Peer-Reviewed Publications
“Democracy Dismissed: When Leaders and Citizens Choose Election Violence,” with Kathleen Klaus, Journal of Peace Research.
In democratic settings, election violence is often jointly produced: it relies on elite incentives and abilities to deploy violence, but equally, on the willingness of ordinary actors to participate. Yet many studies overlook this elite-citizen interaction, effectively black boxing the conditions and processes through which elites mobilize people to fight. This paper introduces and advances the concept of the joint production of election violence. A theory of joint production considers the process through which elites and ordinary citizens come together to produce violence, asking how, when, and for whom election-related violence becomes thinkable and feasible. The concept also complicates the assumption that supporters are ready and willing to use violence, and instead, specifies how elites coordinate with ordinary actors, including the narratives and appeals that are used to legitimize violence, as well as the infrastructural support that makes violence feasible. Using the U.S and Nigeria as illustrative case studies, alongside cross-national data on the incidence of jointly produced violence, this paper aims to provide a framework that can help facilitate more systematic analyses of elite-citizen interactions in the context of electoral violence, especially in democratic regimes.
“Couples Therapy for a Divided America: Assessing the Effects of Reciprocal Group Reflection on Partisan Polarization,” with Hannah Baron, Robert A. Blair, Donghyun Danny Choi, Laura Gamboa, Jessica Gottlieb, Amanda Lea Robinson, Steven C. Rosenzweig, and Emily A. West. 2025. Political Behavior, 47: 1363-1388.
Overcoming America’s deep partisan polarization poses a unique challenge: Americans must be able to sharply disagree on who should govern while agreeing on more fundamental democratic principles. We study one model of depolarization—reciprocal group reflection—inspired by marital counseling and implemented by a non-partisan non-governmental organization, Braver Angels. We randomly assigned undergraduates at four universities either to participate in a Braver Angels workshop or simply to complete three rounds of surveys. The workshops substantially reduced polarization according to explicit and implicit measures. They also increased participants’ willingness to donate to programs aimed at depolarizing political conversations. These effects are consistent across partisan groups, though some dissipate over time. Using qualitative data, and building on contact and deliberative theories, we argue that depolarization is especially effective when it includes both informational and emotional components, such that citizens who are moved to empathize with outgroup members become more likely to internalize new information about them.
“Elites and Arbitrary Power: Ethical Challenges and Guiding Principles for Research with Violent Political Actors,” with Niloufer A. Siddiqui. 2024. Conflict, Security, and Development, 24 (6): 599-619.
Many approaches to and recommendations for ethical research assume a power dynamic between the researcher and the researched that favors the researcher. When study participants include political elites however, the power dynamic is often reversed. This power differential in favor of political elites can render existing guidelines unhelpful or inappropriate, especially where such actors have individualized discretion over coercion and violence. We argue that paying particular attention to how political elites wield arbitrary power can help researchers navigate ethical challenges that arise when political elites are included in the study. We focus on three topics in particular: researchers’ interactions with political elites outside of formal data collection, anticipating and reducing risks for non-elite study participants, and sharing and contextualizing research findings with scholars and a general audience. In doing so, this paper contributes to a growing conversation on the thorny ethical challenges that come with studying violent political elites.
“Nigerian Youth Engagement in Violent Electoral Environments: Political Apathy or ‘Constrained Optimism’?“ with Justine M. Davis. 2024. African Affairs, 123 (491): 133-164. Summary of focus group findings available here.
How do young ordinary citizens engage with politicians and their political environment where elections are frequently affected by violence? We explore this question with focus groups in Nigeria, a country that has some of the highest rates of election violence in Africa. While participants largely condemned violence, they were divided on whether they would continue to support their preferred candidate after hearing that they had engaged in violence, with some participants justifying support for violent candidates if they showed remorse, use violence defensively, or when information about the veracity of violence use was dubitable. Despite participants expressing that violence discouraged participation, we show that they also felt a determination to elect a better government and a strong sense of a civic duty to vote and encourage others to do so as well. Taken together, we argue that young voters in violent contexts operate with ‘constrained optimism’ where they perceive low levels of external efficacy, but possess high levels of internal efficacy: remaining committed to democracy, but facing constraints to who they support and how they participate. Our findings nuance expectations of the effects of electoral violence on political participation and better help us understand the challenges facing voters in contexts where violence is rife.
“Incumbent Responses to Armed Groups in Nigeria and Kenya.” 2024. Studies in Comparative International Development, 59: 56-85.
Under what conditions do incumbents support, tolerate, or try to rein in armed groups within their borders? The paper argues that incumbents strategize toward armed groups in ways that help them manage the ruling coalition and remain in power. I find that incumbents support armed groups in provinces where provincial politicians have defected from the ruling coalition to opposition parties, recruiting armed groups to deliver the province in national elections with fraud and violence and punish elite defectors. Where incumbents are not fighting to keep provinces in the ruling coalition, I show that they tolerate non-dissident groups that enjoy social contracts with local communities, and try to contain their dissident counterparts. Incumbents are likely to repress predatory armed groups, dissident and non-dissident alike. Doing so helps boost elite and mass support for incumbents and project central government power into the province. The argument was inductively built with comparative case studies from Nigeria and then evaluated in Kenya. The findings contribute to an important research agenda on government-armed group relationships and carry implications for security sector aid and reform.
“When Armed Groups Refuse to Carry Out Election Violence: Evidence from Nigeria.” 2021. World Development, 146: 1-15.
