Scholars@Duke
David Siegel

David Siegel CV

Professor of Political Science
Political Science
david.siegel@duke.edu
Box 90204, Durham, NC 27708
140 Science Drive, 293 Gross Hall, Box 90204, Durham, NC 27708
CV

Selected Publications

Diplomatic Statements and the Strategic Use of Terrorism in Civil Wars

Journal Article Journal of Conflict Resolution · January 1, 2024 How does third-party diplomatic and material support affect rebel groups’ use of terrorism in civil wars? We argue via a game-theoretic model that diplomatic support prompts prospective shifts in rebel tactics, from civilian to military targets, in anticip ... Full text Cite

Can money buy control of Congress?

Journal Article PloS one · January 2024 Can a political party spend enough across electoral campaigns to garner a majority within the U.S. Congress? Prior research on campaign spending minimizes the importance of campaign heterogeneity and fails to aggregate effects across campaigns, rendering i ... Full text Cite

Measurement That Matches Theory: Theory-Driven Identification in Item Response Theory Models

Journal Article American Political Science Review · January 1, 2024 Measurement is the weak link between theory and empirical test. Complex concepts such as ideology, identity, and legitimacy are difficult to measure; yet, without measurement that matches theoretical constructs, careful empirical studies may not be testing ... Full text Cite

Talking to the enemy: Explaining the emergence of peace talks in interstate war

Journal Article Journal of Theoretical Politics · July 1, 2023 Why are some states open to talking while fighting while others are not? We argue that a state considering opening negotiations is concerned not only with the adverse inference that the opposing state will draw, but also the actions that the opposing state ... Full text Cite

INS special forum on David Sherman’s ‘An Intelligence Classic That Almost Never Was–Roberta Wohlstetter’s Pearl Harbor: Warning and Decision

Journal Article Intelligence and National Security · January 1, 2022 Roberta Wohlstetter’s Pearl Harbor: Warning and Decision is probably the most influential book in the field of intelligence studies. As David Sherman explains, however, government officials attempted to block its publication due to security concerns that s ... Full text Cite

INCLUSIVE AND NON-INCLUSIVE NETWORKS

Journal Article PS - Political Science and Politics · July 1, 2021 Full text Cite

Cults of personality, preference falsification, and the dictator’s dilemma

Journal Article Journal of Theoretical Politics · July 1, 2020 We offer a novel rational explanation for cults of personality. Participation in a cult of personality is psychologically costly whenever it involves preference falsification, with the costs varying across individuals. We highlight two characteristics asso ... Full text Cite

Hierarchy and the provision of order in international politics

Journal Article Journal of Politics · April 1, 2020 The anarchic international system is actually heavily structured: Communities of states join together for common benefit; strong states form hierarchical relationships with weak states to enforce order and achieve preferred outcomes. Breaking from prior re ... Full text Cite

Identifiability, state repression, and the onset of ethnic conflict

Journal Article Public Choice · December 1, 2019 When do persecuted ethnic minority groups choose to assimilate into the dominant majority group, rather than differentiate from it, and how do states respond? We argue that any answer to these questions must consider the joint effects of identity on state ... Full text Cite

Pink Slips from the Underground: Changes in Terror Leadership

Journal Article International Studies Quarterly · June 1, 2019 Personnel management at the top of terrorist groups presents a puzzle. Commanders act off-message reasonably often, sometimes angering powerful backers. When this happens group leaders typically have the means and incentives to kill the commander. Yet, we ... Full text Cite

Analyzing Computational Models

Journal Article American Journal of Political Science · July 1, 2018 Computational models have been underutilized as tools for formal theory development, closing off theoretical analysis of complex substantive scenarios that they would well serve. I argue that this occurs for two reasons, and provide resolutions for each. F ... Full text Cite

Identity, repression, and the threat of ethnic conflict in a strong state

Journal Article Journal of Theoretical Politics · October 1, 2017 Faced with repression from a strong state, one might expect minority ethnic groups to attempt to assimilate into the dominant group to make themselves seem less threatening. However, this conceptualization of threat elides its tactical components. Oppresse ... Full text Cite

Democratic Institutions and Political Networks

Chapter · 2017 How can countries build ties that promote peace? What are the most fruitful strategies for disrupting arms or terrorist networks? This volume is designed as a foundational statement and resource. ... Cite

Coordination and Security: How Mobile Communications Affect Insurgency

Journal Article Journal of Peace Research · 2015 Cite

Evaluating a Stochastic Model of Government Formation

Journal Article Journal of Politics · 2014 Cite

Religious Participation, Social Conservatism, and Human Development

Journal Article The Journal of Politics · October 2013 What is the relationship between human development, religion, and social conservatism? We present a model in which individuals derive utility from both the secular and religious worlds. Our model is unusual in that it explains both an individual’s religiou ... Full text Cite

Will you accept the government's friend request? Social networks and privacy concerns.

