Publications

“The Politics of Encampment: Pathways to Government Use of Concentration Camps"

Forthcoming in International Interactions

Rachel Van Nostrand, Alex Braithwaite, and Alex Bruens

  • Systems of concentration camps have been administered by governments on every inhabited continent and across more than 150 cases since their first modern use in Cuba in 1896. Although each system takes on unique features, all involve substantial logistical, financial, and reputational costs. Why, then, do governments adopt such costly institutions of repression? While many existing explanations rightly emphasize domestic threat dynamics like civil wars, dissent, and regime type; we argue that decisions to adopt concentration camps are driven, in addition, by diffusion processes, whereby governments learn from regional, colonial, institutional, and ideological peers. Using new global data on concentration camp systems from 1896 to 2018, we evaluate these diffusion dynamics and uncover a striking temporal divide. While regional and ideological networks consistently predict camp adoption throughout the period of study, diffusion within ideological and institutional networks is limited to the post-1945 period. These findings suggest that concentration camps spread not solely in response to domestic crises but also through the development of historically contingent, transnational repertoires of repression.

“Deadly Persuasion: How Leaders Influence Lethality and Sustainability in Violent Extremist Organizations” (with Mackenzie Harms, Justin Jones, and Gina Ligon)

Forthcoming at advances.in/psychology

Abstract: Research on violent extremist organizations (VEOs) has largely treated lethality as a feature of individual attacks or as an aggregate organizational outcome, leaving an open question as to how lethal performance changes across a leader’s tenure. The multilevel methods needed to examine that question remain uncommon in the study of VEOs. We address this gap by applying two models of outstanding organizational leadership—charismatic-ideological-pragmatic influence and personalized-versus-socialized power orientation—to a sample of 68 VEO leaders and 645 leader-year observations. Using a multilevel longitudinal analysis, we examine whether leaders’ influence tactics and power orientations explain changes in lethal performance of the organization over the course of their tenure. Results indicate that lethality increased as leader tenure lengthened, but neither influence style nor power orientation independently accounted for lethality. Instead, the two operated jointly: among charismatic leaders, those with a personalized power orientation led far deadlier organizations than those with a socialized orientation, whereas among pragmatic leaders the pattern reversed. Thus, neither power orientation was uniformly more dangerous; the outcomes driven by those styles depended on the influence style of the leader. These findings suggest that VEOs may represent an uncommon context in which personalized leadership can outperform the socialized orientation typically associated with effective organizational leadership, but only under certain influence conditions. The results also point to the value of incorporating leadership theories into assessments of VEO threat and leadership-decapitation strategies

Articles Under Review

“How USAID’s Withdrawal Fragmented Global Aid Networks in Conflict-Affected Countries” (with Cecilia Cavero, Madeline Fleishman, Shahryar Minhas, Nuole Chen, Jared F. Edgerton, Jessica Maves Braithwaite, Susanna P. Campbell)

Abstract: In 2025, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) cut over 85% of its aid. Not only is this withdrawal likely to cause millions of deaths, it is also fragmenting the global aid ecosystem. Using original data on aid networks in 20 conflict-affected countries, combined with simulations of network disruption and a decomposition analysis, we demonstrate that USAID’s withdrawal leads to network fragmentation at more than twice the rate of any comparable donor. This outsized effect stems from the high dependency of aid actors on USAID, across sectors and organizational types. Given the importance of cross-network coordination, USAID’s withdrawal is likely to reduce the ability of the global aid network to sustain peace and development in the most fragile contexts.

“Beyond Blue Helmets: UN Political Missions and State Violence Against Civilians”

Abstract: Over the last three decades, United Nations (UN) intervention has shifted away from peacekeeping operations (PKOs) in favor of special political missions (SPMs). Do these political missions improve human rights in host states? I define two pathways by which PKOs limit state violence against civilians and explicate overlapping mechanisms in SPMs: mission presence (securitization for PKOs, accountability for SPMs) and institutional reform and development (via mandate tasks). Using a matched sample, I test the effect of interventions on government one-sided violence. I find tentative support that SPMs correspond with reductions in killings and thus may generate similar dividends to PKOs; certain mandate tasks can limit killings. Finally, recognizing PKOs are increasingly replaced with SPMs, I descriptively explain how within-host-country mission sequencing affects human rights. These findings add to the growing literature on UN political operations and speak to the impact of this shifting UN intervention strategy.

“Resumes for Resolution: Rebel Leader Pre-War Job Experience and Civil War Negotiations” (with Mackenzie Harms and Gina Ligon)

Revise & resubmit at Civil Wars

Abstract: Why are some rebels more likely to negotiate in civil wars than others? We argue that rebel leaders’ life experiences are an overlooked characteristic in understanding civil war negotiations. Leaders gain knowledge, skills, and abilities through their pre-rebellion careers, informing their mental model of leadership. Rebel leaders draw on this mental model during war, and we expect leaders with more negotiation experience to be more willing to engage in talks. We match data on rebel leaders’ occupational experience with a validated database of job skills, finding that leaders’ negotiation skills increase the likelihood of civil war termination through ceasefires. However, we find an inverse relationship of pre-war job skills and the likelihood of termination by settlement as well as the incidence of comprehensive agreement signature, indicating that these leaders may be more tactical in their negotiations. This article demonstrates the benefits of considering leaders’ life histories in conflict management. 

Select Working Papers

“Distinct configurations of UN missions’ mandates contribute to different outcomes in conflict-affected countries” (with Cameron Mailhot) [Manuscript Complete]

Abstract: Social scientists are interested in understanding the conditions under which conflict-affected countries achieve a variety of desirable outcomes related to violence and governance. United Nations (UN) field missions are often identified as central to promoting such outcomes. However, missions vary significantly in the activities in which they are mandated to engage, and less is known about which of their mandated activities, in particular, most efficiently and effectively contribute to achieving such goals. Using an original, comprehensive dataset of the mandated activities of all UN missions deployed in the post-Cold War era (1989-2020), we first identify via expanding-window elastic net regression and bootstrap resampling the mandated activities associated with both the improvement and the worsening of five key outcomes: conflict termination, reduction in civilian violence, improvements in democratic governance, increased respect for human rights, and extension of state authority. We then validate these findings on out-of-sample observations to confirm the stability of predictors over time and across different contexts. Finally, we simulate a series of counterfactual scenarios to estimate the predicted probability, relative to observed trends, of improvements in each outcome under different mandate configurations. Our study has important implications for designing UN missions' mandates in order to achieve various conditions in conflict-affected countries.

“Seeing the Ecosystem: Studying the Interdependence of Intervening Actors in Conflict-Affected Contexts” (with Susanna Campbell, Jessica Maves Braithwaite, Cecelia Cavero, Madeline Fleishman, and Hatem Zayed) [Manuscript In Progress]

Abstract: International aid actors engaged in peacekeeping, peacebuilding, humanitarian, development, and related sectors are usually studied as separate organizations. We argue instead that they form interdependent networks whose structure varies across time and place. Using new network data mapping over 12,000 aid actors across 20 conflict-affected countries, we demonstrate that these networks cluster into communities, exhibit context-specific levels of fragmentation, and persist on institutional timelines that outlast peace mission mandates. These features carry important implications for peace, security, and development outcomes. This networked view challenges core assumptions in the peacekeeping, aid, and global governance literatures about dominance, hierarchy, and domestic-international divides. More broadly, it opens a new research agenda centered on how intervention works through relational structures rather than isolated organizations that is increasingly important.