Political Science

Donald Green

John W. Burgess Professor of Political Science

Columbia University

Collaborative Research: Voter Mobilization and Electoral Subversion in the Workplace

Intellectual Merit: The project is important to US national security interests because it addresses economic coercion that undermines democracy. Scholars have long recognized that rulers in non democracies can extend their tenure by subverting elections, focusing on ballot-box fraud, repression, turnout-buying, vote buying, patronage spending, and the co-optation of opposition elites. However, they have largely overlooked one prominent form of electoral subversion in contemporary hybrid regimes: the coercive mobilization of voters by employers.

Doctoral Dissertation Research: Accountability in Rebel Regimes

The project investigates local governance and the establishment of law-like systems of order in territory controlled by rebel organizations during civil war. In particular, the project explains variation in rebel organizations' provision of public goods and services as well as their use of coercive violence against civilians to control territory. Departing from existing research, the argument examines civilian political mobilization and collective action to constrain rebel organizations, advancing a political accountability theory of rebel governance.

Doctoral Dissertation Research: Homeward Bound: Return Migration and Post-Conflict Governance

This dissertation examines the political impact of return migration after civil war. Violence wrought by civil war forces millions of people to flee their homes. While scholars have demonstrated how these population movements can spread and exacerbate conflict, return-migration is assumed to be a purely logistical issue. Once the war is over, people will simply return home and pick up where they left off. Yet, conflict between returning and non-migrant populations is a nearly ubiquitous issue for post-conflict societies from South Sudan to Iraq and Rwanda.

V. Page Fortna

Harold Brown Professor of U.S. Foreign and Security Policy

Columbia University

Richard Betts

Leo A. Shifrin Professor of War and Peace Studies, Arnold A. Saltzman Professor of War and Peace Studies and Professor of International and Public Affairs; Director, Arnold A. Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies