About

I am an Assistant Professor in the department of African American & African Studies and Affiliated Faculty in Political Science at the University of Minnesota. I received my PhD from Indiana University in Political Science. My research interests are in the areas of elite politics, authoritarian regimes, political institutions and social network analysis with a geographical focus on Africa.

Research topics

• Sociology
• Political Science
• Computer Security
• Law
• Political economy
• Development economics
• Psychology
• Economics

Selected publications

• Elite Change without Regime Change: Authoritarian Persistence in Africa and the End of the Cold War

  American Political Science Review · 2023 · 13 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • Political economy
  • Sociology

  Because the end of the Cold War failed to produce widespread democratic transitions, it is often viewed as having had only a superficial effect on Africa’s authoritarian regimes. We show this sentiment to be incorrect. Focusing on the elite coalitions undergirding autocracies, we argue that the end of the Cold War sparked profound changes in the constellation of alliances within regimes. It was an international event whose ripple effects altered the domestic political landscape and thereby enticed elite coalitions to transform and meet the new existential threat they faced. We demonstrate our argument using cabinets as a proxy for elite coalitions, showing that their composition drastically changed at the end of the Cold War. Africa’s authoritarian leaders dismissed many of the core members of their cabinets and increasingly appointed members of opposition parties to cabinet portfolios. Such changes, we argue, represent the dynamic responses that enabled autocracies to persist.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• What Happens When Coups Fail? The Problem of Identifying and Weakening the Enemy Within

  Comparative Political Studies · 2022 · 50 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • Sociology
  • Political economy

  The ruler’s ability to cope with crises is critical for authoritarian durability. Yet, the coping mechanism—the actual management strategies by which rulers confront crises—is largely treated as a black box. This study takes a step in addressing this problem by examining how rulers use their appointment powers to manage the crisis that is the aftermath of failed coups. I argue that the principle challenge of this period is that rulers cannot identify the opposition and to cope, they deliberately infuse the center of the regime with officials from the periphery to dilute and ultimately weaken the invisible enemy they confront. Using a novel dataset on the appointments of mid and high level officials over the course of 34 years in Ethiopia, I find that the ruler relied considerably on outside officials following the failed coup in 1960 in ways he never did before or after the event.

  PublisherDOI

• Replication Data for: Elite Change Without Regime Change: Authoritarian Persistence in Africa and the End of the Cold War

  Harvard Dataverse · 2022-11-25 · 1 citations

  datasetOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Enclosed are all the replication material for the APSR manuscript, "Elite Change Without Regime Change: Authoritarian Persistence in Africa and the End of the Cold War." This includes the README.dox describing each of the files.

  PublisherDOI

• Replication Data for: What Happens When Coups Fail? The Problem of Identifying and Weakening the Invisible Enemy

  Harvard Dataverse · 2021-07-26 · 1 citations

  datasetOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  The ruler’s ability to cope with crises is critical for authoritarian durability. Yet, the coping mechanism – the actual management strategies by which rulers confront crises – is largely treated as a black box. This study takes a step in addressing this problem by examining how rulers use their appointment powers to manage the crisis that is the aftermath of failed coups. I argue that the principle challenge of this period is that rulers cannot identify the opposition and to cope, they deliberately infuse the center of the regime with officials from the periphery to dilute and ultimately weaken the invisible enemy they confront. Using a novel dataset on the appointments of mid and high level officials over the course of 34 years in Ethiopia, I find that the ruler relied considerably on outside officials following the failed coup in 1960 in ways he never did before or after the event.

  PublisherDOI

• Contested or established? A comparison of legislative powers across regimes

  Democratization · 2019-01-21 · 54 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  In research on authoritarian institutions, legislatures are portrayed as capable of resolving dilemmas between the leader and opposition members. Nevertheless, repeated interactions between a leader and their ruling coalition can lead to both contested dictatorships, in which institutions constrain the leader, and established dictatorships, in which the leader exercises near-complete control. To date, however, no one has examined the patterns by which powers vary across legislatures in different settings and over time. Using data from the Varieties of Democracy Project on legislative powers between 1900 and 2017, we conceptualize changes in the powers afforded to the national congress to characterize the development of regimes in either direction. The study expounds on the content of legislatures across regimes and the ways in which they change, encouraging scholars to further consider the relationship between regime dynamics and legislative institutionalization.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Strengthening the Rubber Stamp: Comparing Legislative Powers across Regimes

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2018-01-01 · 13 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• The ruler’s game of musical chairs: Shuffling during the reign of Ethiopia’s last emperor

  Social Networks · 2017-07-22 · 70 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Naunihal Singh, Seizing Power: The Strategic Logic of Military Coups

  Peace Review · 2015-09-18

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Seizing Power: The Strategic Logic of Military Coups, Naunihal Singh (Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University Press, 2014).The transfer of power, a subject that for so long plagued the minds of poli...

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Alex M. Kroeger

  2 shared

• Matthew Wilson

  1 shared

• Matthew C. Wilson

  1 shared