.txt 34. United States Census Bureau. (2016). 2016 state government tax dataset. https://www2.census.gov/programssurveys/stc/datasets/2016/FY2016-Flat-File.txt 35. United States Census Bureau. (2017). 2017 state government tax dataset. https://www2.census.gov/programssurveys/stc/datasets/2017/fy2017_flat_file.txt 36. United States Census Bureau. (2018). 2018 state government tax dataset. https://www2.census.gov/programssurveys/stc/datasets/2017/fy2017_flat_file.txt 37. United States Census Bureau. (2019, December 30). State population totals and components of change: 2010-2019. https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/demo/popest/2010s-state-total.html 38. United States Census Bureau. (2020a). Release tables: Resident population by state, annual. Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/release/tables?rid=118&eid=259194#snid=259198 39. United States Census Bureau. (2020b, September 08). Historical income tables: Households. https://www.census. gov/data/tables/time-series/demo/income-poverty/historical-income-households.html 40. United States Census Bureau. (2020c, November 12). State-to-state migration flows. https://www.census.gov/ data/tables/time-series/demo/geographic-mobility/state-to-state-migration.html

About the Author Amanda graduated Magna Cum Laude in January 2021 with a double major in International Affairs and Economics. Her research interests are in public economics and public finance, focusing on tax policy. During her undergraduate career, Amanda had interned for the Office of Capital Markets at the U.S. Department of Treasury and been a Campus Ambassador for the Gift of Life Bone Marrow and Stem Cell Registry. She is an alumna of the Alternative Breaks Program, the Alpha Pi chapter of Alpha Delta Pi, and the Alpha chapter of the International Honors Society in Economics, Omicron Delta Epsilon.

Mentor Details Dr. Tara Sinclair earned her Ph.D. in Economics from Washington University in St. Louis in 2005. She teaches macroeconomics and econometrics, and enjoys introducing students to different ways to approach economic questions. Much of her personal research focuses on the role of recessions in economic models, forecasts, and policy. She also is co-director of the H. O. Stekler Research Program on Forecasting which hosts seminars and gives students the opportunity to get involved in forecasting research.

113 KEYWORDS: cardiovascular, fear conditioning, telemetry, biofeedback DOI: https://doi.org/10.4079/2578-9201.4(2021).05

Internal State-Dependent Conditioned Stimulus Delivery using Cardiovascular Telemetry in Mice BENJAMIN TURLEY 1, ADAM SWIERCZ 2, LAXMI IYER 2, PAUL MARVAR 2-3 1 NEUROSCIENCE & PSYCHOLOGY, CCAS ‘21 2 GWU DEPARTMENT OF PHARMACOLOGY AND PHYSIOLOGY 3 GWU DEPARTMENT OF PSYCHIATRY AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES, pmarvar@gwu.edu

ABSTRACT To further understand mechanisms of neuropsychiatric disease(s) and their impact on physiological systems, improved pre-clinical models and innovative methodology are needed to assess the internal physiological state of the animal in real-time. To address this challenge we developed a customizable software-based program for Ponemah™ that takes into account the animal’s diurnal and resting cardiovascular state in a home-cage environment. Using an integrated Pavlovian fear conditioning and cardiovascular telemetry approach in mice, we demonstrate for the first time a novel software application that can remotely trigger a conditioned stimulus (CS) (i.e., audible tone) based on the animal’s instantaneous cardiovascular state while in its home-cage environment. This new cardiovascular behavioral tool using cardiovascular telemetry extends the ability to quantify integrated physiological correlates of learned fear and may aid in further understanding mechanisms related to enhanced cardiovascular and autonomic arousal in fear and anxietybased disorders.

•

INTRODUCTION As demand grows for more sophisticated approaches to quantify and analyze integrated multi-modal and internal state-dependent rodent behaviors, new approaches for detection and quantification are needed. Wireless telemetry in freely moving rodents is commonly used to quantify and monitor cardiovascular autonomic responses.

This approach allows for in vivo monitoring of blood pressure, heart rate, electroencephalography, and nerve activity in conscious rodents. Integrating wireless telemetry approaches with animal behavioral measures (e.g., Pavlovian fear conditioning) provides a unique way to test the impact of pharmacological, behavioral (e.g., exposure therapy/extinction learning), or other non-invasive interventions (e.g., Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation) on cardiovascular autonomic responses to learned threats and emotional regulation.

Using a rodent model, our laboratory has begun to evaluate integrated cardioautonomic and behavioral measures (Swiercz et al., 2020); building upon the pioneering work of Joseph Ledoux, Oliver Stiedl, and others, (Burhans et al., 2010; Iwata & LeDoux, 1988; LeDoux et al., 1988; Schreurs et al., 2005; Stiedl et al., 2009; Stiedl & Spiess, 1997) demonstrating that heart rate, (Tovote et al., 2005) heart rate (HR) variability, (Stiedl et al., 2009) and blood pressure (Hsu et al., 2012) are reliable indicators of fear memory

acquisition that can be used to distinguish between nonspecific and associative threat responses.

For example, using an adapted conditioned cardiovascular testing paradigm, we recently showed that recall of a consolidated extinction memory reduces the conditioned cardiovascular response, which is influenced by contextdependent differences in blood pressure and HR sensitivity (Swiercz et al., 2018). Subsequent studies from our laboratory used the same conditioned cardiovascular testing paradigm to evaluate the role of an angiotensin receptor blocker, losartan, on conditioned cardiovascular threat responses independent of extinction learning (Swiercz et al., 2020). These studies provide an example of how using other physiological measures of inhibitory learning (conditioned cardiovascular responses) may help with quantifying the efficacy of extinctionbased interventions and their physiological effects.

While associated fear-based cardiovascular responses have been shown to be important physiological correlates of the expression of learned fear and threat responses (Gaburro et al., 2011), there is a significant amount of experimental variance implicit in current animal models. Retrieval of the fear conditioned response is often confounded by extraneous environmental factors, which may affect physiological state such as proximity to other animals, foreign scents, noise, or by unrelated

THE GW UNDERGRADUATE REVIEW • VOLUME 4 animal behavior like preening or nest building (Janssen et al., 2000; Kurtz et al., 2005). If cardiovascular data is collected during a period of abnormal activity, the potential for variance is unavoidable, as even slight changes in activity can introduce blood pressure and heart rate variation before presentation of a conditioned stimulus (CS) (Stiedl & Spiess, 1997). Moreover, natural circadian fluctuation in blood pressure may significantly alter results if sampled at different time points within the animal’s diurnal variation. Fear retrieval has also been shown to peak during the day and is highly dependent on light level (Chaudhury & Colwell, 2002). Additionally, blood pressure response to acute stress is differentially affected by circadian rhythms (Bernatova et al., 2002).

