Peer-reviewed publications

'Repression, backlash, and the duration of protests in Africa' w/Jacob S. Lewis (forthcoming at Journal of Peace Research)

Breslawski, J., & Ives, B. (2022). Movement under state and non-state authorities during COVID-19: Evidence from Lebanon. SSM-Population Health. 101157.

Ives, B. & Breslawski, J. (2022). Greed, Grievance, or Graduates? Why do Men Rebel? Journal of Peace Research, 59(3), 319-336.

Ives, B. (2021). Trickledown politics: Do excluded ethnic groups benefit from non-violent national resistance campaigns?. Conflict Management and Peace Science, 07388942211045936.
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Ives, B., & Lewis, J. S. (2020). From rallies to riots: Why some protests become violent. Journal of Conflict Resolution, 64(5), 958-986.

Ives, B. (2019). Religious institutionalism: a domestic explanation for external support of rebel groups. International Interactions, 45(4), 693-719.

Ives, B. (2021). Ethnic external support and rebel group splintering. Terrorism and Political Violence, 33(7), 1546-1566.

Breslawski, J., & Ives, B. (2019). Killing for god? Factional violence on the transnational stage. Journal of Conflict Resolution, 63(3), 617-643.

Manuscripts in preparation 

'Estimating subnational armed conflict severity and under-5 mortality rates in 1750 localities' w/SoYun Chang and Jieun Oh (in preparation)
This study investigates the relationship between conflict severity and under-5 mortality rates (U5MR) at the first administrative level (ADM1) across 100 countries.  It hypotheses that the relationship between conflict severity and U5MR is conditioned by whether or not an ethnic population that is not represented in the government is present in the ADM1 as well as the extent of women's political civil liberties in a country. Multivariate OLS regression analysis demonstrates support for the hypothesized relationships. The relationships are robust to a number of model specifications and sensitivity tests.

'Commodity Price Shocks and Ethnic Population in Power Organization Ethnic Riot', in preparation
This study investigates the relationship between negative economic growth and ethnic population in power (EPP) organization ethnic riot.  Studies on negative economic growth and ethnic violence focus primarily on out-of-power ethnic populations and civil war violence, devoting insufficient attention to EPP organizations and ethnic riots.  This article introduces a novel dataset of yearly ethnic riot behavior of 907 EPP organizations from 90 randomly selected countries from 1990 to 2017.  Using commodity terms of trade (CTOT) shocks as exogenous changes in national economic growth, OLS regression analysis demonstrates a systematic and substantive association between negative economic growth and EPP organization ethnic riot probability.  Additional analysis demonstrates that negative CTOT shocks have a larger effect on EPP organizations that are not in a country’s governing coalition.  Overall, the evidence demonstrates that negative economic growth is pivotal for declining inter-ethnic relations, and in particular, EPP organization ethnic riot. 

'Transnational ethnicity and organizations advocating for the ethnic population in power' (under review)
Why do ethnic populations in power (EPP) have varying numbers of political organizations making claims on behalf of that ethnicity?  This article posits that the number of EPP organizations is a function of grievances stemming from transnational ethnicity and discrepancies between ethnic and political boundaries.  Original data are collected that identify EPP organizations from a random selection of 90 countries from 1990 to 2017.  The number of EPP political organizations per capita are regressed (OLS) on two variables measuring transnational ethnicity:  the natural logarithm of the number of transnational ethnic kin and the level of ethnic fractionalization across state borders.  Results are similar for both measures.  Moving from the minimum to maximum values of the transnational ethnic kin number associates with a 153% increase in the logged number of EPP organizations per capita.  The results demonstrate that discrepancies between ethnic and political borders are meaningful for EPP political mobilization.

'Transnational Grievances:  Who Protests against Israel?' (under review)
This article investigates why some Islamist organizations in Muslim-majority countries protest against Israel but not others.  Through mechanisms related to increased demand for protest against Israel among existing supporters, organization reputation costs, and greater recruitment possibilities, it hypothesizes that non-terrorist, pan-Islamist organizations will see higher increases in protest against Israel following Israel-related war outbreaks.  Novel data are collected on Islamist organizations’ protests in Muslim-majority countries in 60-day periods pre- and post-outbreak of three wars involving Israel (Palestinian/Lebanese civilian fatalities>100).  Using a difference-in-difference-in-difference design, multivariate OLS regression analysis demonstrates that pan-Islam, being a terrorist organization, and war outbreak timing interact to increase protests against Israel.  Among non-terrorist Islamist organizations, compared to pre-war outbreak, domestic-oriented Islamist organizations observe a 6.9 percentage point increase in predicted percentage of protests against Israel.  By contrast, pan-Islamist organizations observe a 16.0 percentage point increase, a 131.9 percent relative increase in predicted percentage of protests against Israel.

'Perceived Threat and Demographic Misperception', w/Jori Breslawski (under review)
What causes demographic misperceptions of minority populations? We anticipate that the extent to which members of the majority group perceive the minority group as a threat shapes their estimation of minority group size. We test our argument using an experiment embedded in a survey of Muslims in Indonesia. We manipulate perceived threat of Christians in Indonesia and then ask respondents to estimate the size of the Christian population. While Muslims generally overestimate the size of the Christian population, we find that Muslims who felt a greater sense of threat estimated the Christian population to be significantly larger at both the national and provincial levels.

‘Within Self-Determination Movement Economic Inequality and Violence’ (under review)
Dual bargaining commonly characterizes a number of self-determination (SD) conflicts.  Organizations making self-determination claims contest the state but also contest rival SD organizations.  This article examines variation in SD organization violence against other SD organizations.  It hypothesizes that (i) higher levels of ethnic population income inequality (WPI) are pivotal for explaining violence between SD organizations, and (ii) the relationship occurs at higher rates when the SD organization has previously used violence against the state.  Survey-based data on WPI from 1992 to 2005 and SD organization violence demonstrate that higher WPI increases the probability of an SD organization using violence against other SD organizations.  The association is driven by situations in which SD organizations previously used violence against the state.  The findings are robust to secondary analysis at the ethnic group level, inclusion of additional covariates, sensitivity tests for omitted variable bias, various model specifications, subset analyses, matching techniques and tests for reverse causality.  This article demonstrates that ethnic population inequality levels as well as SD organization interactions with the state may have meaningful consequences for violent behavior between SD organizations.

'Becoming excluded:  Explanations for lack of access to political power' (under review)
This study investigates the factors that influence why some included ethnic groups becomes
excluded.   Spatially, included groups are disaggregated into those with junior status and others.  Temporally, election years are distinguished from non-elections years.  Multivariate logit and OLS regression analyses demonstrates a positive association between (1) junior status, (2) elections, and becoming excluded.  Further analysis is demonstrative of an interactive relationship.  The association between elections and becoming excluded is conditioned by political status.  Only junior status included ethnic groups face a higher risk of exclusion during election years.  Beyond the primary findings, the results may provide insight into how ethnic elites, political actors, and voters may face distinct political outcome risks, which could affect decision making.
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'Rebel Threat, Government Tactics, and Deaths from Hunger in Civil War' w/David Backer, Paul Huth and Peter White, in preparation