Professor Richard Caplan (MA PhD (Lond))

Post: Professor of International Relations and Official Fellow, Linacre College

Introduction

Richard Caplan is Professor of International Relations and Official Fellow of Linacre College. His principal research interests are concerned with international organisations and conflict management. His current research is focused on post-conflict state-building. He is directing a research project on 'Exit Strategies and Peace Consolidation' that is examining the empirical experiences of, and scholarly and policy questions associated with, exit in relation to four types of international operations where state-building has been a major objective: colonial administrations, peacekeeping operations, military occupations and international administrations. (For details, see:  http://cis.politics.ox.ac.uk/research/Projects/consolidation_peace.asp.)

In 2009, Professor Caplan was appointed a UK representative on a European research consortium that will examine new challenges to peacekeeping and the EU's role in multilateral crisis management. In 2009 he was also appointed a member of the World Economic Forum's Global Agenda Council on Fragile States.

Research Areas and Interests

• International Organisations and Conflict Management
• Peacekeeping Theory and Practice
• Contemporary European Security
• Western Balkans (Yugoslavia)
• Humanitarian Intervention
• Nationalism and Ethno-nationalist Conflict

Teaching Responsibilities

MPhil in International Relations: the core seminar and the optional paper on 'Post-Conflict State-Building'.

PPE (IR 214)

Publications

Books and monographs

• Europe and the Recognition of New States in Yugoslavia, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005 (ppbk 2007).
• International Governance of War-Torn Territories: Rule and Reconstruction, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005 (ppbk 2006).
• A New Trusteeship? The International Administration of War-Torn Territories, Adelphi Paper No. 341, Oxford: Oxford University Press/International Institute for Strategic Studies, 2002.
• Europe’s New Nationalism: States and Minorities in Conflict, New York: Oxford University Press, 1996 (ed. with John Feffer).
• Post-Mortem on UNPROFOR: Lessons of UN Peacekeeping in Former Yugoslavia, London Defence Study No. 33, London: Brassey’s/Centre for Defence Studies, 1996.
• State of the Union: The Clinton Administration and the Nation in Profile, Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1994 (ed. with John Feffer).

Articles and book chapters

• ‘International Interventions in Nationalist Disputes' in J. Breuilly, ed., Oxford Handbook on the History of Nationalism, Oxford: Oxford University Press, forthcoming.
• ‘The Western Balkans: On the Path to Stability' in V. Mauer, ed., The Routledge Companion to Security Studies, London: Routledge, forthcoming. 
• ‘The Security Council and the Administration of War-Torn and Contested Territories' in V. Lowe, A. Roberts, J. Welsh and D. Zaum, eds., The UN Security Council and War, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008.
• ‘From Collapsing States to Neo-Trusteeship: The Limits to Solving the Problem of "Precarious Statehood" in the 21st Century', Third World Quarterly 28:2 (March 2007). Reprinted in M.T. Berger and D.A. Borer, eds., The Long War--Insurgency, Counterinsurgency and Collapsing States. London: Routledge, 2008.
• ‘After Exit: Successor Missions and Peace Consolidation’, Civil Wars 8:3-4 (September-December 2006).
• ‘Who Guards the Guardians? International Accountability and Bosnia-Herzegovina’, 12:3 (Autumn 2005), reprinted in A. Hehir and N. Robinson, eds., International PeacekeepingState Building: Theory and Practice, London: Routledge, 2007.
• ‘Histoire et contradictions du State Building’, Critique Internationale, No. 29, October 2005 (with Béatrice Pouligny).
• ‘Nation-Building: History and Evolution of the Concept’, in T. Koivula and T. Tammilehto, eds., Crisis Management: A New Form of Nation-Building?, Helsinki: National Defence College, 2005.
• ‘Partner or Patron? International Civil Administration and Local Capacity Building’, International Peacekeeping 11:2 (Summer 2004).
• ‘International Authority and State-Building: The Case of Bosnia and Herzegovina’, Global Governance 10:1 (January-March 2004).
• ‘International Intervention and its Aftermath: Kosovo and East Timor’, in U. Schneckener and S. Wolff, eds., Managing and Settling Ethnic Conflicts: Comparative Perspectives from Africa, Asia, and Europe, London: C. Hurst, 2003.
• ‘Conditional Recognition as an Instrument of Ethnic Conflict Regulation: The European Community and Yugoslavia’, Nations and Nationalism 8:2 (April 2002).
• ‘La Politica Europea di Sicurezza e Difesa: i Diversi Punti di Vista Nazionali’ [Differing National Perspectives on European Security and Defence Policy], Quaderni del Circolo Rosselli No. 3/2001 (October 2001).
• ‘Assessing Dayton: The Structural Weaknesses of the General Framework Agreement for Peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina’, Diplomacy & Statecraft 11:2 (July 2000).
• ‘Humanitarian Intervention: Which Way Forward?’ Ethics & International Affairs 14 (2000), reprinted in A.F. Lang, Jr., ed., Just Intervention, Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2003.
• ‘Kosovo: The Implications for Humanitarian Intervention’, Forced Migration Review 5 (August 1999).
• ‘International Diplomacy and the Crisis in Kosovo’, International Affairs 74:4 (October 1998).
• ‘The European Community’s Recognition of New States in Former Yugoslavia: The Strategic Implications’, The Journal of Strategic Studies 21:3 (September 1998).
• ‘Global and Regional Security and Conflicts: The Former Yugoslavia’, in SIPRI Yearbook 1996, Oxford: Stockholm International Peace Research Institute/Oxford University Press, 1996 (with Anthony Borden).