Journal Article PloS one · January 2013 Participating in social network websites entails voluntarily sharing private information, and the explosive growth of social network websites over the last decade suggests shifting views on privacy. Concurrently, new anti-terrorism laws, such as the USA Pa ... Full text Cite

Social networks and the mass media

Journal Article American Political Science Review · January 1, 2013 Featured Publication How do global sources of information such as mass media outlets, state propaganda, NGOs, and national party leadership affect aggregate behavior? Prior work on this question has insufficiently considered the complex interaction between social network and m ... Full text Cite

Religious Participation and Economic Conservatism

Journal Article American Journal of Political Science · January 1, 2013 Featured Publication Why do some individuals engage in more religious activity than others? And how does this religious activity influence their economic attitudes? We present a formal model in which individuals derive utility from both secular and religious sources. Our model ... Full text Cite

Modeling the institutional foundation of parliamentary government formation

Journal Article Journal of Politics · April 1, 2012 That neither the assumptions nor the predictions of standard government formation models entirely correspond to empirical findings has led some to conclude that theoretical accounts of government formation should be reconsidered from the bottom up. We take ... Full text Cite

When does repression work? Collective action in social networks

Journal Article Journal of Politics · October 1, 2011 Empirical studies reach conflicting conclusions about the effect of repression on collective action. Extant theories cannot explain this variation in the efficacy of repression, in part because they do not account for the way in which social networks condi ... Full text Cite

Non-disruptive tactics of suppression are superior in countering terrorism, insurgency, and financial panics.

Journal Article PloS one · April 2011 Featured Publication BackgroundSuppressing damaging aggregate behaviors such as insurgency, terrorism, and financial panics are important tasks of the state. Each outcome of these aggregate behaviors is an emergent property of a system in which each individual's actio ... Full text Open Access Cite

A behavioral theory of elections

Book · January 17, 2011 Most theories of elections assume that voters and political actors are fully rational. While these formulations produce many insights, they also generate anomalies--most famously, about turnout. The rise of behavioral economics has posed new challenges to ... Cite

A behavioral theory of elections

Book · January 17, 2011 Most theories of elections assume that voters and political actors are fully rational. While these formulations produce many insights, they also generate anomalies--most famously, about turnout. The rise of behavioral economics has posed new challenges to ... Cite

A strategic theory of policy diffusion via intergovernmental competition

Journal Article Journal of Politics · January 1, 2011 Scholars have hypothesized that policy choices by national, state, and local governments often have implications for "location choices" made by residents (e.g., tax policies affect where firms set up business, welfare benefits influence where the poor live ... Full text Cite

When does repression work? Collective action in social networks

Journal Article Journal of Politics · 2011 Featured Publication Cite

Identity, bargaining, and third-party mediation

Journal Article International Theory · January 1, 2011 This paper elucidates a theory of identity formation and applies it to the study of international negotiation. The theory acknowledges that actors/agents can adopt a multiplicity of identities, and it treats changes in the salience of identities as endogen ... Full text Cite

Social networks in comparative perspective

Journal Article PS - Political Science and Politics · January 1, 2011 In a sense, the study of comparative politics is the study of the role that context plays in structuring behavior. Institutional contexts, such as the nature of the electoral system or the existence of an independent judiciary, drive differences in elector ... Full text Cite

Satisficing: A pretty good heuristic

Journal Article · June 2, 2010 Cite

Is this paper dangerous? Balancing secrecy and openness in counterterrorism

Journal Article Security Studies · January 1, 2010 We analyze a seemingly simple question: When should government share private information that may be useful to terrorists? Policy makers' answer to this question has typically been "it is dangerous to share information that can potentially help terrorists. ... Full text Cite

Adaptively rational retrospective voting

Journal Article Journal of Theoretical Politics · January 1, 2010 Since the seminal work of Key (1966), Kramer (1971), and Nordhaus (1975), retrospective voting has been a major component of voting theory. However, although these views are alive empirically (Lewis-Beck and Stegmaier, 2000; Franzese, 2002; Hibbs, 2006), m ... Full text Cite

Underfunding in terrorist organizations

Chapter · December 1, 2009 A review of international terrorist activity reveals a pattern of financially strapped operatives working for organizations that seem to have plenty of money. To explain this observation, and to examine when restricting terrorists' funds will reduce their ... Full text Cite

Simulating terrorism: Credible commitment, costly signaling, and strategic behavior

Journal Article PS - Political Science and Politics · October 1, 2009 We present two simulations designed to convey the strategic nature of terrorism and counterterrorism. The first is a simulated hostage crisis, designed primarily to illustrate the concepts of credible commitment and costly signaling. The second explores hi ... Full text Cite

Social networks and collective action

Journal Article American Journal of Political Science · January 1, 2009 Featured Publication Despite growing attention to the role of social context in determining political participation, the effect of the structure of social networks remains little examined. This article introduces a model of interdependent decision making within social networks ... Full text Cite

Satisficing: A 'Pretty Good' Heuristic

Journal Article B.E. Journal of Theoretical Economics · January 1, 2009 One of the best known ideas in the study of bounded rationality is Simon's satisficing; yet we still lack a standard formalization of the heuristic and its implications. We propose a mathematical model of satisficing which explicitly represents agents' asp ... Full text Cite

Underfunding in terrorist organizations

Journal Article International Studies Quarterly · June 1, 2007 A review of international terrorist activity reveals a pattern of financially strapped operatives working for organizations that seem to have plenty of money. To explain this observation, and to examine when restricting terrorists' funds will reduce their ... Full text Cite

Rational parties and retrospective voters

Chapter · January 1, 2007 Many elections specialists take seriously V.O. Key's hypothesis (1966) that much voting is retrospective: citizens reward good performance by becoming more likely to vote for the incumbent and punish bad performance by becoming less likely. Earlier (Bendor ... Full text Cite

Laser polarized muonic He3 and spin dependent μ capture

Journal Article Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section A: Accelerators, Spectrometers, Detectors and Associated Equipment · 1998 Cite

A combined polarized target/ionization chamber for measuring the spin dependence of nuclear muon capture in laser polarized muonic He-3

Journal Article Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section A: Accelerators, Spectrometers, Detectors and Associated Equipment · 1997 Cite