These factors can contribute to a longstanding difficulty in establishing an accurate baseline of the internal state of the animals in a home-cage environment.

In order to eliminate some of the confounds which may result from cardiovascular changes related to stress or other environmental factors, we developed a program for remote application in Ponemah™ (version 6.3) from Data Sciences International (DSI), St. Paul, MN, United States. The software is built as a standalone CS delivery scheduling software which can use any connected computer audio outputs in which conditioned stimuli (i.e., audible tones) can be delivered outside of a dedicated testing chamber in a home-cage environment. This software also has the functionality to receive and store live physiological data from Ponemah™ (version 6.3), allowing it to deliver CS tones dependent on the internal physiological state of the animal. This scheduling system does not require an experimenter to be present and can be used with multiple mice and several speakers of any variety, each with the option of running synchronous or asynchronous schedules for fixed, random, or statedependent intervals.

METHODS Animals All procedures were approved by the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee at The George Washington University and were in compliance with National Institutes of Health guidelines. An adult male (3–4 months old) C57BL/6J mouse from Jackson Laboratory (Bar Harbor, ME) was used. The animal was individually housed in a temperature and humidity-controlled polyethylene cage on a 12 hour light/dark cycle (lights off at 7 pm) and supplied with food and water ad libitum.

Telemetry HDX-11 transmitters Data Sciences International (DSI; St. Paul, MN) were subcutaneously implanted as previously described (Stiedl et al., 2004). A blood pressure catheter was placed into the left carotid artery and

114 advanced to the aortic arch. Animals recovered for 10 days after surgery before beginning behavioral experiments.

During telemetry recording, blood pressure signals were sampled at a rate of 500 Hz. Blood pressure, heart rate, and activity data were continuously collected during memory retrieval and memory testing. Blood pressure data was analyzed using Ponemah software version 6.3 (DSI).

Customized remote connection program integrated with Ponemah (version 6.3) The telemetry system and data acquisition software used was Ponemah (version 6.3), which has the ability to send telemetry information over Transmission Control Protocol (TCP). The CS delivery program communicates with Ponemah via TCP sockets and sends data packets in real time from Ponemah containing live physiological information on blood pressure, heart rate, and oxygen saturation, among others. The software processes and stores this data in addition to delivering the conditioned stimuli using native USB audio output channels (Figure 1A).

Software parameters and hardware for experimental set-up and testing The software was configured to deliver six 30-second tones (6 kHz) over a 24-hour period spaced evenly (three daytime and three nighttime). Minimum interval length between the tones was set to 120 minutes to prevent extinction. The software was programmed to deliver the audible tones only at a set resting level state of a mean arterial pressure (MAP) between 85 and 100 mmHg for at least 10 seconds. This was accomplished using TCP packets containing live cardiovascular data sent once per second.

A USB speaker (Powered Stereo Multimedia Speaker, HONKYOB) was wired inside the home-cage of the mouse and connected to the native USB input of the computer.

The home-cage was also surrounded by dense polyester soundproofing acoustic panels (SoundAssured; West Lafayette, IN, United States) on five sides, with the front left open to allow in light for the day/night cycle (Figure 1A).

Pavlovian fear conditioning and conditioned cardiovascular reactivity Auditory fear conditioning was performed as previously described (Stiedl et al., 2004; DSI, n.d.). Mice were individually habituated with the experimenter and conditioning chamber for 20- and 40-minute sessions on days one and two. Fear conditioning consisted of five trials of a conditioned tone (30 s, 6 kHz, 75 dB) coterminating with an unconditioned stimulus (US) foot

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shock (0.5 mA, 0.5 s,) spaced by 3 minute 30 second intertrial intervals. During fear conditioning, freezing behavior was calculated automatically using Freeze Frame 3.2 (Actimetrics; Wilmette, IL). Conditioned cardiovascular reactivity was assessed 24 hours after fear conditioning in telemeter-equipped animals in their home-cage using the software parameters and experimental set-up as described above and as shown in experimental paradigm (Figure 1B).

RESULTS Baseline cardiovascular and behavioral measures Following telemetry surgical recovery, baseline cardiovascular parameters were collected. Mice exhibited normal basal 24 hour blood pressure, heart rate, and diurnal variation. As shown in Figure 1B, following Pavlovian fear conditioning, expected acquisition of learned fear as measured by increased percent freezing over time was displayed. We next assessed the conditioned cardiovascular response in the home-cage environment using our customized software program

with multiple modifiable physiological parameters for remote triggering of a conditioned cardiovascular response (Figure 1A-B).

Software application and proof-of-principle methodology As demonstrated in Figure 2, the software application was pre-programmed to deliver multiple retrieval cues (5x CS/30 s audible tone) set within a cardiovascular threshold state (MAP 85-100 mmHg) across day and night periods. CS onset was pre-programmed to be triggered at all five scheduled CS parameters only when the mouse has a MAP within a preset parameter range (85-100 mmHg). The baseline was defined as the average mean arterial pressure 10 seconds before each CS was presented. On average over the 30-second tone, the mouse demonstrated a distinct response from baseline with an average change in MAP of 6.0 mmHg (SD = 4.7) and heart rate increased from baseline during the tone period by an average of 100 bpm (SD = 29.7) (Figure 3A-B).

The first scheduled tone exhibited a mean negative

FIGURE 1. Integrated behavioral telemetry system and experimental paradigm

A. Modified home-cage and communication of audio speaker to TCP connection with Ponemah™. 1. Home-cage with USB speaker setup. 2. Mouse with implanted telemeter 3. Computer running Ponemah™ server. 4. Computer running scheduling software.

B. Experimental sequence.

THE GW UNDERGRADUATE REVIEW • VOLUME 4

Audio Intervals

Parameter

Unit

Setting

Tone frequency

hz

6000

Tone length

seconds

30

Start time

time

4:00 PM

End time

time

4:00 PM

Number of tones

integer

6

Minimum interval length

minutes

120

Fixed interval

boolean

FALSE

boolean

FALSE

mmHg

10

mmHg

0

MAP time in range3

seconds

10

Server logging rate

seconds

1

Wait for telemetry cue4

boolean

TRUE

Synchronize tones

1

Telemetry

116

MAP trigger range Night time range shift

2

FIGURE 2. Customized software with modifiable physiological, time and interval dependent parameters 1. For multiple speakers, whether the CS schedule is shared or randomized 2. Shifting the parameter range up for the night time to account for diurnal mouse behavior 3. Time MAP must be in parameter range before a CS can be presented 4. Enables state-dependent CS presentation

blood pressure response for the 30-second presentation of the CS. However, as shown in Figure 3A, a sharp incline in blood pressure was recorded during the last 10 seconds of the CS, followed by a sustained elevation in blood pressure persisting over a minute following the cessation of the tone. A similar delay in response by ~20 seconds was found for CS 5. Both of these tones were scheduled during the animal’s resting period during the day, which may have affected the immediacy in response.

Interestingly, for conditioned stimuli presented during the animal’s active period (CS 2, 3, 4), the response was immediate. To further illustrate the software’s thresholddependent component and triggered CS onset and MAP response, Figure 4A-B provides a representative trace of a longer duration (> 10 minutes) highlighting this period. We also include a real-time recording of this software-initiated, CS-dependent MAP and HR response.

Overall, this data demonstrates novel application of a programmable software that can be used to remotely deliver conditioned stimuli (i.e., audible tone) within a preset cardiovascular parameter range (e.g., MAP 85100 mmHg) and takes into account a cardiovascular state-dependence for quantification of a conditioned cardiovascular response.

DISCUSSION Using an integrated Pavlovian fear conditioning and cardiovascular telemetry approach in mice, we demonstrate for the first time a novel software application that can remotely trigger a CS based on the animal’s instantaneous cardiovascular internal state while in its home-cage environment. This is the first study to our knowledge to demonstrate that a conditioned stimulus can be triggered based on the cardiovascular state of an animal. We show that this program accurately delivers a conditioned stimulus at a pre-scheduled time within a preset blood pressure parameter range. The data logging functionality of the program also revealed changes in mouse behavior related to its diurnal cycle and subsequent response to the CS. By taking into account environmental and cardiovascular states, the novel software application and experimental approach described here represent a new tool for quantifying the physiological effects of learned fear and/or time-dependent physiological responses to threat.

Adaptations to fear are most commonly assessed by changes in behavior, which are rapid, robust, and relatively easy to observe and quantify (Mahan & Ressler, 2012). Freezing behavior, for example, is the cessation of all movement aside from that caused by respiration.

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HR (BPM)

600

400

HR (BPM)

100 75

600

400

HR (BPM)

125 100 75

600

400

HR (BPM)

125 100 75

600

400

HR (BPM)

125 100 75

600

Time (sec.)

B.

120

80

100

60

40

0

120

100

400

0

CS 5

CS Duration

125

80

CS 4

75

60

CS 3

100

40

CS 2

125

20

CS 1

MAP (mmHg) MAP (mmHg) MAP (mmHg) MAP (mmHg) MAP (mmHg)

CS Onset

20

A.

Time (sec.)

Day/Night

Time Scheduled

Time Delivered

MAP Baseline (mmHg)

Δ MAP (mmHg)

HR Baseline (BPM)

Δ HR

CS 1

18:00:00

18:00:40

92.9

-0.72

616

58

CS 2

21:40:00

21:48:50

92.8

3.13

585

137

CS 3

1:20:00

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* The mouse never arrived in range at the time CS 6 was scheduled and the experiment ended before the CS could be delivered

FIGURE 3. Remotely scheduled experimental conditioned cue and cardiovascular response CS 1-5 with corresponding CS onset (red line) and CS duration (grey shading) for both mean arterial pressure (MAP) and heart rate (HR) over 120 second period.

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A. MAP Parameter Threshold CS Onset MAP in Range

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FIGURE 4. Example of triggered CS and conditioned cardiovascular MAP and HR tracing

Pre-programmed MAP threshold (hashed blue line). MAP within pre-programmed range (grey shade) and triggered CS onset (red) with corresponding conditioned MAP/HR reactivity (red shade).

This behavior is used to operationally define fear in Pavlovian models of fear conditioning. Freezing is centrally controlled and represents a complex defensive response that is accompanied by significant physiological adjustments. Although they are easily observed and well-characterized, purely behavioral readouts of fear responses provide little information about the internal changes taking place within an organism. This presents a compelling need for additional measures that reliably indicate the emotional state of animals (Lee et al., 2001; Stiedl et al., 2004). One way to address this is by either directly or indirectly monitoring alterations in cardiovascular and autonomic activity, which reflect physiological adjustments to changes in emotional state.

This software achieves this by using a parameter range to

ensure physiological state is within acceptable limits any time a conditioned stimulus is presented.

Our customizable program works with Ponemah™ and possesses several advantages in that it receives physiological input (i.e., blood pressure) for use in a conditioning schedule, as demonstrated here. Moreover, due to the flexibility and pervasiveness of the JavaScript/ TCP framework the software was built on, there are several ways it can be expanded for various other uses.

The experiment conducted used mean arterial pressure to determine the parameter range in which the CS would be delivered, but because the data packet sent by Ponemah™ also contains information on heart rate, separate systolic and diastolic blood pressure values, oxygen saturation (SpO2), and movement behavior, basic modification of the

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software could enable CS delivery based on several other physiological measures, including multiple indices at once. Use of the HDX-11 transmitters has also been listed

by Ponemah™ for use in other biopotential applications such as electroencephalography (EEG), use of which would allow real-time neurofeedback dependent only on packet rate (DSI Guidelines for Biopotential Applications, n.d.). Additionally, modification of the software could allow communication with other hardware beyond the built-in speaker array for delivery of other conditioned or unconditioned stimuli, such as a programmable drug delivery apparatus.

This study was conducted under several limitations.

Use of one animal increases the potential for variability in the conditioned cardiovascular fear response, however the CS-dependent cardiovascular reactivity data here are consistent with our previous work and others (Swiercz, 2018). Moreover, the focus of this paper is on the novel methodology and application for cardiovascular behavioral studies. The experimental design included multiple CS delivered tones, which increases the possibility that the conditioned response of the mouse may undergo some level of extinction over time, especially considering this new methodology delivers the CS in the home-cage and only when MAP is constrained within a normalized range. This may increase association of the CS with an inherently lower stress physiological state. However, fear response was not found to show any signs of extinction over the course of the experiment.

Data from the Ponemah™ telemetry system would also occasionally experience packet loss with unknown cause, sometimes for five or more minutes. This connection problem did not happen often and never when a CS was scheduled to be delivered and so was not considered detrimental to the data collection. If this issue were to occur during live analysis of blood pressures, the software automatically considers data not received to be out of parameter range. Finally, this software application also incurs the inherent possibility that a scheduled CS may not be delivered because of parameter range constraints, as demonstrated by the sixth scheduled CS during this proof-of-concept. This represents a useful aspect of the software, as identification that the baseline variability of the vital sign in question was beyond what could be useful to experimenters allowed the CS to be rejected automatically, increasing confidence in the resultant data.

There are many future applications for this software application approach to aid in further investigating the cardiovascular physiological responses to fear and threat stimuli. Although mean arterial blood pressure was used in the current study, basic modification of Ponemah™ software could enable CS delivery based on several other physiological measures (alone or simultaneous) as described above and including oxygen saturation (SpO2), movement behavior, and heart rate. Furthermore, in

response to threat or acute stress, as observed during the fight-or-flight response, animals exhibit a sharp rise in blood pressure and heart rate (Kayaba et al., 2003). This application enables such a response to be more acutely studied using set physiological parameter ranges. For example, one can measure the degree to which an out-ofrange blood pressure or heart rate modifies fear response.

