Happy to share that my article, “Leadership Decapitation in Civil War: Leadership Arrest and Negotiations between the State and Insurgents,” was shortlisted for the 2026 Cedric Smith Prize. You can read the article open access here: doi.org/10.1017/S026...
My reflections on using AI for qualitative comparative political science: 𝗛𝗼𝘄 𝗔𝗜 𝗧𝗼𝗼𝗹𝘀 𝗖𝗮𝗻 𝗖𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗿𝗶𝗯𝘂𝘁𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝗤𝘂𝗮𝗹𝗶𝘁𝗮𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲 𝗖𝗼𝗺𝗽𝗮𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲 𝗣𝗼𝗹𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗰𝗮𝗹 𝗦𝗰𝗶𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲?: 𝗔 𝗣𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗼𝗻𝗮𝗹 𝗥𝗲𝗳𝗹𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻
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Applications for the Keyman Early-Career Scholars Article Workshop Spring 2026 are open until February 20. For more information, please visit: keyman.buffett.northwestern.edu/.../early-ca....
How Maduro will respond: will he try to govern his country in prison? Or perhaps provide intelligence to the US in exchange for favorable treatment? How will Venezuelan elites react? Will some side-switch? These are dynamics we see in civil wars, and may appear here too.
In particular, the arrest signals US power vis-à-vis Venezuela and strengthens its bargaining position. The fact that the US could pull off an operation like this also suggests that a three-way bargain between Maduro, his allies/Venezuelan elites, and the US was already underway.
In this case, the bargaining will be between Maduro, Venezuelan elites/allies, and the United States. Now much will depend on the extent of Maduro's influence on Venezuela's elites and the new bargaining dynamic.
I argued that the literature focuses too much on the military/operational consequences of leadership decapitation at the expense of its consequences for negotiations. Basically, arrest results in a new bargaining game between the arrested leader, his organization and the state.
Although arrest of a sitting president isn’t the same as arrest of an armed group leader, my work on leadership decapitation has some parallels for thinking through Maduro's arrest/kidnapping by the US since arrest shapes incentives and bargaining dynamics doi.org/10.1017/S026....
Ruşen Çakır'la @rusencakir.bsky.social süreç üzerine keyifli bir sohbet yaptık. Sürecin başarıya ulaşma ihtimalini arttıran faktörleri, başarısızlıkla sonuçlanmasını neden daha olası gördüğümü ve başarılı olursa bile demokratikleşme getirme ihtimalini neden düşük gördüğümü anlattım.
'Leadership decapitation in civil war: Leadership arrest and the negotiations between the state and the insurgents.' @cambup-polsci.cambridge.org 📚
@risjnl.bsky.social #openaccess article by @ulaserdogdu.bsky.social out NOW 🎉
Read Ulaş's key arguments 👉 buff.ly/0rLXs9e
DOI 👉 buff.ly/Z3NPCdV
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#OpenAccess from @risjnl.bsky.social -
Leadership decapitation in civil war: Leadership arrest and the negotiations between the state and the insurgents - cup.org/4kI3i7j
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Excited and honored that my paper Nearly Realized Cases received an Honorable Mention for the 2024 Kendra Koivu Paper Award from @apsa.bsky.social’s Qualitative and Multi-Method Research Section. Grateful to be recognized by a section central to my work and my department
@polisciatnu.bsky.social!
I’m happy to share that my article, Democratization, Foreign Military Intervention, and Rebel Fragmentation in Civil War: Evidence from the PKK Insurgency in Turkey, has won the Best Article Award in Kurdish Studies, given by the Kurdish Political Studies Program at the University of Central Florida
My first post here!
Check out my recently published and very first solo-authored article on how democratization and foreign military intervention can result in rebel fragmentation in Journal of Global Security Studies.
@polviolencepapers.bsky.social
doi.org/10.1093/jogs...
Using PKK's fragmentation in 2004 as a theory-building case study, I identify two new pathways to rebel fragmentation that were previously not identified in the literature. The abstract and schematic-stylized visualizations summarize the argument.