Publications

Books

2023

Civilian Protective Agency in Violent Settings: A Comparative Perspective
Oxford University Press
(co-edited with J. Krause, E. Paddon Rhoads, and J. Welsh)

Book page

Journal Articles

2025

“Risky Business: International Support for Civilian Self-Protection”
Perspectives on Politics
(with E. Paddon and J. Welsh)

Article

Abstract

Over the last decade, a range of international actors has moved away from direct forms of intervention to protect civilian populations in favor of “bottom-up” approaches that emphasize external support for civilian self-protection (CSP). While this indirect action is often perceived to be less costly, more legitimate, and potentially more effective, we argue that external support for CSP is a “risky business” that presents a significant dilemma for international governmental and nongovernmental organizations. Drawing on literature from sociology, economics, and civil war studies, we conceptualize and categorize the risks of unintended consequences that could accompany external support for CSP and suggest why they are likely to arise in this context. We then empirically explore whether and how these risks manifest with an in-depth study of four purposively selected organizations supporting CSP in their programming. We also assess whether and how organizational type matters for the prevalence of these consequences and how the risk of their occurrence is managed. Our analysis shows that, across a range of conflict settings, all four organizations encountered unintended consequences of three main kinds: increased vulnerability and insecurity for local communities, challenges to organizational mandates and values, and strained relations with key protection stakeholders. International actors supporting CSP thus confront the dilemma of seeking to enhance their effectiveness and legitimacy by “localizing” protection, but potentially create new challenges and perverse effects and/or compromise their organizational identity in the process. While this dilemma is inherent in all external protection assistance, our study highlights the importance of actor embeddedness: organizations that are more proximate to the communities they work with are in a better position to minimize these unintended consequences and manage the risks associated with supporting CSP. These findings contribute to ongoing debates about civilian protection in comparative politics, international relations, and humanitarian studies, but also offer concrete insights for practitioners engaged in support for CSP. More broadly, our study could have implications for other policy areas where the legitimacy of so-called top down approaches is being questioned and where these approaches are giving way to the empowerment of local actors and processes.

2025

“Does Crime Breed Authoritarianism? Crime Exposure, Democratic Decoupling, and Political Attitudes in Brazil”
Journal of Peace Research
(with K. Krakowski and D. Morisi)

Article

Abstract

How does crime influence democratic attitudes and behaviors? Existing research offers conflicting answers: some argue that crime fosters antidemocratic preferences, while others suggest it increases democratic engagement. To reconcile this paradox, we conceptualize democracy as a multidimensional system with distinct components that can be decoupled. We distinguish between different (anti)democratic preferences tied to core democratic principles and argue that contextual exposure to crime may heighten support for undemocratic enforcement measures without eroding commitment to procedural democracy. To test this, we conducted a large online survey (N = 3108) in Brazil – a country profoundly affected by various forms of crime – using two embedded experimental protocols. Our findings show that crime exposure increases support for unlawful enforcement practices, such as police overreach and vigilante justice, while leaving attitudes toward military coups, executive aggrandizement and support for democracy as the best form of government largely unaffected. Understanding this nuanced relationship is especially important in contexts where crime is pervasive and politically instrumentalized. That exposure to crime leads citizens to tolerate breaches of the rule of law in the name of public safety is deeply concerning. Yet, our results offer cautious optimism: support for undemocratic enforcement does not necessarily undermine broader democratic commitments.

2025

“The Political Legacies of Wartime Resistance: How Local Communities in Italy Keep Anti-Fascist Sentiments Alive”
Comparative Political Studies
(with S. Cremaschi)

NEPS Best Article Award

Article

Abstract

Can past wartime experiences affect political behavior beyond those who lived through them? We argue that local experiences of armed resistance leave political legacies that “memory entrepreneurs” can translate into contemporary political action via a community-based process of intergenerational transmission consisting of three core activities – memorialization, localization, and mobilization. We empirically substantiate this argument in Italy, where an intense armed resistance movement against Nazi-Fascist forces took place in the 1940s. We combine statistical analysis of original data across Italian municipalities and within-case analysis of a purposively selected locality to show how the past impacts the present via the preservation and activation of collective memories. This study improves our understanding of the processes of long-term transmission, emphasizes armed resistance as a critical source of the long-term political legacies of war, and explores its political effects beyond electoral and party politics.

