On this page, you will find information about my publications and works in progress, along with links to access the manuscripts. 
You may also visit my Google Scholar Page and my ORCid Page.

To learn more about the Subnational Nonstate Actor Governance project, visit the National Science Foundation site for award information and see our related working papers below.

Comments, especially on working papers, are welcomed. 


Peer-Reviewed Publications: 
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Foreign Sponsorship of Armed Groups and Civil War
Rubin, M.A. and I. Malone (2024). "Foreign Sponsorship of Armed Groups and Civil War," International Studies Quarterly., Vol. 68, Issue 2. 
abstract
Under what conditions do armed groups escalate their campaigns to civil war? Existing research suggests foreign states' material support is critical to explaining armed groups' conduct during civil war, and thereby war intensification, duration, and outcomes. Thusfar, little attention has been paid to understanding the role of foreign support in shaping whether armed groups fight civil wars in the first place. Until recently, datasets recording armed group organizational characteristics have included only those already engaged in significant civil war violence, which introduces selection bias that precludes investigating factors that influence which groups fight civil wars. Leveraging the new Armed Groups Dataset (AGD) (Malone 2022), which measures characteristics of armed groups engaged in lower-level violence as well as those included in conventional datasets, we conduct a preliminary empirical investigation into the explanatory role of foreign sponsorship in group-level variation in civil war. While foreign sponsorship and civil war are correlated, there is little evidence that sponsorship has substantial independent explanatory value in predicting civil war. Rather, the evidence is consistent with claims that armed groups' organizational characteristics account for both access to foreign sponsorship and, independently, their likelihood of escalating civil war. 
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American Fatalities in Foreign Wars and Right-Wing Radicalization at Home
McAlexander, R.J., M.A. Rubin, and R. Williams (2024). "They're Still There, He's All Gone: American Fatalities in Foreign Wars and Right-Wing Radicalization at Home," American Political Science Review, Vol. 118, Issue 3: pp. 1577-1583.
Abstract
What explains right-wing radicalization in the United States? Existing research emphasizes demographic changes, economic insecurity, and elite polarization. This paper highlights an additional factor: the impact of foreign wars on society at home. We argue communities that bear the greatest costs of foreign wars are prone to higher rates of right-wing radicalization. To support this claim, we present robust correlations between activity on Parler, a predominantly right-wing social media platform, and fatalities among residents who served in U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, at both the county and census tract level. The findings contribute to understanding right-wing radicalization in the US in two key respects. First, it examines widespread, nonviolent radical-right activity that, because it is less provocative than protest and violence, has eluded systematic measurement. Second, it highlights that U.S. foreign wars have important implications for domestic politics beyond partisanship and voting, to potentially include radicalization.
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Social Cohesion and Community Displacement in Armed Conflict
Arnon, D.Y., R.J. McAlexander, and M.A. Rubin (2023). "Social Cohesion and Community Displacement in Armed Conflict" International Security, Vol. 47, No. 3 (Winter 2022/23), pages 52–94.
abstract
What factors influence civilian behavior during armed conflict? Under what conditions do civilians adopt certain survival strategies over others, and how do these choices shape conflict processes and organized violence? What are the origins of conflict-related population displacement? Existing research addressing civilian agency in armed conflict has explored civilians’ strategies to resist or bargain with belligerents, on the one hand, and their decisions whether to flee the conflict zone, on the other. While the former explores how civilians influence belligerent conduct, the latter primarily focuses on how belligerent actions shape civilian migration and displacement. However, whether civilians flee preemptively, prior to belligerent arrival, influences belligerents’ political and military strategy. Thus explaining the conditions under which civilians flee preemptively is central to understanding subsequent conflict processes. We argue that social cohesion enhances civilians’ capability to efficiently acquire the resources necessary to survive migration and displacement, thereby increasing the likelihood that they manage to leave prior to belligerent occupation. We test the theory’s community-level empirical implications in the context of Arab Palestinian displacement during the 1948 war in Mandate Palestine. We measure community displacement drawing upon village-level historical accounts during the war and measure social cohesion using an original dataset based on archival material from a survey of Arab Palestinian villages conducted during the early 1940s. We find villages with greater social cohesion are more likely to preemptively evacuate, shedding new light on how civilian agency shapes conflict and displacement processes.
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Rebel Territorial Control and Governance
Rubin, M.A. and M.A. Stewart (2022). "Rebel Territorial Control and Governance," in Loyle, C.E., Braithwaite, J.M., Cunningham, K.G., Huang, R., Huddleston, R.J., Jung, D.F. and Rubin, M.A., "Revolt and Rule: Learning about Governance from Rebel Groups." International Studies Review, Volume 24, Issue 4.
forum abstract
Recent work in international relations has problematized state-centric assumptions of governance to explore variations in authority by a range of non-state actors (e.g. NGOs, criminal syndicates, gangs, etc.). This forum centers on the phenomenon of rebel group governance during civil wars and leverages the concept to advance our understanding of current theories and conceptualizations of governance. The nature of rebel organizations provides a unique opportunity for researchers to expand the state-centric focus on governance because rebel actors differ from states in their comparative position within the global state system, the contexts in which they operate, and their lack of legitimizing principles that permit consistent membership as a class of political actors. These differences allow for meaningful extensions of how we theorize and conceptualize governance beyond the state. Furthermore, variation across these differences allows our findings in the study rebel governance to speak directly to the broader literature in international relations on governance by state actors. In our introduction to this forum we detail the ways in which rebel groups have chosen to address the central components of governance through a variety of governance strategies. We then devote three essays in the forum to the concepts of legitimacy, capacity, and territorial control. In each of the three essays authors discuss the ways in which rebel governance problematizes and advances these concepts for the broader study of governance. In the conclusion this forum synthesizes extant and emerging work in the field of rebel governance in order to raise new questions of the governance and state building literatures. In this way we show how investigating governance by rebel groups in particular advances our understanding of governance more broadly.

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Terrorism in Armed Conflict: New Data Attributing Terrorism to Rebel Organizations
Fortna, V.P., N.J. Lotito, and M.A. Rubin (2022). "Terrorism in Armed Conflict: New Data Attributing Terrorism to Rebel Organizations," Conflict Management and Peace Science​, Volume 39, Issue 2: pages 214-236.
abstract
The Terrorism in Armed Conflict (TAC) data collection project, developed with Page Fortna (Columbia University) and Nicholas Lotito (Yale University), links violent incidents in the Global Terrorism Database (GTD) to civil war combatants included in the Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP) datasets, filling a crucial gap in existing empirical studies addressing the causes and consequences of terrorism. Many GTD incidents are missing, or include ambiguous, perpetrator information. Because the accuracy of perpetrator information likely varies systematically, simply dropping these incidents from analyses may bias results. TAC provides possible attribution to specific rebel groups, with coding for uncertainty. TAC enables researchers to 1) address "description bias" in media-based terrorism data, 2) model uncertainty regarding perpetrator attribution, and 3) vary the way terrorism is counted. The data coder 409 rebel organizations from 1970-2013.

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ACCess
[CMPS Link]
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Download and customize the TAC data: [TAC Data Project GitHub page]
Terrorism and the Varieties of Civil Liberties
Rubin, M.A. and R.K. Morgan (2021). ​"​Terrorism and the Varieties of Civil Liberties." Journal of Global Security Studies​, Volume 6, Issue 3.
abstract
How do government protections of, and infringement upon, its citizens’ civil liberties influence the country’s exposure to terrorism? Existing research remains divided on whether civil liberties protections increase or decrease vulnerability to terrorism, and the conditions under which violating civil liberties mitigate or exacerbate the security threats associated with terrorism. We provide clarity on these debates by disaggregating civil liberties into component dimensions—political liberties, private liberties, and physical integrity—which we argue have distinct effects on a country’s exposure to terrorism. We argue political liberties increase terrorism while physical integrity rights decrease terrorism. These countervailing effects provide an alternative explanation for the“inverted-U” relationship between civil liberties protections and terrorism. We isolate the effects of specific political institutional features and government behaviors by leveraging the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) data. We measure a country’s exposure to terrorism using the Global Terrorism Database. Our sample covers 176 states from 1970-2016. We find evidence consistent with our hypotheses regarding the effects of the distinct component dimensions of civil liberties.

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Rebel Territorial Control and Civilian Collective Action in Civil War
Rubin, M.A (2020). “Rebel Territorial Control and Civilian Collective Action in Civil War: Evidence from the Communist Insurgency in the Philippines.” Journal of Conflict Resolution, Volume 64, Issue 2-3: 459-489.​
abstrACT
​Under what conditions do rebel organizations control territory during civil war? How do civilians influence the distribution of territorial control? This article introduces a civilian agency theory, emphasizing community collective action capacity (CAC) defined by underlying social network structure, to complement existing explanations of territorial control. I argue communities with greater CAC mobilize information and resources more efficiently, increasing belligerents’ incentives to control territory. However, CAC also increases community bargaining power to demand costly investments in governance, partially offsetting these gains. CAC increases rebel control in areas of state neglect. But, as state service provision increases, communities leverage CAC to demand prohibitively costly rebel governance, deterring rebel control. This article tests the theory in the context of the communist insurgency in the Philippines, using military intelligence reports from 2011 to 2014 to measure village-level communist insurgent territorial control and a household-level census (2008–2010) to measure village CAC. Interviews with village elders in Eastern Mindanao illustrate causal mechanisms and explore alternative explanations.

