The central goal of this project is to better understand the relationship between civil war and repression at each phase of the "civil-war life-cycle," which is composed of the escalation and onset of civil war, the war itself, and the post-war period. The project then seeks to …
This dissertation fills the theoretical gap in comparative administrative studies describing political turbulence. It examines how Ethiopia's public administrative system operated in a turbulent socio-political environment characterized by recurrent civil/ethnic wars, famines an…
This study examines the causes and consequences of repression and accommodation in post-internal war states. Elites' perceptions of their own vulnerability and subsequent war involvement in the aftermath of an internal war affect the choice between and among repressive and accom…
This study examines Al-Ḥirāk Al-Shabābī Al-ʾUrdunī (the Jordanian Youth Movement), from now on the HSU, and aims to be a first scholarly attempt at mapping the organisation, strategy, challenges, and significance of this youth-led and youth-organised social movement. Taking an i…
The focus here is on explaining the variation in the frequency (how much), intensity (how severe) and types (violent and nonviolent) of protest directed at democratic states and state response. To explain this variation, I focus on the effects of institutional structures and sta…
When faced with secessionists, states essentially respond in one of two ways: with negotiations, concessions and limited levels of violence, or with repression and large-scale violence. What explains this variation? I argue that governments respond more harshly if they perceive …
Environmental disputes occur frequently, particularly in contexts of poor natural resource management and vague law, but while some of these disputes end quickly without fatalities, some escalate to violence or become persistent contentious juggernauts that are increasingly hard…
This master thesis explores the interactions between the Turkish LGBT community and the state, law enforcement, the military, the family and Turkish society in general. The aim was to make sense of these interactions by focusing on the social movement dimension of the Turkish LG…
Repression, used by dictators as a tool to control the populous of a nation, is a defining feature of authoritarian regimes. Often the most concerning response, the use of coercion is centrally important to a greater understanding of how dictators maintain stability. Emerging th…
Concessions are the crucially important benefits that individuals seek when they decide to participate in collective action, yet they are poorly understood. In particular, it remains unclear why authoritarian governments, which rely on coercion to maintain control, promise conce…
This dissertation explores how and why parliamentarian Islamists, both in Morocco and in Turkey, moderated their beliefs and behaviors over time. From a heavily identity-based discourse, both parties became more policy-oriented and pro-systemic over time, albeit with differing d…