2024

“Aligning Interviewing with Process Tracing”
Sociological Methods & Research
(with E. González-Ocantos)

APSA QMMR Best Article Award

Article

Abstract

Interviews play a pivotal role in process tracing (PT) by allowing researchers to delve deep into the intricacies of agency, inter-agent interactions and relationships, and the processes underlying meaning and decision-making. These dimensions are essential for evaluating process theories connecting causes to outcomes in specific cases. Testing theoretical arguments via PT bears implications for how we conceive interviewing. We provide recommendations for scholars to design interview research aligned with PT best practices, focusing on sampling and the design of interview protocols, and being sensitive to differences between PT approaches. Aligning interviews with PT’s specific requirements strengthens the weight and inferential power of evidence. While the methodological foundations of PT and related data analysis techniques are well-documented in the literature, there is still a gap concerning data collection and generation. We aim to address this by encouraging process tracers to think systematically about their interviewing plans at the design stage.

2024

“Does it Matter that an Ally is Democratic? Public Diplomacy and Attitudes Toward International Actors in Times of Crisis”
European Political Science Review
(with F. Coticchia, M. Di Giulio, and A. Ruggeri)

Article

Abstract

Can public diplomacy in times of crisis shape citizens’ attitudes towards international politics? Using a survey experiment in Italy, we evaluated whether information cues about public diplomacy efforts by the United States and China to assist the country in dealing with the COVID-19 emergency shifted the importance citizens attached to Italy’s international allies being democracies. We found that citizens who receive positive cues about USA efforts to assist Italy report a stronger preference for Italy interacting with democracies. At the same time, when they received positive cues about China’s efforts to assist Italy, they discounted the importance attached to international allies being democracies. We further found that these effects are conditional on the participants’ support for democracy at home. We argue that these findings are consistent with a cognitive dissonance framework where citizens update their attitudes to decrease dissonant cognitions when they receive information that challenges prior beliefs or expectations.

2023

“The Human Costs of the War on Drugs: Attitudes Towards Militarization of Security in Mexico”
Comparative Political Studies
(with Davide Morisi)

Article

Abstract

Citizens in multiple crime-ridden countries strongly support the militarization of security—that is, placing the military in charge of traditional policing duties. Yet, we know little about the determinants of such support. Do people approve of militarization even in the face of human fatalities? We explore this question in the context of Mexico’s “war on drugs.” In three experimental studies, we manipulate the presence of human costs in a military operation against a drug lord and present arguments either justifying or condemning these costs. We consistently find that, even in successful operations, support for militarization decreases when military operations cause civilian casualties, but not when the victims are members of drug cartels. This finding holds for both respondents who have been victims of cartel-related violence and those who have not. Arguments that justify these costs as helping to achieve the end goal of eradicating organized crime increase support. These findings shed light on the public opinion side of the militarization of security debate, and have important implications for security policy reform and democratic politics.

2022

“Violent or Non-violent Action? Civilian Resistance and Tactical Choice in Colombia and Mozambique”
Political Geography
(with Corinna Jentzsch)

Article

Abstract

Why do some communities resist armed groups non-violently while others take up arms to do so? Recent research has advanced our knowledge of the causes and consequences of wartime civilian resistance. Yet, the factors explaining the emergence and outcomes of civilian resistance do not account for how people resist. Despite its important consequences for the politics and geography of war, the issue of why civilians engage in violent or non-violent forms of resistance remains poorly understood. We rely on extensive original fieldwork to examine within-case and cross-case variation in violent and non-violent resistance campaigns during the Mozambican and Colombian civil wars. We argue that forms of resistance are linked to prior experiences of collective action, normative commitments, and the role of local political entrepreneurs. Previous experiences make repertoires of resistance “empirically” available, while prevailing local social and cultural norms make them “normatively” available. Political entrepreneurs activate and adapt what is empirically and normatively available to mobilize support for some forms of action and against others. Our analysis advances emerging research on wartime civilian agency and has significant implications for theories of armed conflict, civil resistance, and contentious politics more broadly.