Conversely, it could also allow for CS presentation during low blood pressure for extended periods when the animal is in its non-active, non-threat, resting or sleep state. Understanding the impact of conditioned threat stimuli on the cardiovascular system at different stages of physiological and non-physiological arousal and day/night variations could also be studied, which has translational applications for further understanding mechanisms related to physiological co-morbidities (e.g., cardiovascular disease and sleep disorders) associated with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Overall, these future applications are grounded in the basis for expanding the current understanding and quantification of monitoring real-time physiological effects of fear or threat learning (Seligowski et al., 2020) and the impact and role of cardiovascular arousal.

CONFLICTS OF INTEREST STATEMENT The authors declare no conflict of interest.

FUNDING This research and NIH1R01HL137103-01.

PJM

was

supported

by

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS We thank the animal care and veterinary staff at the George Washington University for maintaining the health and well-being of our research subjects. We would like to acknowledge The George Washington University School of Public Health Genomics Core for the library preparation and sequencing services performed. The authors would also like to thank Dr. Shara Grant for her insightful comments in the early development of this paper.

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REFERENCES 1. Bernatova, I., Key, M. P., Lucot, J. B., & Morris, M. (2002). Circadian differences in stress-induced pressor reactivity in mice. Hypertension, 40(5), 768–773.

2. Burhans, L. B., Smith-Bell, C., & Schreurs, B. G. (2010). Effects of extinction on classical conditioning and conditioning-specific reflex modification of rabbit heart rate. Behavioural Brain Research, 206(1), 127–134.

3. Chaudhury, D., & Colwell, C. S. (2002). Circadian modulation of learning and memory in fearconditioned mice. Behavioural Brain Research, 133(1), 95–108.

4. DSI Guidelines for Biopotential Applications. (n.d.).

Retrieved January 30, 2021, from https://web. archive.org/web/20200815165220/http://support. datasci.com/hc/en-us/articles/115004317348 5. Gaburro, S., Stiedl, O., Giusti, P., Sartori, S. B., Landgraf, R., & Singewald, N. (2011). A mouse model of high trait anxiety shows reduced heart rate variability that can be reversed by anxiolytic drug treatment. The International Journal of Neuropsychopharmacology / Official Scientific Journal of the Collegium Internationale Neuropsychopharmacologicum, 14(10), 1341–1355.

pressure measurement in experimental animals: a statement for professionals from the Subcommittee of Professional and Public Education of the American Heart Association Council on High Blood Pressure Research. Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis, and Vascular Biology, 25(3), e22–e33.

11. LeDoux, J. E., Iwata, J., Cicchetti, P., & Reis, D. J. (1988). Different projections of the central amygdaloid nucleus mediate autonomic and behavioral correlates of conditioned fear. The Journal of Neuroscience: The Official Journal of the Society for Neuroscience, 8(7), 2517–2529.

12. Lee, H. J., Berger, S. Y., Stiedl, O., Spiess, J., & Kim, J. J. (2001). Post-training injections of catecholaminergic drugs do not modulate fear conditioning in rats and mice. Neuroscience Letters, 303(2), 123–126.

13. Mahan, A. L., & Ressler, K. J. (2012). Fear conditioning, synaptic plasticity and the amygdala: implications for posttraumatic stress disorder. Trends in Neurosciences, 35(1), 24–35.

14. Seligowski, A., Merker, J., Swiercz, A., Park, J., Marvar, P. M., Ressler K. J., & Jovanovi, T. (2020). Examining the Cardiovascular Response to Fear Extinction in a Trauma-Exposed Sample. Journal of Psychiatric Research, 124, 85–90.

6. Hsu, Y.-C., Yu, L., Chen, H.-I., Lee, H.-L., Kuo, Y.-M., & Jen, C. J. (2012). Blood pressure variations real-time reflect the conditioned fear learning and memory.

PloS One, 7(4), e32855.

15. Schreurs, B. G., Crum, J. M., Wang, D., & SmithBell, C. A. (2005). Conditioning-specific reflex modification of rabbit (Oryctolagus cuniculus) heart rate. Behavioral Neuroscience, 119(6), 1484–1495.

7. Iwata, J., & LeDoux, J. E. (1988). Dissociation of associative and nonassociative concomitants of classical fear conditioning in the freely behaving rat.

Behavioral Neuroscience, 102(1), 66–76.

16. Stiedl, O., Jansen, R. F., Pieneman, A. W., Ogren, S. O., & Meyer, M. (2009). Assessing aversive emotional states through the heart in mice: implications for cardiovascular dysregulation in affective disorders.

Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews, 33(2), 181–190.

8. Janssen, B. J., Leenders, P. J., & Smits, J. F. (2000).

Short-term and long-term blood pressure and heart rate variability in the mouse. American Journal of Physiology. Regulatory, Integrative and Comparative Physiology, 278(1), R215–R225.

9. Kayaba, Y., Nakamura, A., Kasuya, Y., Ohuchi, T., Yanagisawa, M., Komuro, I., Fukuda, Y., & Kuwaki, T. (2003). Attenuated defense response and low basal blood pressure in orexin knockout mice. American Journal of Physiology. Regulatory, Integrative and Comparative Physiology, 285(3), R581–R593.

10. Kurtz, T. W., Griffin, K. A., Bidani, A. K., Davisson, R. L., Hall, J. E., & Subcommittee of Professional and Public Education of the American Heart Association Council on High Blood Pressure Research. (2005).

Recommendations for blood pressure measurement in humans and experimental animals: part 2: blood

17. Stiedl, O., & Spiess, J. (1997). Effect of tonedependent fear conditioning on heart rate and behavior of C57BL/6N mice. Behavioral Neuroscience, 111(4), 703–711.

18. Stiedl, O., Tovote, P., Ogren, S. O., & Meyer, M. (2004). Behavioral and autonomic dynamics during contextual fear conditioning in mice. Autonomic Neuroscience: Basic & Clinical, 115(1-2), 15–27.

19. Swiercz, A. P., Iyer, L., Yu, Z., Edwards, A., Prashant, N. M., Nguyen, B. N., Horvath, A., & Marvar, P. J. (2020). Evaluation of an angiotensin Type 1 receptor blocker on the reconsolidation of fear memory.

Translational Psychiatry, 10(1), 363.

