We study the impact of electoral gender quotas in post-war Burundi and Rwanda on women's political representation. First, we look at descriptive representation by studying the number of female representatives and the prestige of their positions in the legislative and executive branches of...

Does secessionism lead to social polarization? Despite much research on independence movements, their relationship to polarization, a key mechanism theorized as increasing the chances of violent conflict, remains less understood. We argue that secessionist conflicts can polarize along both...

Wartime sexual violence is widespread across conflict zones and thought to leave a disastrous legacy for survivors, communities, and nations. Yet, systematic studies on i) the prevalence and ii) the social and political consequences of wartime sexual violence are fraught with severe data...

Malaysia provides for interesting paradoxes. Poverty was reduced by adopting a horizontal perspective to policy planning through affirmative action targeting one ethnic group lagging economically in society. However, outcomes of affirmative action include growing wealth and income disparities, a...

Rebels, militias, and criminal groups all govern civilians. Governing strategies adopted by armed groups during civil war likely influence citizens' post-conflict political participation, with consequences for democratic politics. We theorize that an armed group's position relative to the state...

The lack of political representation often lies at the origin of identity-based violence, and, when not resolved, can re-ignite violence. We study who perceives gains and losses in political representation in Rwanda and Burundi and why. We rely on a quantitative and qualitative analysis of over...

This paper presents evidence of political legacies of exposure to a violent class conflict over 100 years. We revisit the Finnish Civil War of 1918 and first trace out the impact of local conflict exposure on electoral outcomes over a quarter-century period between the World Wars. The electoral...

Under what conditions can legacies of past violence shape political behaviour? We propose a theory of how war victimization defines attitudes over the long run, and how these can be activated by changes in the political environment. We argue that exposure to violence by members of a different...

When does organized crime resort to assassinating politicians? In narcocracies, criminal groups co-opt political elites through bribery in exchange for protection to traffic illegal drugs. When criminal groups compete, they may also resort to political violence to influence which candidate wins...

We investigate the impact of the political representation of minority groups on the incidence of ethnic conflict in India. We code data on Hindu-Muslim violence and Muslim political representation in India and leverage quasi-random variation in legislator religion generated by the results of...