Ben Smith
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Ethnic Violence and Separatist Conflict  

  • Separatist Conflict In the Former Soviet Union and Beyond: How Different Was Communism? World Politics 65, 2 (April 2013), 350-81. Replication data and other materials archived at my Dataverse page.

  • Explaining Anti-Chinese Violence in Late 20th Century Indonesia (with Rizal Panggabean), World Development 39, 2: 231-42

Regime Change and the State

  • Economic Origins of Democratic Breakdown? The Redistributive Model and the Post-Colonial State (with Dan Slater and Gautam Nair), Perspectives on Politics 12, 2: June 2014, 353-74. Replication data and other files archived at my Dataverse page.

  • Rethinking the Economic Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: The Continuing Value of Cases and Comparisons, APSA-CP (Winter 2008), 16-21

  • Life of the Party: The Origins of Regime Breakdown and Persistence Under Single-Party Rule World Politics 57, 3 (April 2005). Replication data and other files archived at my Dataverse page.

  • "Conclusion," in Adam White ed. The Everyday Life of the State, University of Washington Press (2013), 205-18.

Research Methods

  • Analyzing Natural Experiments: A Comparative Historical Approach

  • Comparing Separatism Across Regions: Rebellious Legacies in Africa, Asia and the Middle East


















The Politics of Resource Wealth

  • Survivorship Bias in Comparative Politics: Endogenous Sovereignty and the Resource Curse, with David Waldner.
  • Exploring the Resource-Civil War Nexus. In Sara Mitchell and T. David Mason eds. What do We Know About Civil War?  Forthcoming at Rowman-Littlefield.

  • Resource Wealth as Rent Leverage: Rethinking the Oil-Stability Nexus. Conflict Management and Peace Science. 34, 6: 597-617. Replication data, appendices and replication files archived on my Dataverse page.

  • Rentier States and State Transformations, with David Waldner. In Stephan Leibfried, Frank Nullmeier, Evelyne Huber, Matthew Lange, Jonah Levy, John Stephens eds., The Oxford Handbook of Transformations of the State, Oxford University Press, 2015.

  • Review of Wars of Plunder, Petro-Aggression: When Oil Causes War and The Race for What’s Left: The Global Scramble for the World’s Last Resources. In Perspectives on Politics December 2013.

  • Resource Wealth and Political Regimes: How Solid a Link After 40 Years of Research?, APSA-CD 11, 2 (June 2013), 2, 17-20. (references)

  • Oil and Political Power in Southeast Asia, in Robert Looney ed. Handbook of Oil Politics, Routledge 2012. Replication data and other files archived at my Dataverse page.

  •   The New Petromercantilism: Oil, Development and the State in the 21st Century Doha Discussion Paper, Brookings Institution

  • Oil Wealth and Regime Survival in the Developing World, 1960-1999 American Journal of Political Science (April 2004): 232-46.

  • The Wrong Kind of Crisis: Why Oil Booms and Busts Rarely Lead to Authoritarian Breakdown Studies in Comparative International Development (Winter 2006)

 Iran and Indonesia

  • Collective Action With and Without Islam: Mobilizing the Bazaar in Iran, in Quintan Wiktorowicz Islamic Activism: A Social Movement Theory Approach (Indiana University Press, 2003)
  • The Origins of Regional Autonomy in Indonesia: Experts and the Marketing of Political Interests, Journal of East Asian Studies 8, 2: 211-34.