Research

My research examines the political and social strategies of armed groups (what I have called "rebelcraft," as opposed to statecraft in international relations), including: 1) rebel governance; 2) rebel diplomacy; and 3) rebels' tactical use of social identities. Exploring their links with political outcomes such as democratization, statebuilding, and foreign policy, my projects offer implications for understanding violence and nonviolence, war and social mobilization, and the effects of international interventions on conflict dynamics.

Additionally, I am at work on new projects on the rebel lobby; rebel leader biographies and transnational social networks; and rebel environmental governance.

Books

Rebel Governance in the Age of Climate Change. Elements in Organizational Response to Climate Change. Cambridge University Press, 2025, with Kathleen Gallagher Cunningham, Leonardo Gentil-Fernandes, Elisabeth Gilmore, Danielle Jung, and Cyanne Loyle. 

The Wartime Origins of Democratization: Civil War, Rebel Governance, and Political Regimes. Problems of International Politics series. Cambridge University Press, 2016.
                    Paperback, August 2017
                    Replication files: see Rebel Governance Dataset

Peer-Reviewed Articles, Book Chapters, and Edited Volumes

• "Functional Sovereignty in Contested Territories," International Studies Quarterly (2025), with Adrian Florea. 
  
  
• "Are We Marketing Rebellion?" Conflict, Security & Development (2024), with R. Joseph Huddleston (part of a special issue on "Research Ethics and the Study of Armed Actors").
  
  
• "How Religious Are 'Religious' Conflicts?" International Studies Review (2023), with Mohammad Ayatollahi Tabaar, Kanchan Chandra, Evgeny Finkel, Richard Nielsen, Mara Revkin, Manuel Vogt, and Elisabeth Jean Wood.
  
  
• "Rebel Leader Age and the Outcomes of Civil Wars," Journal of Conflict Resolution (2023), with Daniel Silverman and Benjamin Acosta.
  
  
• "New Directions in Rebel Governance Research," Perspectives on Politics (2023), with Cyanne Loyle, Kathleen Gallagher Cunningham, and Danielle Jung.
  
  
• "Revolt and Rule: Learning about Governance from Rebel Groups," International Studies Review (2022), with Cyanne Loyle, Jessica Maves Braithwaite, Kathleen Cunningham, Joseph Huddleston, Danielle Jung, and Michael Rubin.
  
  
• "Introducing ROLE: A Database of Rebel Leader Attributes in Armed Conflict," Journal of Peace Research (2022), with Benjamin Acosta and Daniel Silverman.
  
  
• "Friends in the Profession: Rebel Leaders, International Social Networks, and External Support for Rebellion," International Studies Quarterly (2022), with Daniel Silverman and Benjamin Acosta.
  
  
• "Voting for Militants: Rebel Elections in Civil War," Journal of Conflict Resolution (2021), with Kathleen Gallagher Cunningham and Katherine Sawyer.  Supplemental files
  
  
• "We Are All Coethnics: State Identities and Foreign Interventions in Violent Conflict," Journal of Global Security Studies (2021), with Mohammad Ayatollahi Tabaar.
  
  
• "Arms for Education? External Support and Rebel Social Services," Journal of Peace Research (2021), with Patricia Sullivan.
  
  
• "Religious Instrumentalism in Violent Conflict," Ethnopolitics (2020). 
  
  
• ​"Rebel Diplomacy in Civil War," International Security (2016).  Replication files
  
  
• "Democratization after Civil War: A Brush-Clearing Exercise," International Studies Quarterly (2012), with Page Fortna. Replication files
  
  
• "Counter-Terrorism and the Rule of Law," in A. Hurwitz with R. Huang eds., Civil War and the Rule of Law, Lynne Rienner (2008).
  
  
• "The Nuts and Bolts of Capacity Building: Practicable Lessons from East Timor," Journal of Peacebuilding and Development 2.3 (2006), with Joseph Harris.
  
  
• New Nation: United Nations Peacebuilding in East Timor, Nagasaki: Research Institute of Southeast Asia; and Macau (2004), with Geoffrey C. Gunn.
  
  
• "Reconciliation as State-Building in East Timor," Lusotopie, Sciences Po Bordeaux (2004), with Geoffrey C. Gunn.

Essays, Reflections, and Reviews (selected)

• "Rebel Governance in an Age of Climate Change," New Security Beat, Stimson Center, July 30, 2025, with Elisabeth Gilmore, Kathleen Gallagher Cunningham, Leonardo Gentil-Fernandes, Danielle Jung, Cyanne Loyle. 
  

• "The Order or Anarchy," Aeon, December 5, 2024. (The piece is an homage to the scholarship of James C. Scott.)
  
  
• Invited review of Violent Victors: Why Bloodstained Parties Win Postwar Elections by S. Daly, RJISSF Roundtable,
  H-Diplo, 2024.
  
  
• "The Elitism of Armed Rebellion," The Takeaway 12(6), Mosbacher Institute for Trade, Economics, and Public Policy, September 2021.
  
  
• "Lobbying Battles in the Libyan War," The Takeaway 11(3), Mosbacher Institute for Trade, Economics, and Public Policy, March 2020.
  
  
• "Armed Rebel Groups Lobby in DC, Just Like Governments. How Does That Influence U.S. Policy?" Monkey Cage, The Washington Post, February 6, 2020.
  
  
• "Wartime Nonviolent Mass Protests and Post-Conflict Politics," The Politics of Post-Conflict Reconstruction, POMEPS Studies Vol. 30 (2018).
  
  
• ​​"The Islamic State as an Ordinary Insurgency," Monkey Cage, The Washington Post, May 14, 2015.
  • Also in Islam and International Order, POMEPS Studies Vol. 15 (2015).
  • French translation in Orient XXI (June 2015).
    
    
• Invited book review of C. Crocker, F. Osler, and P. Aall, eds, Managing Conflict in a World Adrift, H-Diplo (2015).