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[Journal of Conflict Resolution] (includes Appendix, data, and replication materials)

[SSRN Pre-print]
support
Research supported by the National Science Foundation Law and Social Sciences Program (Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant, Award Number: 1535598). Support also provided by the Earth Institute's AC4 program, the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, and the Columbia University Political Science Department.


Don't Bite the Hand that Feeds: Rebel Funding Sources and the Use of Terrorism in Civil Wars
Fortna, V.P., N.J. Lotito, and M.A. Rubin (2018). "Don't Bite the Hand that Feeds: Rebel Funding Sources and the Use of Terrorism in Civil Wars," International Studies Quarterly, Volume 62, Issue 4, Pages 782–794​.
abstract
Why do some rebel groups resort to terrorism tactics, while others refrain from doing so? This paper argues that rebel organizations pay attention to the legitimacy costs associated with terrorism and that how rebel organizations finance their rebellion creates variation in their vulnerability to these legitimacy costs. Organizations that rely primarily on civilian support, and to a lesser extent on foreign support, are most constrained in their use of terrorism. Rebels who finance their fight with lootable resources such as gems or drugs are least vulnerable to legitimacy costs and so are more likely to resort to terrorism and to employ more of it. The paper develops legitimacy cost theory and tests it using new data on Terrorism in Armed Conflict from 1970 to 2007. We find robust support for the hypothesis that groups who finance their fight with natural resources are significantly more likely to employ terrorism (though not necessarily to conduct more deadly attacks) relative to those who rely on local civilian support. We find that groups with external sources of financing, such as foreign state support, may be more likely to engage in terrorism than those who rely on local civilians, but not significantly so.
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[ISQ Link] (includes Appendix, data, and replication materials)

Working Papers and Works in Progress:
Into the Fray: Explaining State Support for Nonviolent Resistance
with Maria Lotito and Chris Shay.
Conditional Accept, International Studies Quarterly​
abstract
Under what conditions do states sponsor foreign nonviolent campaigns (FNCs) seeking to overthrow incumbent regimes? Why do some campaigns receive sponsorship while others do not? While political ideology plays an important role, motivating liberal democracies to support (mostly pro-democratic) FNCs, we argue that strategic and material factors — specifically, geopolitical alignment and economic dependence — influence whether states sponsor FNCs, often overriding normative and ideological motivations. We argue that a potential sponsor, whether democratic or autocratic, is unlikely to support FNCs when doing so risks jeopardizing a valuable strategic partnership with the target regime, which may retaliate against the sponsor. Additionally, democracies are particularly deterred from supporting FNCs when the target regime can retaliate economically, such as by disrupting trade or other vital economic ties. To test these arguments, we leverage data from the External Support for Nonviolent Campaigns Dataset (EX-D), which documents global instances of state support for nonviolent campaigns from 2000 to 2014. Consistent with our theory, we find that liberal democracies make up the vast majority of sponsors, but also that geopolitical alignment between potential sponsor and target regime – measured through UN General Assembly voting records – is strongly and negatively correlated with the provision of support. Moreover, economic dependence on the target significantly reduces the likelihood of support among liberal democracies.
Measuring Territorial Control in Armed Conflict
with Andy Halterman, Nina McMurry, and Ben Radford.
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Subnational Nonstate Actor Governance project, NSF Award #: 2446384
abstract
Under what conditions do nonstate actors control territory in defiance of the incumbent government? How does nonstate territorial control and governance affect violent and nonviolent conflict processes, states’ sovereignty and legitimacy, and political and economic development? This article advances this research agenda by introducing the Subnational Nonstate Actor Governance (SNAG) project’s new measurement strategy to create spatially and temporally disaggregated data on armed nonstate actors’ territorial control in conflict zones, comparable across countries and conflicts. Existing efforts to measure territorial control during conflict focus on (primarily violent) conflict and contentious politics events. This approach captures territorial control in contested areas, but remains unreliable for capturing control established without confrontation, identifying actors’ strongholds where control remains stable, and, crucially, differentiating strongholds from areas with limited or no belligerent presence. SNAG addresses these issues by employing text analysis methods on reporting from conflict zones to extract mentions of actors’ presence and control, along with location and timing, which form the basis of a measurement model to estimate areas of territorial control. After presenting the measurement strategy, we validate SNAG’s subnational data territorial control data against “ground truth” data on territorial control in the Syrian Civil War using the Carter Center Syria Conflict Mapping project.