20. Swiercz, A. P., Seligowski, A. V., Park, J., & Marvar, P. J. (2018). Extinction of Fear Memory Attenuates

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21. Tovote, P., Meyer, M., Pilz, P. K. D., Ronnenberg, A., Ogren, S. O., Spiess, J., & Stiedl, O. (2005). Dissociation of temporal dynamics of heart rate and blood pressure responses elicited by conditioned fear but not acoustic startle. Behavioral Neuroscience, 119(1), 55–65.

About the Author Ben Turley is a senior from Virginia studying Neuroscience and Psychology. He works as an intern and software developer in a behavioral neuroscience and pharmacology lab where he studies the relation of angiotensin II receptor agonists to memory reconsolidation for PTSD treatment. He also works as a neurofeedback technician where he specializes in the treatment of trauma and previously worked as a psychiatric counselor for the Psychiatric Institute of Washington. On the side, Ben competes in boxing and jiu jitsu and spent a short stint as a cheerleader for George Washington University.

Mentor Details Dr. Paul Marvar is an Assistant Professor at the GW School of Medicine & Health Sciences. His research is focused on understanding the link between stress and anxiety disorders (i.e., Posttraumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD) and increased cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk. The laboratory specializes in utilizing multi-disciplinary approaches that combine integrated physiological, molecular, analytical and behavioral neuroscience tools to examine neuroendocrine (i.e., renin angiotensin system), autonomic nervous system and inflammatory pathways in PTSD-related CVD. The basic science pre-clinical research funding is complemented by translational clinical research funding focused on identifying new therapeutic targets and opportunities for treatment for PTSD and co-morbid CVD.

the gw

SCOPE The GW Scope is the online news edition of the GW Undergaduate Review, keeping the George Washington University up to date with important events and advancements in science and policy, including related research at GW. We seek to engage the GW community with the intersection of science with modern society, including policy, culture, and the future.

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Time to put women back in STEM - where they rightfully belong

BY DHATRI BADRI

Can you think of a female scientist from history?

Chances are that you can name Marie Curie or Ada Lovelace: Curie, the two-time Nobel Prize-winning scientist who discovered radioactive elements, and Lovelace, a mathematician who wrote the first algorithm for an early computing machine. Yet, we have no problem identifying several male scientists such as Aristotle, Isaac Newton, or Charles Darwin in history. If you do not recognize these names, you might be more familiar with Galileo Galilei, Albert Einstein, and Stephen Hawking.

Why is it that their names roll off the tongue so easily, yet it takes a lot more effort to name female scientists?

Is it because history was written from the lens of powerful white men? Or is it that women were written out of history—robbed of their rightful place due to their gender? It is common knowledge that women were not given the same social or economic rights as men, with that standard only changing fairly recently. Not until 1962, a mere 59 years ago, was Marguerite Perey, the first woman physicist, admitted to the prestigious Académie des Sciences in France—an honor denied to her mentor, Curie. Female participation in the world of science has become a new field of study in higher education, but is

this truly a new phenomenon? As a woman and student in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM), how do I pay homage to female scientists without looking back at these very women who made such opportunities possible? Is women’s participation in science a result of recent developments in equality or have women been contributors—and indeed, leaders—in the field of science throughout the last two centuries?

Even before the early civilizations of Greece and Rome, women were known to have practiced medicine in ancient Egypt (Ferry, 2010). Described on her tomb as “the chief physician,” Merit Ptah was a well-known figure in ancient Egypt; she is known as the first female doctor in the history of the field of medicine as well as being the first recognized female scientist (Kwiecinski, 2020). In ancient Greece, philosophical and medical discussions around the nature of health and diseases were originally pursued by males. During the last decades of the Roman Empire, however, Hypatia of Alexandria emerged as a symbol of learning and science. She followed in her father’s footsteps as a professor of mathematics and philosophy and rose to be the head of her city’s Neoplatonist school of philosophy. According to Socrates, students flocked to hear her lectures (Sheldon, 2018). In the Middle Ages, most notable female scientists and writers were indebted to the men they associated with for their educational outlets or resources (Mahaffey A., 2000). Sophia Brahe, a sixteenth-century Danish astronomer, started as her brother’s assistant. Sophia and her brother recorded accurate positions of the planets in the sky in the late 1500s. Even though Sophia was instrumental in gathering

THE GW UNDERGRADUATE REVIEW • VOLUME 4 data and making astute observations, it was her brother who was regularly recognized for their work and who also became the subject of several books and the namesake of the greatest planetarium in Denmark (Mahaffey A., 2000).

During the early 17th century, the option to pursue higher studies was only available to the elite and wealthy.

Margaret Cavendish, the Duchess of Newcastle, attended a meeting of the newly formed Royal Society of London in 1667. At a time when most females wrote under a male pseudonym, she wrote under her own name in several disciplines including experimental philosophy—known today as physics. During the Age of Enlightenment, more opportunities opened up for women. Laura Bassi, a Newtonian physicist at the University of Bologna in Italy, was appointed to professorships in both anatomy and experimental philosophy—making her the first woman in the world to hold such posts. Meanwhile, in France, Émilie du Châtelet and Sophie Germain, mathematicians of high social status, were able to work independently and receive the recognition of their male peers (Petrovich, 1999).

Around the same time, William Herschel, a German-born British astronomer, made his sister, Caroline Lucretia Herschel, his head assistant. She performed calculations for her brother’s studies, discovered numerous comets on her own, and published a complete revision of the star catalog. King George III awarded pensions to her and her contemporary Mary Somerville, a Scottish mathematician and astronomer, for their work. They were both elected honorary members of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1835 (Ferry, 2010).

Women in Europe and the United States were actively fighting for the right to the same education as men throughout the 19th century. Since women did not have access to education in their native countries, they had to seek educational opportunities elsewhere. Elizabeth Blackwell was born in Britain but immigrated to the US in 1832 to obtain a medical degree and was the first woman to do so. Meanwhile, Russian mathematician Sofya Vasilyevna Kovalevskaya was the first woman in modern Europe to earn a doctorate in mathematics. She went on to earn a degree at a German university and later attained a professorship at the University of Stockholm in Sweden (Ferry, 2010).

The founding of women’s colleges in both the UK and the US at the turn of the 19th century and its acceleration in the 20th century established a clear career path for women scientists. Although few women were able to practice as individual scientists, several benefited from the “harem effect” (Rossiter, 1980), a scenario where male scientists employed large groups of women assistants.

During this period, Williamina Paton Stevens Fleming and Annie Jump Cannon classified stars for American physicist and astronomer Edward Pickering at the Harvard college observatory (Ferry, 2010). British botanist and geneticist Rebecca Saunders and biochemist Muriel Wheldale contributed to the foundation of modern genetics

124 through their work with biologist William Bateson while at the University of Cambridge in England. Saunders and Wheldale received their training in the Balfour Biological Laboratory for Women, a research facility established specifically for women students at Cambridge because females were excluded from the university’s other laboratories (Ferry, 2010). As a result of the establishment of these labs, women were often paired up with men to ensure they were taken more seriously. Nowhere is this more famous than the husband-wife duo of Polish-born French physicist Marie Curie and her husband Pierre Curie, who shared the Nobel Prize for physics in 1903.