Social science research on election violence shows that incumbents regularly turn to different nonstate armed groups to organize violence during elections, including ethnic militias, gangs, criminal organizations, and paramilitaries, among others. Less well known are the motivations of these different actors, what they seek to gain from election violence, and when they turn down incumbents’ overtures. From a practitioner perspective, understanding when armed groups supply election violence for incumbents is important because of the severe consequences of such acts, including economic hardship, forced displacement, damaged infrastructure, and costs to human life. The paper asks: under what conditions do armed groups agree or refuse to perpetrate election violence for incumbents? Drawing on most similar case studies of the Ijaw Youth Council and the O’odua People’s Congress in Nigeria, we find that internal armed group politics help to explain how these actors respond to incumbent governors’ demands for election violence. Specifically, groups divided by leadership rivalries agree to perpetrate election violence for incumbents whereas those with cohesive leadership refuse to do so. Leaders of rival factions accept money and arms from incumbents to try to eliminate their competitors, and in exchange, agree to organize violence during elections for their incumbent sponsors. In contrast, groups with cohesive leadership turn down incumbents’ overtures given the risks of cooptation and weakened community support. The findings contribute to our understanding of how election violence is co-produced by elites and nonstate armed groups by explaining the motivations and decisions of the latter. More broadly, the paper speaks to larger questions about security challenges in developing democracies. The findings also highlight the need for greater attention to interventions to prevent armed groups from engaging in election violence on behalf of political elites.
“Elite Competition, Social Movements, and Election Violence in Nigeria.” 2020/21. International Security, 45(3): 40-78.
Election violence varies significantly within countries, yet how and why are undertheorized. Although existing scholarship has shown how national-level economic, institutional, and contextual factors increase a country’s risk for violence during elections, these studies cannot explain why elites organize election violence in some localities, but not others. An analysis of gubernatorial elections in Nigeria reveals the conditions under which elites recruit popular social movement actors for pre-election violence. Gubernatorial elections are intensely competitive when agreements between governors and local ruling party elites over the distribution of state patronage break down. To oust their rivals and consolidate power, elites recruit popular reformist groups for pre-election violence and voter mobilization. Conversely, when local ruling party elites are aligned over how state patronage is to be distributed, the election outcome is agreed to well in advance. In this scenario, there is little incentive to enlist social movement actors for violence. Case studies of the Ijaw Youth Council and Boko Haram provide empirical support for the argument. The theory and evidence help to explain subnational variation in election violence, the relationship between intraparty politics and violence during elections, and speak to broader questions about political order and violence.
“When Militias Provide Welfare: Lessons from Pakistan and Nigeria.” With Yelena Biberman, 2018. Political Science Quarterly 133(4): 695-727.
Militias are often noted and studied for their violent behavior towards civilians. Still underexplored and poorly understood is their provision of welfare to local communities. Why do some militias provide welfare while others do not? We argue that the timing of access to material resources plays an important role in the militia’s willingness and capacity to provide welfare. While wealthy militias lack the incentives and poor militias lack the capacity to provide public goods, “nouveau riche” militias – which begin poor and acquire wealth later on – are most likely to provide welfare. The empirical implications of the argument are explored with a structured comparison of six militias in Pakistan and Nigeria. Our findings help to illuminate the broad range of militia behavior and bridge three burgeoning literatures – on militias, non-state welfare, and insurgent behavior in civil war.
Works-in-Progress
“Can Violence Narratives Shape Political Participation?: Evidence from Nigeria,” with Justine M. Davis (Writing in progress). Pre-analysis plan available here.
How do ordinary citizens engage with politicians and their political environment where elections are frequently manipulated with fraud and violence? We explore this question with a survey and conjoint experiment in Nigeria, a country that has some of the highest rates of election violence in Africa. We argue that in contexts where violence is expected and where many candidates either implicitly or explicitly condone or justify it, voters still have preferences over candidate behavior and characteristics which condition their participation in politics generally. We pay special attention to the narratives candidates who use violence deploy by examining whether respondents are more likely to select candidates who express remorse, use violence defensively, or use violence exclusively as opposed to other electoral manipulation strategies. Going beyond traditional assessments of vote choice as an outcome, we also examine whether exposure to certain types of candidate narratives reduces or increases political participation beyond voting, such as mobilizing in support or in condemnation of violent candidates, volunteering to reduce violence, or joining political parties. Our findings nuance expectations of the effects of electoral violence on political participation and better help us understand the challenges facing voters in contexts where violence is rife.
“Class Politics and Accountability for Election Violence in Kenya” (Data analysis in progress)
“The Normative Foundations of (Non)State Violence: Evidence from Nigeria on the Legitimacy of Armed Security Provision,” with Hanne Fjelde, Kristen Kao, and Tore Wig (Data analysis in progress; pre-analysis plan available here).
Do non-state armed actors tap into the same sources of normative legitimacy as the state? It is commonly argued that states need to be seen as fair, impartial, and effective to enjoy legitimacy among citizens. This study investigates whether this also applies to non-state armed actors in contexts where they compete with the state and sovereignty is fractured. Drawing on a pre-registered survey experiment in Nigeria, as well as fieldwork with focus groups and observational analyses, we find that non-state actors suffer no legitimacy-deficit compared to the state, and are held to the same performance and procedural standards. Critically, non-state actors are judged by citizens according to expectations of procedural fairness and effectiveness, suggesting that they can use violence legitimately by respecting informal moral norms.
Megan Turnbull 