Note: links to all of my published research follow this research statement.
Broadly speaking, my research falls into two main streams and two smaller ones. First, I have been researching and publishing on the politics of resource wealth (especially oil and natural gas) for more than twenty years. My doctoral dissertation and first book, as well as several articles, used the experiences of Iran and Indonesia in the 1960s and 1970s alongside cross-country statistical data to explore how oil wealth was conditioned by the timing of its entry into developing countries. In the years since that first book appeared in print, I have published eight additional papers and a co-authored book on oil and politics. These works collectively have continued my initial research intuition that oil wealth a) has conditional effects and b) that sometimes those are directly beneficial ones, notwithstanding the resource curse conventional wisdom 'out there.'
Second, I have been conducting research on ethnic politics, nationalism, and ethnic conflict for about a decade now. In particular, I am interested in the dynamics of secessionism and separatist conflict. This interest has led me to empirical research on the former Soviet Union, the province of Aceh in Indonesia, the four Kurdish minority regions in Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Turkey, the Touareg region of Africa, Balochistan in Southwest Asia, and more recently Western Europe and the American South. All of this scholarship has had a foundation of long-range historical dynamics, in which rebellions and episodes of mobilization sometimes more than 200 years ago still exert sizable influence on contemporary identities and mobilization around them.
My two somewhat smaller research streams focus on a) regime change and b) research methods. On regime change, I have built on the institutional focus in my first book to explore the determinants of both durable and fragile single-party autocracy. That project, titled "Life of the Party," is linked below. I also collaborated with Dan Slater and Gautam Nair to challenge prevalent redistributive models of democracy in an article published in 2014 (also below).
On research methods, I have remained keenly committed since my graduate school years to making ever better and more reliable use of qualitative data for causal and historical inference. In addition to the articles below, my two books and many of my published articles explicitly ground their approach to cross-country statistical research on an imperative of contextualizing and sequencing aggregate data analysis with qualitative modes of inquiry.
Broadly speaking, my research falls into two main streams and two smaller ones. First, I have been researching and publishing on the politics of resource wealth (especially oil and natural gas) for more than twenty years. My doctoral dissertation and first book, as well as several articles, used the experiences of Iran and Indonesia in the 1960s and 1970s alongside cross-country statistical data to explore how oil wealth was conditioned by the timing of its entry into developing countries. In the years since that first book appeared in print, I have published eight additional papers and a co-authored book on oil and politics. These works collectively have continued my initial research intuition that oil wealth a) has conditional effects and b) that sometimes those are directly beneficial ones, notwithstanding the resource curse conventional wisdom 'out there.'
Second, I have been conducting research on ethnic politics, nationalism, and ethnic conflict for about a decade now. In particular, I am interested in the dynamics of secessionism and separatist conflict. This interest has led me to empirical research on the former Soviet Union, the province of Aceh in Indonesia, the four Kurdish minority regions in Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Turkey, the Touareg region of Africa, Balochistan in Southwest Asia, and more recently Western Europe and the American South. All of this scholarship has had a foundation of long-range historical dynamics, in which rebellions and episodes of mobilization sometimes more than 200 years ago still exert sizable influence on contemporary identities and mobilization around them.
My two somewhat smaller research streams focus on a) regime change and b) research methods. On regime change, I have built on the institutional focus in my first book to explore the determinants of both durable and fragile single-party autocracy. That project, titled "Life of the Party," is linked below. I also collaborated with Dan Slater and Gautam Nair to challenge prevalent redistributive models of democracy in an article published in 2014 (also below).
On research methods, I have remained keenly committed since my graduate school years to making ever better and more reliable use of qualitative data for causal and historical inference. In addition to the articles below, my two books and many of my published articles explicitly ground their approach to cross-country statistical research on an imperative of contextualizing and sequencing aggregate data analysis with qualitative modes of inquiry.
The Politics of Resource Wealth
Books
Rethinking the Resource Curse (with David Waldner). Cambridge University Press, 2021.
Hard Times in the Lands of Plenty: Oil Politics in Iran and Indonesia. Cornell University Press, 2007.
Articles
Research Methods
Iran and Indonesia
Books
Rethinking the Resource Curse (with David Waldner). Cambridge University Press, 2021.
Hard Times in the Lands of Plenty: Oil Politics in Iran and Indonesia. Cornell University Press, 2007.
Articles
- Pax Petrolica? Rethinking the Oil-Interstate War Linkage, with Hye Ryeon Jang, Security Studies. Replication materials here. Quantitative appendix here. Qualitative appendix here.
- Survivorship Bias in Comparative Politics: Endogenous Sovereignty and the Resource Curse, Perspectives on Politics, with David Waldner.
- Exploring the Resource-Civil War Nexus. In Sara Mitchell and T. David Mason eds. What do We Know About Civil War? Rowman-Littlefield, 2016
- 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)
- 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
- 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
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.