Professor Luwei Ying Receives Walter Isard Award

Professor Ying recently won the Walter Isard Award for the Best Dissertation in Peace Science. This prestigious award is given every two years and honors outstanding contributions to the scientific knowledge of peace and conflict. The winner was selected on the basis of the importance and scientific significance of the dissertation with respect to the field of peace science and its contribution to the understanding of international behavior more generally.

Professor Ying’s dissertation titled “New ‘Weapon of the Weak’: Ideology, Mobilization, and Global Violent Movements” presents a framework for understanding global violent movements, focusing on non-state actors’ ideology and mobilization. The core of this work develops and empirically assesses the New “Weapon of the Weak” theory, where “the weak” refers to non-state armed organizations. Professor Ying’s central argument is that these organizations strategically put more rhetorical emphasis on their ideological brand in propaganda when they are militarily weaker, using their extreme position as an ideological weapon. Overall, this dissertation applies machine learning, geospatial analyses, and statistical inference to uncover how violent organizations strategically use propaganda for mobilization and recruitment in pursuit of broader transnational influence, as well as how state governments play a role in these violent movements.