About

Christopher W. Blair is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Politics at Princeton University. He received his Ph.D. from the Department of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania in 2023, along with an M.A. in Political Science from the same institution. He holds a B.A. with Highest Distinction in Foreign Affairs and History from the University of Virginia, where he participated in the Distinguished Majors Program. His research spans international relations and comparative politics, with a substantive focus on the political economy of conflict, migration, and climate change. The main questions motivating his work include how counterinsurgency policies impact rebel and civilian behavior, and how prospective host countries respond to forcibly displaced and climate-displaced populations. He also investigates public opinion on foreign policy. Blair employs a range of quantitative and qualitative tools, including design-based causal inference, original and archival data collection, and qualitative interviews. His geographic focus is on the Global South, particularly the Middle East and Africa. His research has been published or is forthcoming in prominent journals such as the American Economic Review, American Journal of Political Science, the American Political Science Review, International Organization, and the Journal of Politics. He has received financial support from organizations including the World Bank, TESS, EGAP, ICANN, DDSS, and the Kleinman Center for Energy Policy. Blair's commentary has appeared in outlets such as Foreign Affairs, the Washington Post, Lawfare, Defense One, and the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. For more information about his research, teaching, data, or service, he can be contacted via email or found on Twitter and BlueSky.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Economics
• Law
• Public relations
• Political economy
• Social Science
• Sociology
• Market economy
• Development economics
• Economic growth
• Internet privacy
• Law and economics
• Psychology
• Social psychology

Selected publications

• Forced Displacement and Asylum Policy in the Developing World

  International Organization · 2021 · 59 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • Political Science
  • Development economics

  Abstract Little theoretical or empirical work examines migration policy in the developing world. We develop and test a theory that distinguishes the drivers of policy reform and factors influencing the direction of reform. We introduce an original data set of de jure asylum and refugee policies covering more than ninety developing countries that are presently excluded from existing indices of migration policy. Examining descriptive trends in the data, we find that unlike in the global North, forced displacement policies in the global South have become more liberal over time. Empirically, we test the determinants of asylum policymaking, bolstering our quantitative results with qualitative evidence from interviews in Uganda. A number of key findings emerge. Intense, proximate civil wars are the primary impetus for asylum policy change in the global South. Liberalizing changes are made by regimes led by political elites whose ethnic kin confront discrimination or violence in neighboring countries. There is no generalizable evidence that developing countries liberalize asylum policy in exchange for economic assistance from Western actors. Distinct frameworks are needed to understand migration policymaking in developing versus developed countries.

  DOI

• Honor Among Thieves: Understanding Rhetorical and Material Cooperation Among Violent Nonstate Actors

  International Organization · 2021 · 37 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • Sociology
  • Political Science

  Abstract Cooperation among militant organizations contributes to capability but also presents security risks. This is particularly the case when organizations face substantial repression from the state. As a consequence, for cooperation to emerge and persist when it is most valuable, militant groups must have means of committing to cooperation even when the incentives to defect are high. We posit that shared ideology plays this role by providing community monitoring, authority structures, trust, and transnational networks. We test this theory using new, expansive, time-series data on relationships between militant organizations from 1950 to 2016, which we introduce here. We find that when groups share an ideology, and especially a religion, they are more likely to sustain material cooperation in the face of state repression. These findings contextualize and expand upon research demonstrating that connections between violent nonstate actors strongly shape their tactical and strategic behavior.

  PublisherDOI

• Do Women Make More Credible Threats? Gender Stereotypes, Audience Costs, and Crisis Bargaining

  International Organization · 2020 · 109 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • Political Science
  • Public relations

  Abstract As more women attain executive office, it is important to understand how gender dynamics affect international politics. Toward this end, we present the first evidence that gender stereotypes affect leaders’ abilities to generate audience costs. Using survey experiments, we show that female leaders have political incentives to combat gender stereotypes that women are weak by acting “tough” during international military crises. Most prominently, we find evidence that female leaders, and male leaders facing female opponents, pay greater inconsistency costs for backing down from threats than male leaders do against fellow men. These findings point to particular advantages and disadvantages women have in international crises. Namely, female leaders are better able to tie hands—an efficient mechanism for establishing credibility in crises. However, this bargaining advantage means female leaders will also have a harder time backing down from threats. Our findings have critical implications for debates over the effects of greater gender equality in executive offices worldwide.

  DOI

Frequent coauthors

• Joshua A. Schwartz

  14 shared

• Michael C. Horowitz

  University of Pennsylvania

  13 shared

• Jeremy M. Weinstein

  11 shared

• Guy Grossman

  10 shared

• Philip Potter

  8 shared

• Sabrina B. Arias

  5 shared

• Sandra León

  Centro de Estudios Políticos y Constitucionales

  4 shared

• Ignacio Jurado

  Universidad Carlos III de Madrid

  4 shared

Education

• Ph.D. Student, Political Science

  University of Pennsylvania

• B.A. in Politics and History

  University of Virginia

  2016

Awards & honors

• Winner of the 2019 Young Investigators Competition from Time…
• Winner of the 2022 APSA Presidents & Executive Politics (PEP…

Similar researchers at Princeton University

• Jonathan Cohenh-162
• Michael Straussh-149
• Thomas E. Shenkh-136
• Michael Levineh-131
• Romain Teyssierh-130