Peer-Reviewed Publications
Honor Among Thieves: Understanding Rhetorical and Material Cooperation Among Violent Non-State Actors​
Abstract: Cooperation among militant organizations contributes to capability but also presents security risks. This is particularly the case when organizations face substantial repression from the state. As a consequence, for cooperation to emerge and persist when it is most valuable, militant groups must have means of committing to cooperation even when the incentives to defect are high. We posit that shared ideology plays this role by providing community monitoring, authority structures, trust, and transnational networks. We test this theory using new, expansive, time-series data on relationships between militant organizations from 1950-2016, which we introduce here. The results show that when groups share an ideology, and especially religion, they are more likely to initiate material alliances. Moreover, in the face of repression from the state, shared ideology is associated with sustained cooperation. These findings contextualize and expand upon important existing research demonstrating that connections between violent, nonstate actors strongly shape their tactical and strategic behavior​.
  • Forthcoming at International Organization (with Erica Chenoweth, Michael C. Horowitz, Evan Perkoski, and Philip B.K. Potter)​
  • ​​Publisher's Version    PDF     Appendix     Replication Data​​​​​
Changing Tides: Public Attitudes on Climate Migration
Abstract: Little existing work studies public perceptions of climate-induced migration. We redress this gap, drawing on diverse literatures in political science and social psychology. We argue that climate migrants occupy an intermediate position in the public view, garnering greater support than traditional economic migrants but less support than refugees. Evidence from a conjoint experiment embedded in nationally representative surveys of 2160 respondents in the U.S. and Germany provide support for this claim. Importantly, this result holds for internal and international migrants. These findings suggest the importance of humanitarian considerations and empathy in shaping migration attitudes. We use a follow-up factorial experiment to explore potential policy implications of public support for climate migrants. We find no evidence that priming climate migration increases support for climate change mitigation, echoing existing work on the difficulty of mobilizing climate action, and suggesting that climate migration is unlikely to spur greater support for mitigating climate change.
  • Forthcoming at The Journal of Politics (with Sabrina B. Arias)
  • ​​Publisher's Version     PDF     Appendix     ​ ​Replication Data​​​​​
Leadership Targeting and Militant Alliance Breakdown
Abstract: Existing research finds that cooperation between militant groups is common and contributes to both capabilities and lethality. Comparatively little is known, however, about how militant alliances are maintained and how they break apart. We argue that leaders are critical to sustaining alliances between militant groups. As a consequence, organizational disruption in the form of leadership targeting can lead to the breakdown of militant alliances. To test this argument, we pair original data on militant alliances with data on leadership targeting to reveal that killing an organization’s leader, and particularly its founder, increases the probability that an organization’s alliances terminate. We find that leadership decapitation spurs alliance termination by incapacitating targeted groups, stoking fear among allies, and inducing preference divergence between targeted groups and allies over strategy.
  • Forthcoming at The Journal of Politics (with Michael C. Horowitz and Philip B.K. Potter)
  • ​​Publisher's Version     PDF     Appendix     Replication Data​​​​​
Do Women Make More Credible Threats? Gender Stereotypes, Audience Costs, and Crisis Bargaining
Abstract: As more women attain executive office, it is important to understand how gender dynamics affect international politics. Toward this end, we present the first evidence that gender stereotypes affect leaders’ abilities to generate audience costs. Using survey experiments, we show that female leaders have political incentives to combat gender stereotypes that women are weak by acting “tough” during international military crises. Most prominently, we find evidence that female leaders, and male leaders facing female opponents, pay greater inconsistency costs for backing down from threats than male leaders do against fellow men. These findings point to particular advantages and disadvantages women have in international crises. Namely, female leaders are better able to tie hands—an efficient mechanism for establishing credibility in crises. However, this bargaining advantage means female leaders will also have a harder time backing down from threats. Our findings have critical implications for debates over the effects of greater gender equality in executive offices worldwide.
  • International Organization 74(4): 872-895 (with Joshua A. Schwartz)
  • Winner of the 2019 Time-Sharing Experiments for the Social Sciences (TESS) Young Investigator Competition
  • ​​​Publisher's Version     PDF     Appendix     Replication Data​​​​​