Dawn Brancati
2006. International Organization (July): 651-685.
Political decentralization is widely believed to reduce ethnic conflict
and secessionism in the world today. Yet decentralization is more successful in reducing
conflict and secessionism in some countries than in others. In this article, I explore
why this difference occurs. I demonstrate using a statistical analysis of thirty democracies
from 1985 to 2000 that decentralization may decrease ethnic conflict and secessionism
directly by bringing the government closer to the people and increasing
opportunities to participate in government, but that decentralization increases ethnic
conflict and secessionism indirectly by encouraging the growth of regional parties. Regional parties increase ethnic conflict and secessionism by reinforcing ethnic and
regional identities, producing legislation that favors certain groups over others, and
mobilizing groups to engage in ethnic conflict and secessionism.
Dawn Brancati
2007. Journal of Conflict Resolution 51 (5): 715-743.
Although many scholars, policy makers, and relief organizations suggest that natural
disasters bring groups together and dampen conflicts, earthquakes can actually stimulate
intrastate conflict by producing scarcities in basic resources, particularly in developing
countries where the competition for scarce resources is most intense.
Capitalizing on a natural experiment design, this study examines the impact of earthquakes
on intrastate conflict through a statistical analysis of 185 countries over the
period from 1975 to 2002. The analysis indicates that earthquakes not only increase
the likelihood of conflict, but that their effects are greater for higher magnitude earthquakes
striking more densely populated areas of countries with lower gross domestic
products as well as preexisting conflicts. These results suggest that disaster recovery
efforts must pay greater attention to the conflict-producing potential of earthquakes
and undertake certain measures, including strengthening security procedures, to prevent
this outcome from occurring.
Dawn Brancati
2008. British Journal of Political Science 38(1): 135-159.
Traditional explanations of the origins of regional parties as the products of regionally-based social cleavages
cannot fully account for the variation in regional party strength both within and across countries. This
unexplained variance can be explained, however, by looking at institutions, and in particular, political
decentralization. This argument is tested with a statistical analysis of thirty-seven democracies around the
world from 1945 to 2002. The analysis shows that political decentralization increases the strength of regional
parties in national legislatures, independent of the strength of regional cleavages, as well as of various features
of a country’s political system, such as fiscal decentralization, presidentialism, electoral proportionality,
cross-regional voting laws and the sequencing of executive and legislative elections.
Dawn Brancati
2008. Journal of Politics 70(3): 648-662.
Independent candidates are widely believed to influence the quality of representation through issues as
fundamental to democracy as government accountability, responsiveness, and electoral turnout. Their impact,
however, hinges on their electoral strength, which varies widely within and across countries. In order to explain this
variation, this study examines which aspects of electoral systems affect independents the most and why. Based on a
statistical analysis of 34 countries around the world between 1945 and 2003, this study finds that electoral systems
influence the electoral strength of independent candidates by defining the opportunities for independents to compete
for office (i.e., ballot access requirements), the degree to which politics is candidate centered versus partisan driven
(i.e., majority/plurality rule, district magnitude, open-list PR, and democratic transitions), and the extent to which
small vote getters win seats (i.e., district size and electoral thresholds). Accordingly, not only do independents
influence the nature of representation, but so too do the ways in which electoral systems influence independent
candidates.
Dawn Brancati and Jack L. Snyder
2011. Journal of Conflict Resolution 55 (3): 469-492.
In the post–cold war period, civil wars are increasingly likely to end with peace settlements brokered by international actors who press for early elections. However,
elections held soon after wars end, when political institutions remain weak, are associated with an increased likelihood of a return to violence. International actors have
a double-edged influence over election timing and the risk of war, often promoting
precarious military stalemates and early elections but sometimes also working to
prevent a return to war through peacekeeping, institution building, and powersharing. In this article, we develop and test quantitatively a model of the causes of early
elections as a building block in evaluating the larger effect of election timing on the
return to war.
Dawn Brancati and Jack L. Snyder
2013. Journal of Conflict Resolution 57(5): 822-850.
Elections constitute a fundamental element of postconflict peacebuilding efforts in
the post–cold war era and are often held soon after conflicts end. Yet, the impact of
early elections on postconflict stability is the subject of sharp debate. While some
argue that early elections facilitate peace agreements, hasten democratization, and
ensure postconflict stability, others suggest that they undermine genuine democracy
and spark a renewal in fighting. In this study, we argue that holding elections soon
after a civil war ends generally increases the likelihood of renewed fighting, but that
favorable conditions, including decisive victories, demobilization, peacekeeping,
power sharing, and strong political, administrative and judicial institutions, can
mitigate this risk. We attempt to reconcile the extant qualitative debate on
postconflict elections through a quantitative analysis of all civil wars ending in the
post–World War II period.
