Peer-reviewed publications

'Perceived Threat and Demographic Misperception', w/Jori Breslawski (forthcoming at Politics and Religion)

Lewis, J.S. & Ives, B. (2023). Repression, backlash, and the duration of protests in Africa. Journal of Peace Research. (Online first) DOI:  10.1177/00223433231186.

Ives, B. (2023). Within ethnic population inequality and within self-determination movement violence. Defence and Peace Economics. (Online first) DOI: 10.1080/10242694.2023.2247509.

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 

Commodity Price Shocks and Majority Ethnic Nationalist Organization Ethnic Riot, offer to revise and resubmit
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. 

Islamist organization protests against Israel in Muslim majority countries:  Economic shocks and protest history, offer to revise and resubmit
This article examines transnational anti-war protests, focusing on protests against Israel by Islamist organizations in Muslim majority countries during three Israel related conflict outbreaks.  It theorizes that increases in grievances against Israel following an Israel-related conflict do not always generate increases in protest against Israel.  Rather, during negative economic conditions, domestic grievances may emerge, reducing the relative salience of grievances against Israel and thus expected protest against Israel.  The relationship is expected to be further conditioned by whether an Islamist organization has a history of protest.  Novel data are collected on Islamist organizations’ protests in Muslim-majority countries in 60-day periods pre- and post-outbreak of three Israel related conflicts (Palestinian/Lebanese civilian fatalities>1000).  Using commodity terms of trade (CTOT) shocks as a plausibly exogenous measure for annual economic changes, multivariate linear regression with various two way fixed effects demonstrates that among Islamist organizations with a history of protest and positive CTOT shocks associate positively with protest against Israel, comparing pre- and post-conflict outbreak.  The findings advance understanding of (i) transnational anti-war protests and (ii) how grievances related to war and economy interact, (iii) heterogenous protest heterogeneity between Islamist organization types with (iv) novel evidence that the relationship between grievances stemming from war and transnational anti-war protests is limited to situations of positive economic shocks and actors with histories of protest, diverging from previous findings on the relationship between economic growth and protests.

Majority ethnonationalist ethnic riot and protest in 18 European countries: variable levels of vote salience (under review)
This study advances existing studies on majority ethnonationalism in European countries by focusing on ethnic riot and protest by majority ethnonationalist organizations.  It posits an interactive association between party, election year, and ethnic riot and protest.  The interactive association is expected to result from the relative salience of votes compared to other types of support in election years.  Using originally collected data on 275 majority ethnonationalist organizations across 18 countries, linear two-way fixed effects estimations demonstrate that for majority ethnonationalist non-parties, an election year is associated with a 4.1 percentage point decrease in the predicted probability of ethnic riot.  In contrast, among majority ethnonationalist parties, a positive association is observed between election year and ethnic riot.  In contrast to ethnic riot, no clear interactive association is observed when estimating ethnic protest.  The findings advance existing evidence on majority ethnonationalism at the country level with evidence for organizational differences.

Estimating subnational armed conflict severity and under-5 mortality rates in 1750 localities, w/SoYun Chang and Jieun Oh (under review)
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.

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.
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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
It is widely understood that mass hunger often has war as a root cause. Yet only a minority of wars lead to deaths from hunger. In this article, we examine deaths from hunger in civil wars and argue that what separates wars that lead to deaths from hunger from those that do not is the extent of rebel threat. When facing severe threats in the form of large rebel groups or major casualties, government forces are more likely to resort to aggressive counterinsurgency strategies that either directly target civilians or cause high levels of collateral damage. These tactical choices disrupt livelihoods and food production and create large refugee populations that are vulnerable to malnutrition, leading to deaths from hunger. We test this theory using new data we have collected on incidence of hunger-related deaths during civil wars and find strong support for our theoretical expectations.

Protest cascades and reactive repression in African countries, w/Jacob S. Lewis, in preparation
Despite global improvements in reducing repression levels, government repression of protests in a number of African countries remains a pressing concern.  In response, researchers have provided insight into subnational variation in repression of protests and riots, which we refer to as reactive repression. This study advances existing insights by examining how and whether reactive repression is responsive to extent of dissent in neighboring regions and at the national level.  Data from the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project identify dissent and repression from 1997 to 2015 across 54 countries in Africa and are matched at the monthly level to 10,674 0.5 degree by 0.5 degree grid cells.  Each grid’s level of neighboring dissent and countrywide dissent rates in the previous month are then identified.  Linear regression with two-way fixed effects demonstrates that reactive repression in a locality associates positively with higher levels (1) of countrywide dissent, (2) neighboring dissent, and (3) the interaction of country and neighboring dissent.  Overall, our results indicate that governments engage in repression not simply based on neighboring dissent levels but on the broader dissent conditions occurring in the country, highlighting the multiplicative relationship between country and subnational factors.