Writings

ACADEMIC BOOK

Dilemmas of Democratic Consolidation (Lynne Rienner, 2010). Review in Perspectives on Politics here. Xavier Marquez’s blogged review here. PDF of Introduction here.

ACADEMIC ARTICLES AND BOOK CHAPTERS

“Mining Texts to Efficiently Generate Global Data on Political Regime Types,” co-authored with Shahryar Minhas and Michael D. Ward, Research & Politics (July 2015).

“Can Structural Conditions Explain the Onset of Nonviolent Uprisings?” co-authored with Erica Chenoweth, Journal of Conflict Resolution (April 2015).

“Democratic Transitions,” in Jeffrey Haynes, ed. The Routledge Handbook of Democratization (Routledge, 2012). Typescript here.

“A Global Model for Forecasting Political Instability,” co-authored with Jack A. Goldstone, Robert H. Bates, David L. Epstein, Ted Robert Gurr, Michael Lustik, Monty M. Marshall, and Mark R. Woodward, American Journal of Political Science Vol. 54, No. 1 (January 2010): 190–208. Ungated version here.

“International Integration and Democratization: An Event History Analysis,” Democratization, Vol. 15, No. 2 (April 2008): 272–296.

“Natural-Resource Wealth and the Survival of Autocracy,” Comparative Political Studies, Vol. 140, No. 6 (August 2007), pp. 995–1018.

“Modeling Transitions to and from Democracy,” co-authored with Michael Lustik, Democratization,Vol. 14, No. 3 (May/June 2007), pp. 351–387. Ungated earlier version here.

“Contentious Collective Action and the Breakdown of Authoritarian Regimes,” International Political Science Review, Vol. 26, No. 3 (July 2005), pp. 311–34.

“Baltic Protest in the Gorbachev Era: Movement Content and Dynamics,” Global Review of Ethnopolitics, Vol. 3, Nos. 3–4 (March/June 2004), pp. 23–43.

SELECTED ACADEMIC CONFERENCE AND WORKING PAPERS

“Promising Initial Results from a new Mass-Atrocities Early Warning System,” paper presented at the ISA Annual Convention, New Orleans, LA (February 2015). On SSRN.

“Using the ‘Wisdom of (Expert) Crowds’ to Forecast Mass Atrocities,” paper presented at the ISA Annual Convention, Toronto, ON (March 2014). On SSRN.

“A Multimodel Ensemble for Forecasting Onsets of State-Sponsored Mass Killing,” APSA 2013 Annual Meeting paper (August 2013). On SSRN.

“Forecasting Political Instability: Results from a Tournament of Methods,” working paper (September 2012). On SSRN.

“Economic Growth and Political Instability,” presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Washington, DC (September 2010). On SSRN.

“Searching for Sources of Democratic Consolidation,” Political Instability Task Force report (August 2010). On SSRN.

“What We Talk About When We Talk about States,” Political Instability Task Force concept paper (January 2010). On SSRN. Associated coding rules for state collapse also on SSRN.

“Forecasting Democratic Transitions and Breakdowns,” Political Instability Task Force report (August 2009). On SSRN.

“Pathways to Political Liberalization in Dictatorships,” presented at the National Meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, Chicago, IL (April 2009). On SSRN.

“Assessing Risks of State-Sponsored Mass Killing,” co-authored with Ben Valentino, Political Instability Task Force report (February 2008). On SSRN.

“Gambling on Reform,” presented at the National Meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, Chicago, IL (April 2007). On SSRN.

“Do ‘Observables’ Really Produce Better Data? Problems with the PACL [a.k.a. ACLP or DD] Data Set for Analysis of Regime Survival,” working paper. On SSRN.

DISSERTATION

I wrote my dissertation in the mid-1990s on ethnic and nationalist mobilization in Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania during the Gorbachev years. In 2008, an academic press invited me to dust off that dissertation and publish it as a book. After recovering the file from a floppy disk with a drive at my local library, I reformatted and lightly edited the manuscript to ready it for publication. In the end, though, I decided not to publish it after a couple of colleagues whose work I admire said they didn’t think it was quite ready for prime time. In hopes that the work might still be useful to other researchers, I’ve posted the manuscript version on the Web. You can find it here.

SELECTED NON-ACADEMIC PUBLICATIONS

“Genocide Is Going Out of Fashion,” Foreign Policy (May 14, 2015)

“Why the World Can’t Have a Nate Silver,” Foreign Policy (November 8, 2012)

“Worrying about South Africa,” Foreign Policy (September 14, 2012)

“Bucking the Odds in North Korea,” Foreign Policy (September 6, 2012)

“The Watch List,” Foreign Policy (July/August 2012)

“Crystal Clear,” Foreign Policy (June 22, 2011)

“A State Is Born,” World Link (2002)

“Upwardly Mobile,” World Link (2002)

“Hazards of the Trail,” Running Times Magazine (June 2002)

“Into the Breach: Tackling the Digital Divide,” World Link (2002)

“Collective Powers,” World Link (2001)

“Ask Questions First,” Baltimore City Paper (May 9, 2001)

“Game Face,” Baltimore City Paper (January 3, 2001)

“Taking on the Pain,” Running Times Magazine (November 2000)

“Welcome to the Boys’ Club,” Running Times Magazine (October 2000)