Marie Curie’s later discovery of new radioactive elements polonium and radium won her the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1911. She became the first woman to win a Nobel Prize and the first person to win the award in two different categories.

Curie’s accomplishments were a result of her husband’s guidance; without him, she could not have conducted pioneering research in radioactivity. We can look to history to offer some explanation as to why science still has a masculine bias. For starters, science has been traditionally viewed as a body of knowledge rather than an activity or a creative process. This inherently ignores women’s contribution as collaborators, focusing instead on the facts produced by big discoveries—and the men who made them famous. Curie was attacked in the media for allegedly taking credit for her husband’s work (Jones, 2018). Similarly, an obituary in Nature in December of 1923 criticized Hertha Ayrton, a physicist and electrical engineer who won the Royal Society’s Hughes Medal for original research in 1906, for neglecting her husband. The obituary stated that she should have “put him into carpet slippers” and “fed him well” so he could focus on his scientific pursuits instead of focusing on her research.

Why were women subjected to such traditional hierarchical assumptions of being seen only as supporters and helpers to men? Is this why they were absent from narratives of science in the first place? One reason is that women do not “fit the image” of a scientist. The notion of a lone male genius researcher is alarmingly persistent (Clark, 2017). Why is that? Londa Schiebinger states the most ancient of explanations: women just cannot do science as well as men (Schiebinger, 1993).

Known as biological determinism, this theory claims that something in the “physical, psychological, and intellectual nature of women prohibits them from producing great science” (Schiebinger, 1993). We can trace ideas behind women’s social inferiority to Aristotle’s claims of her supposed biological inferiority. In the Eurocentric world, Hippocrates, Aristotle, and Galen painted a picture of the inferior social status of women which held for centuries.

Aristotle contended that women are colder and weaker than men as they do not have sufficient heat to “cook” (warm-up) the blood and purify the soul (Schiebinger, 1993). During the late 18th and 19th centuries, craniologists

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tried to correlate sexual differentiation with intellectual achievement by measuring the skull. Anatomists postulated that the bigger male skull contained a larger and more robust brain. In the mid-19th century, Darwinists invoked evolutionary biology to explain that a woman was actually a man whose evolution—both physical and mental—had been halted in a primitive stage (Schiebinger, 1993).

Aristotle was not the only scientist to have held prejudiced views against women; Charles Darwin is also guilty of it. Why is it that we do not discuss Darwin’s blatant sexism during our introductory biology classes in college?

Is it because we choose to concentrate on the big idea of evolution and neglect the nitty-gritty—that women were considered inferior to their male equivalents? One person, Antoinette Brown Blackwell—a woman—did challenge Darwin’s views on evolution. She sent him a copy of her first book, titled Studies in General Science. He thanked her personally for her book and noted that “[she] quote[d] some statements made by [him] and very little known to the public” (Rubin, 2017). Darwin made one mistake in his response; his letter was addressed, “Dear Sir.” Although Blackwell did not acknowledge this admittedly major oversight, she would address the assumption that learning is only performed by men in her second book—one aimed squarely at Darwin and other elite male scientists of his time. Darwin argued that evolution made man “superior” to woman. To Darwin, superiority stemmed from the intellectual and artistic realm (Rubin, 2017). He wrote, “If two lists were made of the most eminent men and women in poetry, painting, sculpture, music—comprising composition and performance, history science and philosophy … the two lists would not bear comparison” (Rubin, 2017). Blackwell, who had dedicated her life to promoting women’s equality, could not tolerate Darwin’s conclusions. She penned what would become the first published feminist critique of Darwin by proving that many of his claims were not only morally insulting but altogether unscientific. To refute the false claims made by Darwin, she knew it was vital that the men had “a feminine viewpoint.” She believed that male scientists stood on “a learned masculine eminence, looking from their isolated male standpoints through their men’s spectacles and through the misty atmosphere of entailed hereditary glamour” (Rubin, 2017). Blackwell was right —in 1990, Amy Parish, a primatologist, wrote her thesis on how Bonobos behaved in a matriarchy, which subsequently challenged traditional evolutionary theory (Leprince-Ringuet, 2018).

She set the stage for Darwinian feminism: the destruction of Darwin’s claims that gender inequalities are directly correlated to biological differences that make women less intelligent (Brilmyer, 2017).

Why was it difficult to see women as anything more than inferior? The historian Margaret Rossiter offers an explanation. She dubs this systemic bias against women as the “Matthew Matilda Effect” (Rossiter, 1993). The

“Matilda effect” is a female account of the previously established “Matthew effect,” which sociologist Robert K. Merton described as a tendency to give distinguished scientists more credit than their lesser-known colleagues, even if their accomplishments are similar (Rossiter, 1993).

Rossiter wanted to bring to attention “that the more women worked the more the men around her profited and the less credit she got.” However, World War II brought social changes to the positions women undertook in the STEM fields, roles that were previously more likely to be occupied by males. Isabella L. Karle, an American crystallographer, developed a means to separate plutonium chloride from impure plutonium oxide while working on the Manhattan Project. American Biologist Rachel Carson worked for the US Bureau of Fisheries as an aquatic biologist, and American mathematician Grace Murray Hopper worked for the U.S. Navy as one of their first computer programmers. Unlike Hopper and Carson, who retained their positions following the end of World War II, many women who worked in the war returned to the domestic sphere. Nevertheless, the idea that women were mentally, physically, or emotionally unfit for scientific work, a perception that had existed since ancient times, was no longer sustainable. Beginning in the 1960s, when the women’s movement in the 20th century was close to its peak, women campaigned for and finally won equal rights in education and employment in 1972. The growing accessibility of effective birth control methods allowed women to plan their families as well as their futures. These social changes had a major impact on women, especially those seeking higher education. There was an increase in the number of female students choosing careers in physics, chemistry, and mathematics, as well as law and business. Some female researchers were also recognized internationally for their contributions, such as British crystallographer Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin and American geneticist Barbara McClintock, who respectively made significant scientific developments that were acknowledged by the Nobel committees (Ferry, 2010).

While some women were internationally recognized for their achievements, others only found recognition after their male counterparts had reaped the benefits first; unfortunately, even more, went unrecognized altogether. While Lise Meitner, an Austrian-born physicist, calculated the energy that would be released by splitting a uranium atom, it was her male colleague, German chemist Otto Hahn, who won the 1944 Nobel Prize in chemistry for the discovery (Knutsen, 2017).

