Journal ArticleAmerican Political Science Review · May 1, 2025
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 textCite
Journal ArticleJournal of Conflict Resolution · February 1, 2025
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 textCite
Journal ArticleJournal of Politics · January 1, 2025
Despite the centrality of collective action to the social sciences, we know relatively little as to how individuals process uncertain future costs of participation. We offer a formal model of collective action that incorporates punishment: with some probab ...
Full textCite
Journal ArticlePloS 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 textCite
Journal ArticleJournal 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 textCite
Journal ArticleIntelligence 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 textCite
Journal ArticleJournal 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 textCite
Journal ArticleJournal 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 textCite
Journal ArticlePublic 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 textCite
Journal ArticleInternational 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 textCite
Journal ArticleAmerican 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 textCite
Journal ArticleJournal 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 textCite
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
Journal ArticleThe 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 textCite
Journal ArticlePloS 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 textCite
Book · January 1, 2013
Political science and sociology increasingly rely on mathematical modeling and sophisticated data analysis, and many graduate programs in these fields now require students to take a “math camp” or a semester-long or yearlong course to acquire the necessary ...
Cite
Journal ArticleAmerican 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 textCite
Journal ArticleAmerican 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 textCite
Journal ArticleJournal 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 textCite
Journal ArticleJournal 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 textCite
Journal ArticlePloS 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 textOpen AccessCite
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
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
Journal ArticleJournal 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 textCite
Journal ArticleInternational 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 textCite
Journal ArticlePS - 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 textCite
Journal ArticleSecurity 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 textCite
Journal ArticleJournal 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 textCite
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 textCite
Journal ArticlePS 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 textCite
Journal ArticleAmerican 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 textCite
Journal ArticleB 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 textCite
Journal ArticleInternational 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 textCite
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 textCite
Journal ArticleNuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section A: Accelerators, Spectrometers, Detectors and Associated Equipment · 1998Cite
Journal ArticleNuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section A: Accelerators, Spectrometers, Detectors and Associated Equipment · 1997Cite
