Greetings, and welcome to my page. Since August 2008, I am Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of North Texas. I am also a research associate at the Centre for the Study of Civil War, Peace Research Institute, Oslo and a Fellow of the Robert S. Strauss Center for International Security and Law at the University of Texas at Austin.
My research interests lay at the intersection of international relations and comparative politics, with my analytic toolkit primarily derived from bargaining theory, organizational economics, social choice theory, and econometric analysis. I apply these tools to four substantive areas of inquiry:
- Civil Conflict, Contentious Politics and International Security: Civil conflicts, and the governance vacuums to which they can lead, poses serious challenges to international security. Comparatively less well understood, however, are violent conflicts, often large in scope and international implications, which do not fit neatly into the intra- or interstate conflict paradigm.
- State Capacity: Peace and effective governance are necessary preconditions for human and economic development, yet the vast disparities across countries on these measures suggest large gaps in the capacity of states to generate the revenue necessary to provide order and basic social services. I cast the emergence of capable state institutions as the outcome of bargaining between societal actors rulers, and argue that geography has exerted a significant impact on this bargain by affecting the nature of the resource base over which bargaining takes place.
- Environmental Politics: Though environmental scholars have been predicting widespread conflict over natural resources for decades, evidence for environmental conflict is scant. I argue that the paucity of evidence is due to a failure to recognize that environmental stressors, particularly those related to climate change, are mediated by existing economic, political, and social institutions.
- Global Markets and Transnational Actors: Transnational rebels are a significant threat to peace and stability in both the international and domestic political arena. Comparatively less is known about the effects that global markets and transnational advocacy networks have on patterns of contentious politics, and state responses to contentious actions, in the developing world.
These basic questions motivate my research. I have interests also in food security, the fiscal contract theory of the state, and human rights.Please see my research page for information on my working papers and publications and my personal page for everything else.
