Work in Progress

Humanitarian organizations often face challenges delivering aid in conflict-affected regions where armed groups impose significant access constraints. Traditional explanations for these challenges focus on the behaviors of armed groups or the characteristics of the conflict but overlook the critical role of aid-receiving communities. This study introduces a novel perspective, arguing that aid congruence—the extent to which projects, targeting, and procedures align with community preferences—influences communities’ willingness to negotiate access with armed groups. When aid congruence is high, communities are more likely to advocate for and guard its delivery, even at considerable personal risk. Using geo-temporal data from Mali and a difference-in-differences design, I explore this dynamic by examining whether projects implemented by community-led organizations—serving as a proxy for aid congruence—reduce access constraints. I supplement the quantitative analysis with evidence from interviews with local leaders and humanitarian practitioners in central Mali. The findings highlight the power of civilian agency in shaping humanitarian outcomes and challenge assumptions about the powerlessness of aid recipients. By centering the preferences and actions of local communities, this study offers novel insights into improving humanitarian access in some of the world’s most volatile regions.

Mass violence against civilians has killed tens of millions, yet whether ordinary citizens in perpetrating societies support such violence as it unfolds remains unknown. Existing evidence relies on archival records, retrospective accounts, and hypothetical scenarios rather than systematic real-time measurement. We surveyed 2,204 Jewish-Israeli civilians during Israel’s 2023-2025 military campaign in Gaza, distinguishing between support for violence that could be framed as military necessity and support for violence whose stated purpose was to harm civilians. 87% of respondents endorsed the former; one in five endorsed the latter. Threat perception predicted support for violence rationalized as military necessity, whereas dehumanization predicted support for both forms. These findings upend longstanding assumptions of civilian indifference, revealing that public support for mass violence is far more widespread than assumed and rests on different psychological foundations depending on its form.

To what extent do publics endorse wartime policies that impose severe costs on civilians in enemy-held areas? What explains variation in public support for such policies, and can it be reduced? We argue that support is shaped by \textit{humanitarian misperceptions}: (i) the underestimation of civilian suffering and (ii) the overestimation of civilian support for armed groups. We test this claim in a preregistered survey experiment among Israeli Jews during the 2023–2025 Israel–Hamas war. Respondents received factual information drawn from mainstream Israeli media correcting either misperception. Both treatments reduce support for blocking humanitarian access under low-cost conditions. Information emphasizing low civilian support for Hamas produces more consistent effects, consistent with a blame-reduction mechanism. The comparatively weaker effects of the suffering treatment are theoretically expected given the constrained conditions for out-group empathy in high-threat settings. The results show that even in a high-threat, polarized wartime setting, preferences for restricting humanitarian access is responsive to targeted, credible information.

International constitutional advising has become a common practice of democracy promotion, attracting both advocates and critics. However, its actual influence on democratic outcomes remains empirically understudied. Addressing this gap, this article presents the first large-n analysis of the goals and democratic impact of international constitutional advising, drawing on an original dataset of 62 organizations involved in 950 foreign advising cases across 155 countries between 1989-2021. Contrary to prevailing skepticism, and accounting for the tendency of already-democratizing states to seek advising, we find that external constitutional advising is associated with subsequent improvements in electoral democracy, judicial independence, clean elections, women’s political participation, minority empowerment, and reduced non-state violence, especially when coupled with new constitution enactment and direct, on-the-ground engagement. Bridging comparative constitutionalism and democracy-promotion scholarship, our analysis shows that foreign constitutional consulting is more consequential than widely presumed, laying the foundation for future research on its underlying mechanisms and operation.