How does the fear of anarchy affect telephone survey behaviors? A survey experiment administered to a sample of Mogadishu residents – validated with a natural experiment – is used to assess this question. Randomly-assigned reminders of anarchic violence conditioned differential effects on...

We conducted a representative survey of Mogadishu’s population — the first in 25 years — in March 2012. We overcame challenges related to lack of data and poor security with the use of remote sensing, the systematic development of local contacts through the Somali diaspora, the flexible...

After highly fragmented civil wars, order is often secured through the selective co-optation of rebel field commanders and atomized insurgents. This paper presents a formal model of civil war settlement as a coalition formation game between various regime and rebel factions. This approach...

What are the political consequences of democratization assistance to regimes transitioning from authoritarian rule? By exploiting the downstream effects of a field experiment designed to encourage citizen monitoring of Georgia's 2008 parliamentary elections, we evaluate the political...

Unrecognized statelets may be forming in the Eastern Donbas region of Ukraine under the aegis of Russian protection — a “frozen conflict.” Georgia's past provides a useful cautionary tale in reference to Ukraine's probable future. The very same conceptual debates that are currently...

Shelter-in-place ordinances were the first wide-spread policy measures aimed to mitigate the spread of COVID-19. Compliance with shelter-in-place directives is individually costly and requires behavioral changes across diverse sub-populations. Leveraging county-day measures on population...

The discipline of anthropology recoils instinctively at the idea that its researchers' labor might contribute to the national security state; other disciplines celebrate the same contributions as evidence of policy impact. In this article, we examine the seductions of espionage for professionally...