PublicationsPublicaciones
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Human Rights Consolidation or Fragmentation? A Network Analysis of Resolution Sponsorship in the UN Human Rights CouncilForthcomingEn prensaNetwork Science
The international human rights regime is neither universally cohesive nor universally fragmented, yet existing scholarship treats it as one or the other. This article addresses that gap by analyzing state sponsorship of resolutions proposed at the United Nations Human Rights Council (2006-2024). We develop a network-based measurement approach that enables systematic, within-issue comparison of fragmentation across the regime's diverse topic areas. Through network analysis of expert- and BERT-coded resolutions, we find that fragmentation is issue-dependent, with topics like Israel-Palestine exhibiting higher levels of division, while others, such as physical integrity, show more consistent collaboration among states. These findings challenge the assumption of a monolithic human rights regime, highlight the analytical value of combining domain knowledge with unsupervised text analysis, and clarify the specific issue domains where coalition-building in multilateral human rights governance is most constrained.
Under ReviewEn Revisión
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How USAID's Withdrawal Fragmented Global Aid Networks in Conflict-Affected CountriesUnder ReviewEn Revisión
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.
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Memory Matters: Rethinking Structural Breaks in Conflict Time SeriesUnder ReviewEn Revisión
How do structural breaks in conflict time series arise? Standard practice treats breaks such as coups, uprisings, and crackdowns as exogenous shocks to control away. We argue this assumption fails for the breaks that matter most. We develop a framework distinguishing three mechanisms: exogenous breaks, where timing is independent of conflict history; threshold switches, which are reversible regime activations; and escalation breaks, which are permanent structural transformations triggered by the accumulation of past violence. Simulation shows that standard estimators tend to misdate escalation breaks and misestimate post-break persistence when the true process is accumulation-driven. Applied to Egypt (1997-2025), major violence shifts coincide with periods when accumulated instability made violent ruptures probable, not with identifiable external interventions. The framework applies wherever path-dependent accumulation governs structural transformation, including democratic backsliding, polarization, institutional erosion, and rivalry escalation, and provides researchers a principled diagnostic for selecting among them.
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The Demand for Rebel RulesUnder ReviewEn Revisión
Given the demands of warfighting, why do rebel groups expend limited resources to govern civilians? Early research focused on the structural characteristics and ideological motivations of rebel groups, while more recent studies highlight the role of civilians in conditioning rebel behavior. We argue that civilian discontent with state institutions creates demand for rebel alternatives. Using subnational survey data from Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger, we test whether perceived judicial corruption and mistrust in state courts predict JNIM's establishment of Sharia courts. We find that areas with higher civilian discontent in state courts are significantly more likely to experience rebel governance. Critically, civilian affinity does not independently predict rebel governance, suggesting that rebels do not simply establish courts where resistance is minimal but instead respond to specific institutional grievances. This paper contributes to the research on political order during conflict by providing the first systematic empirical evidence showing the importance of civilian demands in driving rebel behavior.
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Civil Society and the Local Dynamics of PeacebuildingUnder ReviewEn Revisión
How can local civil society organizations contribute to lasting peace? While scholars recognize CSOs' importance in peacebuilding, systematic evidence of their impact on dispute management remains limited. This study introduces novel peace indicators beyond violence reduction, focusing on communities' capacity to resolve local land disputes — a critical yet understudied dimension of peacebuilding. Using panel data from 222 rural communities in Colombia (2010-2016), I estimate the impact of participation in local CSOs on dispute management. Increased citizen participation in local CSOs significantly enhances land dispute management through patterns consistent with two mechanisms: information-bridging between communities and state institutions, and direct alternative dispute resolution platforms. Greater participation in key CSOs increases the likelihood of successful dispute resolution without violent escalation. These findings advance our understanding of civil society's contribution to conflict resolution by illuminating how local organizations enhance both formal institutional access and community-based alternatives, with relevance for understanding post-conflict governance.
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Elections under Contested Authority: Sustained Violence, Incumbent Punishment, and Challenger Mobilization in ColombiaUnder ReviewEn Revisión
How does prolonged exposure to violent armed groups shape electoral processes in democracies? Armed conflicts from the Philippines to Turkey create contexts where state authority is contested, yet the electoral consequences of sustained coexistence with armed actors over time remain understudied. We estimate how exposure to government forces, guerrillas, paramilitaries, and criminal groups during Colombia's civil war shapes voter turnout from 1988-2019. Leveraging administrative electoral data and a dynamic difference-in-differences design, we find armed group presence increases turnout progressively over fifteen years, with effects concentrated exclusively among political challengers. Voters systematically punish visible state representatives for persistent insecurity even when those officials lack direct authority over security forces, consistent with blind retrospective voting. These patterns persist despite substantial conflict-induced displacement and show no association with electoral fraud or incumbent dropout, indicating genuine voter punishment. Our findings reveal how citizens adapt available electoral institutions to express dissatisfaction within deeply compromised contexts — the strategic use of constrained channels to sanction leadership failures.
DissertationDisertación
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Preferences for Local Authority in Peacebuilding Project DesignPre-RegisteredPreregistradoOSF
This study examines how peacebuilding practitioners believe authority should be allocated between international donors and local community organizations in the design of peacebuilding projects. The localization agenda holds that greater local authority is widely endorsed in principle, yet locally led arrangements remain rare in practice. Whether that gap reflects practitioners' actual preferences or the contracting structures they operate within is an open question with direct consequences for how peacebuilding aid is designed and delivered.
The study embeds a paired conjoint experiment in a follow-up organizational survey of peacebuilding practitioners in Colombia (Encuesta Organizacional, Redes de Actores de Construcción de Paz en Colombia, NPAC). Respondents are staff of organizations interviewed in the NPAC network elicitation wave, spanning Colombian civil society organizations, Colombian NGOs, government entities, international NGOs, intergovernmental organizations, and bilateral donors. Each respondent evaluates five pairs of hypothetical project descriptions that vary independently on three governance attributes: project design authority, budget control, and monitoring and evaluation ownership. A fixed vignette holds the project setting constant: a land dispute involving families returning after conflict-related displacement in a rural community. The survey also includes a list experiment estimating the prevalence of observed armed actor rule enforcement in the communities where respondents work.
This study forms part of a doctoral dissertation on the organizational architecture of peacebuilding in Colombia. View the pre-analysis plan on OSFVer el plan de análisis preregistrado en OSF.
FieldworkTrabajo de Campo
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Colombia scheduled programado2026
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Colombia pre-dissertation pre-disertación2024
Policy PublicationsDivulgación
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Discovery of Speech Crimes in Ukraine from Open Sources