Dawn Brancati
2014. Annual Review of Political Science 17: 313-326.
This review essay examines the burgeoning literature on democratic
authoritarianism, which examines two related, but distinct questions about why
authoritarian regimes adopt institutions conventionally associated with democracy, and
how these institutions ironically strengthen authoritarian regimes and forestall
democratization. The literature suggests that authoritarian regimes adopt and utilize
nominally democratic institutions to strengthen regimes in five main ways: signaling,
information acquisition, patronage distribution, monitoring, and credible commitment. I
evaluate each of these mechanisms in this review essay, as well as the empirical challenges
facing this research agenda in general, and offer several suggestions for how the field
should proceed to overcome these challenges
Dawn Brancati
2014. Comparative Political Studies 47(11): 1503-1530.
Why do pro-democracy protests emerge in some countries at certain
periods of time and not others? Pro-democracy protests, I argue, are more
likely to arise when the economy is not performing well and people blame the
autocratic nature of their regime for the economy, than when the economy
is performing well, or when people do not blame the nature of their regime
for the poor state of the economy. People are more likely to associate the
economy with the nature of their regime, I further argue, in election periods,
particularly when people are unable to remove the incumbent government
from power through elections. My argument is supported by a statistical
analysis of pro-democracy protests in 158 countries between 2006 and
2011, showing that not only is the economy an important factor explaining
the emergence of pro-democracy protests, but that other factors commonly
thought to affect these protests, including technologies like cell phones and
the Internet, are not.
Dawn Brancati
2014. Political Science Research and Methods 2(1): 29-95.
Economic integration is widely argued to increase subnational demands for independence. Yet, increasingly high degrees of integration have not been associated with a
commensurate explosion of separatist activity. Integration, I argue, should not promote separatism because states retain important political and economic powers even in
the face of major integration, and because separatist movements intrinsically support
strong states, albeit not the ones from which they are seeking independence. Empirically, I test this argument through the case of post-WWII European integration,
a hard test of my argument, since the European Union (EU) is the most advanced
economic integration scheme in the world today. The quantitative analysis supports
this argument showing that EU integration is weakly associated with a minor increase
in separatist party activity in only two countries, Belgium and the United Kingdom.
Further qualitative analysis suggests that even in these two countries the increase in
separatist activity is not due to integration.
Dawn Brancati
2014. Political Behavior 36(4): 705-730.
In this paper, I evaluate two competing perspectives regarding what
underlies the public’s support for democracy promotion—a democratic valuesbased perspective positing that the public’s support for democracy promotion is
based on a principled desire to spread American values, beliefs, and ideologies to
other countries, and a national interests-based perspective claiming that it is based
on a rational desire of Americans to advance the US’ political and economic
interests abroad. Using a survey experiment, I find that, in general, Americans are
not driven by either democratic values or national interests to support democracy
promotion even though they believe that democracy promotion is in the interests of
both the recipient country and the United States. Only a subset of the population is
motivated to support democracy promotion for the sake of democratic values. This
subset of the population is driven by cosmopolitanism—that is, a sense of concern
for the welfare of those living in other countries and a sense of moral responsibility
to promote democracy abroad derived from the US’ position as a world leader, not
national pride.
Dawn Brancati
2014. Journal of Experimental Political Science 1(Spring): 6-15.
While most research on electoral monitors has focused on the effect of electoral monitors on politicians and their behavior in terms of committing electoral fraud, this study examines the effect of electoral monitors on citizens, and their effect in particular on people's perceptions of electoral integrity and behavior in terms of turnout at the polls. To examine this relationship, I conducted a field experiment around the 2009/10 municipal elections in Kosova, which varied the amount of information people had about the responsibilities of monitors in these elections. In the experiment, people who had more information about the monitors' responsibilities believed that the elections were more free and fair than those who had less information, and also believed that the monitors helped make these elections more free and fair, even though they were not more likely to vote as a result.
J. Birnir, J. D. Fearon, D. D. Laitin, T. R. Gurr, S. M. Saideman, D. Brancati, A. Pate, and A. S. Hultquist
2015. Journal of Peace Research 52(1): 110-115.
Protracted conflicts over the status and demands of ethnic and religious groups have caused more instability and loss
of human life than any other type of local, regional, and international conflict since the end of World War II. Yet we
still have accumulated little in the way of accepted knowledge about the ethnic landscape of the world. In pan this is
due to empirical reliance on the limited data in the Minorities at Risk (MAR) project, whose selection biases are well
known. In this anicle we tackle the construction of a list of'socially relevant' ethnic groups meeting newly justified
criteria in a dataset we call AMAR (A for All). We find that one of the principal difficulties in constructing the list is
determining the appropriate level of aggregation for groups. To address this issue, we enumerate subgroups of the
commonly recognized groups meeting our criteria so that scholars can use the subgroup list as one reference in the
construction of the list of ethnic groups most appropriate for their study. Our conclusion outlines future work on
the data using this expanded dataset on ethnic groups.