Meitner and her other colleague, Fritz Strassmann, who also contributed to the discovery, were recognized with the 1966 Enrico Fermi Award which they shared with Hahn. The notable British scientist Rosalind Franklin took crucial X-ray images of DNA that enabled male biochemists James Watson and Francis Crick to illustrate the helical nature of the molecule. Franklin’s significant

THE GW UNDERGRADUATE REVIEW • VOLUME 4 contribution to Watson and Crick’s discovery, for which they received the 1962 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine, was unmentioned and ignored. Lastly, Jocelyn Bell Burnell, a British astronomer, discovered regular pulses of radio waves in space in 1967 (Drake, 2018). Burnell and her thesis adviser, astrophysicist Antony Hewish, also reported the pulses emitted by cosmic objects known as pulsars. Despite playing an integral part in this discovery by building the radio telescope which enabled Hewish and radio astronomer Sir Martin Ryle to receive the 1974 Nobel Prize for Physics, Burnell went unrecognized.

These examples barely scratch the surface of the women that have been lost to the history of STEM. It is evident that women’s participation in the STEM field is neither new nor born as a result of the achievement

126 of the modern world; it is, in fact, ancient. STEM does not need to be a masculine or feminine field—it needs to be a field welcoming of all. STEM does not need to privilege women; it needs to free itself from centuries of deformation that excluded half of humanity from its ranks. These women overcame societal barriers and expectations of their generation and paved the way for future scientists, engineers, and mathematicians. Today, women are being given some of the recognition they deserve. NASA recently decided to name its Washington D.C. headquarters after the first African American female engineer, Mary W. Jackson (Inclán & Rydin, 2020). Women have been in the shadows far too long—it is time to bring them out and give them their rightful place. It is time to put women back in STEM— where they rightfully belong.

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2. Clark, K. (2017, Dec). The Conversation. Retrieved from Myth of the genius solitary scientist is dangerous: https://theconversation.com/myth-ofthe-genius-solitary-scientist-is-dangerous-87835 3. Drake, N. (2018, September 6). National Geographic . Retrieved from Meet the Woman Who Found the Most Useful Stars in the Universe: https://www. nationalgeographic.com/science/article/newsjocelyn-bell-burnell-breakthrough-prize-pulsarsastronomy 4. Ferry, G. (2010, December 22). Britannica. Retrieved from https://www.britannica.com/topic/Womenin-Science-2100321 5. Inclán, B., & Rydin, M. (2020, June). NASA. Retrieved from NASA Names Headquarters After ‘Hidden Figure’ Mary W. Jackson: https://www.nasa.gov/ press-release/nasa-names-headquarters-afterhidden-figure-mary-w-jackson/ 6. Jones, C. (2018, Dec). The Conversation. Retrieved from Women have been written out of science history – time to put them back: https:// theconversation.com/women-have-been-writtenout-of-science-history-time-to-put-themback-107752 7. Knutsen, E. (2017, August 2). Medium. Retrieved from This brilliant woman pioneered nuclear technology, but her male colleague got a Nobel Prize for it: https://medium.com/s/the-matilda-effect/lisemeitner-matilda-effect-74c19c65d944 8. Kwiecinski, J. (2020). Merit Ptah, “The First Woman

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Rubin, R. (2017, November). The Woman Who Challenged Darwin’s Sexism. Retrieved from https:// www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/ woman-who-tried-take-down-darwin-180967146/ Schiebinger, L. (1993). Women in Science: Historical Perspectives. Women at Work: A Meeting on the Status of Women in Astronomy.

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MEET THE STAFF EXECUTIVE BOARD Camille Leoni (President & Editor-in-Chief) Camille is a San Francisco native majoring in Biology and minoring in art history. This past fall, she studied the effects of pesticides on the cognitive abilities of honeybees. Currently, she is a senior beekeeper at the GWU Apiary and is also a member of the University’s Honors Program. Following graduation, she will be attending the GW School of Medicine and Health Sciences in pursuit of a medical career.

Janavi Kanagasundaram (Director of GW Scope) Janavi is a sophomore from Lansdale, PA, majoring in International Affairs and Economics with a concentration in the Middle East. Last semester, she served as a peer advisor at the Elliott School and worked as a research assistant on a project detailing South Asian American women writers and filmmakers and their contributions to discussions surrounding race and freedom. Apart from GWUR, she is a member of the Pre-Law Student Association and the GW Honors Program.

Emily Earls (Treasurer & Director of Internal Development) Emily is a senior from Nashville, Tennessee majoring in Biology and is also a member of the University’s Honors Program. She works in a genetics lab at GW that researches butterfly wing patterning pathways using CRISPR genome-editing technology and is a former EMT who worked with GW’s Emergency Medical Response Group (EMeRG). She will be attending Vanderbilt University in the fall to become a nurse practitioner focusing on psychiatric mental health.

Aldonza Chavez (Events Manager) Aldonza is a junior from Iowa double majoring in English and Biology with a concentration in Ecology, Evolution, and Environment. She previously worked in the Zanne Lab where she assisted in multiple ecology related research endeavors, ranging from the construction of CO2 monitors to study levels of CO2 throughout the DC area to termite experimentation and data entry. She also holds a position at the Wilbur V. Harlan Greenhouse, where she monitors and maintains various botanical research experiments. She currently works with Icelandic horses in Iowa, and she hopes to attend graduate school for English studies in Fall 2022.

Nammu Arumugasamy (Submission Recruitment Chair) Nammu is a sophomore from Seattle, Washington majoring in Political Science and minoring in Criminal Justice. She plans to pursue criminal/civil law and is currently a member of GW’s Pre-Law fraternity, Phi Alpha Delta. She is a part of GW’s Women’s Club Lacrosse and is an orientation leader for GW. Nammu is also a Social Sciences editor for the GWUR.

Diana Vu (Social Media Assistant) Diana is a junior from San Diego, California majoring in Neuroscience with a minor in Business Administration.

Diana is currently working in Dr. Hashimoto-Torii’s lab at Children’s National Medical Center, learning about how the prenatal environment affects the genetic predisposition and susceptibility of diseases. She is a member of the Dean’s Council and American Medical Physiology Club.

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Richard Sear (Layout Manager) Richard is a senior from Milwaukee, Wisconsin studying Computer Science with minors in Mathematics and Physics.

He is interested in artificial intelligence and is currently working with Dr. Neil Johnson’s research team studying the many-body physics of online extremist groups. He’s also involved with GW Robotics, GW’s chapter of the ACM, and is a member of the GW Honors Program.

Maryam Gilanshah (Lead Editor for Humanities) Maryam is a senior from Northern Virginia studying English/Creative Writing, with minors in Psychology and Journalism. Her lifelong interest in media studies, particularly film/television, motivates both her creative writing and analytical work, publishing a research article on the appropriation of Jewish comedy and a satirical short story this past year. She also works as a Writing Consultant in the GW Writing Center, conducting independent research on pedagogy-related subjects, and hopes to pursue film and screen studies after graduation.

