Work In Progress

State strength, outside interventions, and the intensity of conflict (with Erwin Bulte)

We use the ability of governments to commit and act as Stackelberg leaders to operationalize the concepts "weak states" and "strong states." We develop a conflict model to explore how state strength thus defined affects the outcomes of conflict when the state and a rebel group compete for the distribution of a windfall gain. We also analyze how the impact of third party "interventions," seeking to promote peace, varies with state strength. Our main results are that state strength matters for the equilibrium of conflict, and affects the performance of outside interventions. Specifically, no interventions are "robust" in the sense that outcomes are similar across contexts, and the effect of interventions is conditional on state strength. The same policies that promote peace in one setting could inadvertently accentuate conflict elsewhere.

Working Paper

Outreach Activity

Here you can find an article in the Austrian newspaper Die Presse about my PhD thesis.