Dawn Brancati and Adrián Lucardi
2019. Journal of Conflict Resolution 63(10): 2354–2389.
Forum Responses: V. Bunce and S. Wolchik, H. Hale, C. Houle and M. Kayser, and K. Weyland
One of the primary international factors proposed to explain the geographic and temporal clustering of democracy is the diffusion of democracy protests. Democracy
protests are thought to diffuse across countries primarily through a demonstration
effect, whereby protests in one country cause protests in another based on the positive
information that they convey about the likelihood of successful protests elsewhere, and
secondarily, through the actions of transnational activists. In contrast to this view, we
argue, that, in general, democracy protests are not likely to diffuse across countries because the motivation for and the outcome of democracy protests results from domestic
processes that are unaffected or undermined by the occurrence of democracy protests
in other countries. Our statistical analysis supports this argument. Using daily data
on the onset of democracy protests around the world between 1989 and 2011, we found
that in this period, democracy protests were not significantly more likely to occur in
countries when democracy protests occurred in neighboring countries either in general
or in ways consistent with the expectations of diffusion arguments.
Dawn Brancati and Adrián Lucardi
2019. Journal of Conflict Resolution 63(10): 2438–2449.
In “Why Democracy Protests Do not Diffuse,” we examine whether or not countries
are significantly more likely to experience democracy protests when one or more of their
neighbors recently experienced a similar protest. Our goal in so doing was not to attack the
existing literature or to present sensational results, but to evaluate the extent to which the
existing literature can explain the onset of democracy protests more generally. In addition
to numerous studies attributing to diffusion the proliferation of democracy protests in four
prominent waves of contention in Europe (1848, 1989 and early 2000s) and in the Middle
East and North Africa (2011), there are multiple academic studies, as well as countless
articles in the popular press, claiming that democracy protests have diffused outside these
well-known regions and periods of contention (e.g. Bratton and van de Walle 1992; Weyland
2009; della Porta 2017). There are also a handful of cross-national statistical analyses that
hypothesize that anti-regime contention, which includes but is not limited to democracy
protests, diffuses globally (Braithwaite, Braithwaite and Kucik (2015); Gleditsch and Rivera
(2017).1 Herein we discuss what we can and cannot conclude from our analysis about the diffusion of democracy protests and join our fellow forum participants in identifying potential areas for future research. Far from closing this debate, we hope our paper will stimulate further conversations and analyses about the theoretical and empirical bases of contention, diffusion, and democratization.
Dawn Brancati and Elizabeth M. Penn
2023. Journal of Conflict Resolution 67(5): 858-892.
Political actors often resort to electoral violence in order to gain an edge over their competitors even though violence is much harder to hide than fraud and more likely to delegitimize
elections as a result. The existing literature tends to treat violence and fraud as equivalent
strategies, explaining the former in terms of the same factors as the latter, or to treat violence
as a means of last resort due to its overtness. We argue, in contrast, that violence is neither and,
in fact, that political actors can use violence for the very reason that it is hard to hide. Its overtness, we argue, allows political actors to observe whether the agents they enlist to manipulate
elections for them do so and reduces these agents’ likelihood of shirking in turn. We develop
our argument through a formal model showing that electoral monitors, by exacerbating problems of moral hazard (i.e., shirking) can induce actors to increasingly turn to violence and use
process tracing to examine the implications of this model through the example of Egypt.
Dawn Brancati, Jóhanna K. Birnir and Qutaiba Idlbi
2023. American Political Science Review 117(4): 1327-1343.
While the effects of non-state actor violence on public health outcomes
are well-known, the effects of public health crises like the COVID-19
pandemic on non-state actor violence are not. Lockdown measures,
widely used to stop the spread of disease in crises, we argue, are likely
to reduce non-state actor violence, especially in urban and non-base
areas. These measures deplete actors’ resources, reduce the number
of high-value civilian targets, and make it logistically more difficult to
conduct attacks. Using the example of ISIS, and taking advantage of
the exogenous nature of COVID-19 lockdowns, we find that curfews
and travel bans significantly reduce violence, especially in populated
and non-base areas. These effects are most likely due to short-term
changes in ISIS’s targets and logistics rather than its resources. These
findings provide important insights into the security aspects of public
health crises and offer novel findings into the general effectiveness of
two common counterinsurgency tools.