2021

“Civilian Contention in Civil War: How Ideational Factors Shape Community Responses to Armed Groups”
Comparative Political Studies

Article

Abstract

Why do some communities overtly declare their opposition to violent groups, while others disguise it by engaging in seemingly unrelated activities? Why do some communities manifest their dissent using nonviolent methods instead of organizing violence of their own? I argue that ideational factors are crucial to answering these questions: normative commitments can restrict civilian contention to nonviolent forms of action, while exposure to oppositional ideologies can push civilians toward more confrontational forms of noncooperation with armed groups. Furthermore, I contend that the role of political entrepreneurs activating and mobilizing this ideational content is crucial for it to shape contention. I support this argument with a wealth of microlevel evidence collected in various warzones in Colombia, analyzed within a purposively designed comparative structure. My findings support the growing conflict scholarship that stresses that ideology matters in war, but extends its application beyond armed actors’ behavior to that of civilian communities.

2021

“Refusing to Cooperate with Armed Groups. Civilian Agency and Civilian Noncooperation in Armed Conflicts”
International Studies Review

Article

Abstract

Conflict scholars have increasingly stressed the importance of taking civilian agency seriously for understanding how conflicts operate on the ground and the social legacies they leave behind. Among the different expressions of civilian agency that this scholarship has studied, instances in which civilians refuse to collaborate with armed groups have captured particular attention. While this development is to be praised, the proliferation of neighboring terms (e.g. “voice”, “autonomy”, “civil action”, “oppositional agency”, “resilience”, and “resistance”, among others) menaces the further progression of this intellectually stimulating and policy relevant field of inquiry. In dialogue with the growing literature on civilian agency, and drawing on an established literature on concept formation, I propose civilian noncooperation as the root concept to capture these instances and specify its meaning by identifying both necessary and accompanying attributes. I discuss the advantages of this concept and assess it vis á vis alternative terms and conceptualizations. Finally, I illustrate how these conceptual foundations provide a more solid basis for empirical research by introducing a descriptive typology and a database of civilian noncooperation campaigns in the Colombian civil war. Research on noncooperation holds great potential to improve existing theories of conflict, as well as to inform crucial policy debates, including the protection of civilians, peacebuilding, and post-conflict reconstruction. Conceptual rigor is central to fulfilling this potential.

2020

“Who Shot the Bullets? Exposure to Violence and Attitudes Toward Peace: Evidence from the 2016 Colombian Referendum”
Latin American Politics and Society
(with G. Kreiman)

Article

Abstract

Does exposure to violence aﬀect attitudes toward peace? Civilians living in war zones see peace agreements as an opportunity to improve their security prospects. However, in multiparty conﬂicts, this does not automatically translate into support for peace. Support hinges on the interplay between which faction has victimized civilians in the past and which faction is sitting at the negotiation table. If civilians have been victimized by the group that is involved in the peace agreement, they will be likely to support peace. On the contrary, if they have been victimized by another faction, they will be likely to refrain from supporting peace if they believe that this can trigger retaliatory violence against them. This article explores this argument empirically in the context of the 2016 peace agreement between the Colombian government and the FARC; both quantitative and qualitative data yield support to the study’s theoretical expectations.

Under Review

R&R

Short-term Security or Long-term Democratic Stability? Evidence from Ecuador’s War on Gangs
Journal of Peace Research
(with Davide Morisi)

Abstract

Add abstract here.

R&R

Putting Yourself in Their Shoes: Perspective-Taking to Foster Positive Attitudes Toward Venezuelan Migrants among Ecuadorian Youth
British Journal of Political Science
(with D. Davila, K. Natter, L. Demarest, and P. Moncagatta)

Abstract

Add abstract here.

Working Papers

Destroying Criminals or Enacting Preferred Behaviors? Public Support for Alternative Approaches to Fight Organized Crime
(with D. Morisi)

Abstract

Add abstract here.

Violent and Non-Violent Mobilization in Criminal Wars: Current Determinants and Historical Legacies
(with M. Bem Hamo Yeger)

Abstract

Add abstract here.