Book Project and Job Market Paper:

Legal Militias: The Case of Convivir Groups in Colombia

In my book project, I examine an understudied feature of civil wars: legal militias. These are armed groups that receive formal recognition from the state but remain separate from regular forces like the police or military. I argue that legalization encourages militia formation by lowering the costs of mobilization. This dynamic is most likely to occur in areas that combine two conditions: a high insurgent threat, which creates demand for protection, and high land inequality, which gives local elites strong incentives to mobilize. Once formed, legal militias influence civilian–armed group collaboration and civilian victimization by providing local intelligence and making the armed landscape more legible to the state and its allies.

Laws and Loyalties: The Effects of Legal Militias on Insurgent Violence (JMP)

Can state laws affect civilian behavior during civil war? Existing research argues that laws shape behavior either by changing the costs of an action or perceptions of its appropriateness. Yet these arguments often assume levels of state capacity and legitimacy that may be absent during civil war. I examine whether laws can change the costs or perceptions of actions even during civil war by studying laws that legalize counterinsurgent militias. I argue that legalizing militias facilitates civilian support by removing punishment and weakening stigmatization of collaboration. This support, in turn, provides militias with intelligence that helps disrupt rebel attacks. Drawing on original panel data and a staggered difference-in-differences design, I find lower rates of insurgent violence in municipalities with legal militias than in those without them. I interpret these findings as consistent with increased civilian support and provide qualitative evidence supporting this claim. I also examine two alternative explanations—that the decline was driven by militia violence or greater state capacity—and find evidence consistent with neither. This paper brings laws and norms into the study of civilian support for armed groups and conflict outcomes.

Peer-Reviewed Publications

• Making, Updating, and Querying Causal Models with CausalQueries
  with Till Tietz, Georgiy Syunyaev, and Macartan Humphreys
  Conditionally accepted, Journal of Statistical Software (2025) — Preprint

• Citizen Attitudes Toward Traditional and State Authorities: Substitutes or Complements?
  with Peter van der Windt, Macartan Humphreys, Jeffrey F. Timmons, and Maarten Voors
  Comparative Political Studies (2019) — Article | Replication

Ongoing Work

• (Class) Disparities in Policing
  Solo-authored paper
  Working paper available upon request

• Marching for Change: Quantifying the Effects of Women’s Rights Protests on Legislation and Femicide in Mexico
  with Johanna Reyes
  Early draft available upon request