Jessica Bride (Lead Editor for Social Sciences) Jessica is a junior from Charleston, South Carolina, majoring in Psychology and Criminal Justice. She is a research assistant in Dr. Robert Turner’s lab at the GW School of Medicine & Health Sciences, studying the brain health and aging of former NFL athletes as well as the challenges in resource utilization for caregivers of persons with dementia. She is also an editor for Capitol Letters, GW’s literary magazine.

Veronika Kulik (Lead Editor for Natural Sciences & Engineering) Veronika is a junior from Portland, Oregon majoring in Biological Anthropology. She is a member of Dr. Colin Young’s lab at the GW School of Medicine & Health Sciences, studying the role of the brain in hypertension and nonalcoholic fatty liver disease. She has also worked at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History and is part of the University Honors Program.

EDITORIAL BOARD Dhatri Badri Dhatri is a junior who grew up in Singapore and moved to San Francisco, California. She is currently majoring in Biology with a specialization in Cellular and Molecular Biology with a double minor in Bioinformatics and STEM teaching. In addition to being a writer for the GW Scope blog, she is part of the Epsilon Sigma Alpha sorority and works as a research assistant at the Computational Biology Institute.

Eleanor Ball Eleanor is a sophomore from Iowa double majoring in Public Health and English. Last summer, she conducted an independent research project with her county health department to study local racial disparities in the COVID-19 pandemic. At GW, she is also on the boards of GlobeMed GW and GW Shakespeare.

Ben Chapman Ben is a junior from Colchester, Connecticut, who is majoring in Political Science and minoring in Criminal Justice.

Previously, he has interned in two congressional offices on Capitol Hill and is currently a member of Delta Sigma Phi. After graduation, he is interested in becoming a public defender and working to reform the criminal justice system.

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Jaylee Davis Jaylee is a freshman from Atlanta, Georgia, currently interested in studying English Literature and American Studies.

In addition to writing articles highlighting innovative research in the humanities for the GW Scope blog, she also writes advice for her hometown blog VOX ATL. In the past, she has served as the co-editor-in-chief of The C&G newsmagazine and the Rhyme and Reason literary magazine.

Michael Farina Michael is a junior from Mount Pleasant, NY, majoring in Biology and minoring in STEM teaching. In addition to serving as an editor, he also writes for our blog, The GW Scope, and has worked as a peer mentor and TA for the GW Teach Program. He is currently working as an EMT on EMeRG and is interested in pursuing a career as a physician assistant after graduation.

Fiona Garcia Fiona is a junior from Mooresville, NC, double majoring in Psychology and International Affairs with a concentration in Contemporary Cultures and Societies. She is interested in clinical psychology and plans to attend graduate school in Fall 2022. She previously interned at the Peace Corps and currently works at the Elliott School’s Undergraduate Academic Advising Office.

Esha Mukherjee Esha is a sophomore from Chelmsford, Massachusetts, double majoring in International Affairs and Arabic Studies.

She is interested in public policy and is currently an intern in a congressional office. At GW, she is part of the GW Women’s Rugby Club, Phi Sigma Pi Honor Fraternity, and is a member of the GW Honors Program.

Carson Solaz Carson is a sophomore from Sarasota, Florida, currently majoring in Political Science and Economics. This past summer, he worked on 3 political campaigns in the greater Manatee County. Currently, he is training for the Marine Officer Program that he will complete this summer.

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Editorial Research Feature Jessica Bride

Majors in Psychology and Criminal Justice Columbian College of Arts and Sciences, Class of 2022 Where did/do you conduct research? What is the overarching goal of that organization?

I have been a research assistant in the R.W. Turner Lab at GW’s School of Medicine and Health Sciences since June 2020. The lab’s research mainly focuses on neurological and psychological health, aiming to provide caregivers with the best and most up-to-date information with which they can treat their clients. Our main studies focus on former highlevel athletes and also Black male caregivers of persons with dementia.

What was/is your specific project? Why is this important?

The main study I am involved in is titled “Accelerated Cognitive Aging and Mild Traumatic Brain Injury among Former College and Professional Football Players: Psychosocial and Neurocognitive Risk and Protective Factors,” also known as the Athlete Brain Health and Aging Study. Our essential question is “What are the long-term neurocognitive and psychosocial implications of Mild Traumatic Brain Injury?” This study investigates differences in cognitive functioning of former collegiate and professional football athletes compared to males without a history of contact sports, with or without a history of concussions. I conduct pre-screenings and health surveys, which ask participants about their general health, sports history, and injury-related experiences. I also administer cognitive assessments that are part of a validated neurocognitive testing battery. Previously, I coded qualitative data and created master narratives from our focus groups on former NFL players, former D-1 non-contact athletes, and former D-1 college football athletes. We are currently developing a protocol to conduct interviews during the upcoming summer.

Many of our participants shed light on the impact of physical trauma from concussions and injuries along with emotional trauma from their competitive environment. By examining information provided by focus groups, interviews, and biological tests, we are able to learn more about the brain and how to provide the best possible care. I hope this study contributes to the improvement of men’s health and aging. Our qualitative data suggests that the expectation of mental and physical strength during our participants’ athletic careers often resulted in athletes playing through injuries, postponing medical treatment, and attempting to solve their problems alone. Findings on how specific vulnerabilities impair successful long-term brain health will enable interventions that will better address gaps in recovery processes.

Furthermore, these findings may have a significant impact on policy to address attitudinal, behavioral, and social vulnerabilities in concussed men.

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What has been the most valuable experience thus far doing research as an undergraduate?

I have loved witnessing and participating in the academic publication process. I currently assist with manuscript publication for multiple writing teams in the lab. It’s been important to learn how difficult the process can be - from ensuring the research question is compelling and matches the data to changing the piece according to review edits. I learned how much work goes into a research paper from my own research and my time with GWUR. Still, submitting to a professional journal is very different. Teamwork is crucial and having a background in statistics can never hurt.

What are your plans for the future? How has your research experience prepared you for them?

I’m unsure about my future plans but hope to pursue a postgraduate degree. I frequently attend professional workshops and lab-sponsored training sessions that cover topics such as data analysis, interview training, and healthcare outcomes. Working directly with community members has improved my interpersonal and reflective listening skills, which will be valuable as a qualitative researcher or if I become a therapist.

Any advice for people looking to get involved in undergraduate research?

I’m sure you’ve heard it before but network! Reach out to your professors and ask if they have any research they’re currently doing. Or, look into research at GW that interests you and contact the faculty involved. It can’t hurt and even if they don’t have spots, they may know of other opportunities for you.

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