Dissertation:

Legal Militias: The Case of Convivir Groups in Colombia

In my dissertation, 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.

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)

• 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

• NextGenC: Survey on Youth Political Participation in Intermediate Cities in Colombia
  In the field