Research

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).