Research
My academic research examines how conflicts start, spread, and change, with a focus on civil wars, external intervention, retaliation, cybersecurity, and political risk.
Civil War and Intervention
My dissertation and related work examine when civil wars attract outside support, when governments retaliate against external rebel supporters, and how intervention can expand the scope of domestic conflict. This research combines formal theory, original data collection, archival research, and statistical analysis.
Published in Conflict Management and Peace Science. The article analyzes civil war onset, rebel-sided intervention, and interstate retaliation using a formal model of asymmetric information.
Working paper introducing the Civil War Expansion Dataset, which captures retaliation by civil war governments against external rebel supporters across all civil wars with rebel-sided intervention from 1975 to 2009. The dataset records direct retaliation, proxy retaliation, threats, and other forms of war expansion.
Ongoing project using predictive models to study third-party intervention into civil wars, including government-sided intervention, rebel-sided intervention, and non- intervention across a civil war-potential intervener dataset.
Cybersecurity and Conflict
For years, I have been interested in the strategic and political dimensions of cybersecurity, particularly as it pertains to international conflict. This work asks how cyber capabilities affect coercion, crisis behavior, regional security, and the relationship between technology and political order.
Co-authored with Benjamin Jensen, Patrick James, and Brandon Valeriano. This project combines cyber incident data with the Interstate Crisis Behavior dataset to examine crisis onset and post-crisis relations between states.
Co-authored with Miguel Gomez and Brandon Valeriano. The paper argues that regional analysis is necessary for understanding cyber vulnerability, capacity, and interests.
This working paper develops an ecological approach to cyber power and coercion, treating cyberspace as an environment whose structure shapes strategic possibilities.
Book chapter in Conflict in Cyber Space. The chapter reviews competing ways of studying cybersecurity and conflict as an academic research field.
NUPI report on technological and political challenges facing emerging economies as information and communications technology spreads, with attention to the risks and limits of external assistance.
Political Risk and Resource Politics
A related line of research examines how resource wealth and political institutions shape incentives for elite conflict, instability, and coup behavior.
Co-authored with Curtis M. Bell and Scott Wolford and published in International Interactions. The article examines how newly discovered and realized oil wealth affect coup attempts and outcomes.