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Repression and Resistance in Late-Stage Colonialism: Evidence from British Mandate Palestine
with Daniel Arnon and Adee Weller.
Abstract
How and why do colonial regimes vary their use of repression in response to anti-colonial resistance? We argue that repression is shaped by the economic value of localities, their political opportunity structures, and patterns of mobilization. In economically valuable areas, the costs of both rebellion and repression are higher. Colonial authorities invest in public goods and cultivate alliances with local elites to deter resistance and enable targeted, selective repression when violence occurs. By contrast, in peripheral or politically fragmented areas, colonial regimes face fewer constraints. They under-invest in governance, exploit internal divisions, and rely on more indiscriminate forms of repression. These strategies allow regimes to suppress resistance at a lower cost but also increase the likelihood and lethality of violence. We evaluate this argument in the context of British Mandate Palestine, where colonial authorities confronted widespread anti-colonial mobilization during the 1936–1939 Arab Revolt. Drawing on original archival data from British, Israeli, and Palestinian sources, we construct a novel dataset measuring local-level variation in village-level politics, economics, and repression across hundreds of communities. Our findings show that higher economic value reduces both resistance and repression, while intra-village rivalries increase the likelihood of repressive violence. Political characteristics of appointed village leaders further shape the forms of repression used, including collective punishments and imprisonment. These findings advance theories of colonial governance and coercive state-building by showing how regimes combine violence and co-optation to manage resistance and secure their political and extractive interests.

Terrorism and Territorial Control
abstract
Under what conditions do rebel organizations employ terrorism in their repertoire of tactics during armed conflict? Are rebels that control territory more or less likely to perpetrate terrorism? Under what conditions? In this article, I argue that, contrary to conventional wisdom, rebels use terrorism in areas of contested control (in the periphery) according to a military logic to gain territorial control. Terrorism discourages the state from deploying or expanding civilian government representatives, investing in physical infrastructure, and developing social capital in targeted areas, all of which are essential to the state's efforts to cultivate the support and legitimacy necessary to establish a monopoly of violence and clear rebels from holding territory. This theoretical framework departs from the prevailing conventional wisdom in existing research investigating the empirical relationship between terrorism and territorial control, which primarily considers terrorism as a "weapon of the weak" used by groups lacking the ability or interest in controlling territory. While some scholars note territorial control may increase terrorism by extending group longevity and violence capabilities, these studies still focus on the impact of territorial control on use of terrorism, assuming terrorism is not a strategy to control territory. I test the theory in light of these predominant alternatives through two channels. First, I examine the theory's implications for variation in territorial control across rebel groups in a global sample. I measure rebels' use of terrorism using the Terrorism in Armed Conflict (TAC) dataset and measure their territorial control using the Non-State Actor (NSA) dataset. Next, I conduct a micro-level analysis examining local-level changes in territorial control and use of terrorism, and its sequencing, for a set of rebel groups in Syria's civil war, 2012-2016 using geolocated terrorism incidents in the Global Terrorism Database (GTD) and the Carter Center's Syria Mapping project. 
Rebel Alliances and Conflict Issues
Abstract
​Under what conditions do rebel groups form alliances in civil wars? Existing research highlights the role of military capabilities, ideology, and social identity to explain militant alliance patterns. While these factors are important, the literature under-emphasizes the political factors shaping alliance formation. This article investigates the ways in which the configuration of political issues underlying the conflict influence patterns of militant cooperation and competition in civil wars. While in single-issue conflicts rebel groups face barriers to cooperation, in multi-issue conflicts they may facilitate deeper cooperation to achieve shared goals through issue linkage and credit-claiming. To test the argument empirically, I examine the relationship between militant alliances, measured using the MGAR dataset, and the number and type of conflict issues, using the UCDP CID dataset, in a global sample of conflicts from 1989-2016. 

Government Repression and Rebel Organizations' use of Terrorism
with Page Fortna.
abstract
Under what conditions do rebel groups use terrorism as a tactic in armed conflict? Does the government’s human rights record, including its history of civilian-targeted violence, reduce the likelihood of terrorism by eliminating violent challengers or does it increase terrorism by legitimizing it as a warranted response to government abuse? We argue that rebel groups are more likely to perpetrate acts of terrorism when their constituent population finds terrorism an appropriate tactic; when the legitimacy costs, the expected loss in legitimacy among a key audience associated with specific actions, are lower. Specifically, constituent populations are more likely to accept terrorism as legitimate when the government adversary has committed its own abuses, especially, but not exclusively, violations of physical integrity rights such as indiscriminate violence, extrajudicial killings, and other forms of civilian-targeted violence. In other words, a rebel group’s legitimacy costs for terrorism are driven, at least in part, by the perceived legitimacy of the government adversary and prior exposure to civilian-targeted violence. We test the argument empirically in the context of ethnic conflicts. The Terrorism in Armed Conflict (TAC) dataset attributes incidents of terrorism to rebel group perpetrators, using the list of rebel groups in the Uppsala Conflict  Data Program (UCDP). The Ethnic One-Sided Violence Dataset records government repression of specific politically mobilized ethnic group populations, which we link to UCDP rebel groups that purport to represent those groups using the Ethnic Power Relations dataset.
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