Political leaders use different tactics to ensure widespread compliance with state policies
and to minimize resistance. Scholarship tends to treat different tactics individually …

Canonical studies of the origins of state capacity have focused on macro-historical or
structural explanations. I review recent research in historical political economy that …

Claim-making–the everyday strategies through which citizens pursue rights fulfilment–is
often overlooked in studies of political behavior, which tend to focus on highly visible, pivotal …

Decentralization is an important and commonplace type of reform, yet our understanding of
its effects remains limited. This paper documents the effects of the 2009–10 wave of district …

What aids governments in establishing centralized political authority and gaining legitimacy
among rural populations? We hypothesize that primary schools in rural communities play a …

Why has homegrown jihadi Salafism emerged as a major security challenge in some African
countries, but not in others? This article draws attention to the organizational playing field in …

Why would a strong authoritarian state choose not to enforce its own policy? We extend the
theory of forbearance to the authoritarian context and incorporate both the supply and …

This article examines how African chiefs shape pre-election violence (PEV) locally. I argue
that chiefs with greater capability of voter coordination, which stems from precolonial …

Why do politicians intervene in some chieftaincy succession disputes but not others? The
key actors and their motivations in these processes remain understudied. In this article I …

The 2016 peace agreement between the Colombian government and the Revolutionary
Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) has been heralded as the end of the Cold War-era …