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How does the location of rebel-held territory shape insurgent relations with civilians? We argue that when rebel groups control territory domestically, they are strongly incentivized to cultivate mutually beneficial relations with civilians living in their territory and limit their violence against them, while insurgencies with foreign territorial control are incentivized to deploy violence against civilians to gain compliance and extract resources. We test this hypothesis in three ways: a quantitative analysis of all insurgencies from 1989 to 2003 followed by a qualitative case illustration and the synthetic controls method that leverages the mostly exogenous acquisition of foreign territory by the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) after the 1991 establishment of the northern Iraq no-fly zone. Our results strongly support our hypothesis. These findings shed light on potential broader patterns of civilian victimization by insurgents, and the conditions under which insurgents may strive to limit civilian casu...

Economic development generally promotes women’s autonomy. Yet women in resource-rich autocracies fare more poorly than women in similarly wealthy industrial and postindustrial states. Some attribute this puzzling outcome to cultural causes, describing the apparent link between restrictions on women’s autonomy in resource-rich countries (especially in the Middle East) as spurious. Others argue that oil and gas rents cause a gendered resource curse through macroeconomic mechanisms. By contrast, we explain the association as a consequence of a political mechanism. We propose a theory of autocratic survival via antisocial policies chosen for the harms they inflict on targeted groups. Autocrats need to placate ideologically motivated members of their winning coalition. Antisocial policies serve as a costly and visible measure of rulers’ fidelity to these winning coalition members. Resource rents enable rulers to afford such policies, which would be infeasible in tax-reliant regimes. Restricting women’s autonomy thus forms part of a strategy of autocratic rule in resource-rich autocracies. Using quantitative evidence, we demonstrate that variations in women’s autonomy correlate with variations in oil income per capita in cross-country regressions. To trace variations within cases, we present case studies of Saudi Arabia and Iran to demonstrate processes consonant with our theory.

For decades, China has been countering U.S. naval strengths with asymmetric capabilities, not by matching them. Yet, China is now building aircraft carriers. Why? It is not a sign of strength but rather history is replete with examples, including two from the Cold War, of weaker states imitating more advanced rivals rather than pursuing their own “disruptive” innovations.

Is there a resource curse? Some scholars argue that resource income is associated with slower transitions to democracy; others contend that the negative effects of resources are conditional on factors such as institutional quality. To test these competing hypotheses, this article exploits the price spike caused by the 1973 oil embargo, which transformed several countries with latent oil industries into resource-reliant states. Our quasi-experimental research design allows for better identification of causation than the associational approaches common in the literature. We use the method of synthetic controls to compare the political development of states that received resource-derived revenue with how these states would have behaved in a counterfactual world without such revenue. We find that there is little evidence that a resource curse systematically prevents democratization or that institutional quality alone determines outcomes. Nevertheless, resource income meaningfully affects outcomes and even contributes to democratization in some instances.

What explains public opinion on trade? Many scholars of trade opinion argue that individuals form opinions about trade based upon personal economic interest. However, public opinion research suggests that individuals are rarely able to connect the effects of national policies with their own interests. This paper addresses this puzzle. Based on over three decades of public and elite survey data, we find that higher levels of political awareness robustly predict greater support for free trade, consistent with data showing that overwhelming elite support for trade. Further, we show that the effects reported in the trade opinion literature (e.g., education, gender, race, and income) are conditioned on respondents' levels of political awareness. This suggests that few people have settled opinions on trade policy. Instead, politically-aware individuals receive cues from political elites and take positions corresponding to elite positions on trade policy.