Abstract This article explores the effects of coup leaders' signals of ideological preferences on political violence. Leveraging a new, original data set on coup ideology, the article's findings show that successful coups d’état performed by ideologically inspired military personnel significantly increase chances for future political violence, evidenced in torture, political killings, and repression. Programmatic statements amid military takeovers of power establish expectations for future policy directions and set the stage for creating winners and losers in society beyond renegotiating elite coalitions at the time coups occur. Empirical findings provide robust support for this theory and help explain why military coups increase political violence. Understanding the logic of programmatic coups offers a valuable contribution to multiple research programs, including civil–military relations, authoritarian regime change, and political violence.

Abstract How do protesters restrain their use of violent tactics in leaderless and decentralized mass protests? While existing research highlights the role of leaders and movement organizations in enforcing nonviolent discipline, we lack understanding of how protester violence is regulated from within protest movements in the absence of centralized leadership. This article addresses this puzzle through a case study of Hong Kong's Anti-Extradition Movement of 2019. Through content and descriptive statistical analysis of LIHKG, an influential online discussion forum widely used by protesters during the movement, I examine the discursive strategies protesters employed to restrain violent escalation through the construction of “internal brakes”—discursive reasonings that aim to establish normative boundaries around the tactical use of violence. In addition to describing the basic characteristics of these internal brakes, I identify four subtypes based on their normative logic: proportionality, conditionality, consequentiality, and moral sanity. By analyzing how these brakes emerged and operated in relation to various forms of protester violence during the movement, I demonstrate that their salience varied depending on contextual factors including the target scope, predictability, and severity of the violence they aimed to restrain. The findings contribute to the contentious politics literature by developing a novel theoretical framework for understanding self-regulation mechanisms in leaderless and decentralized movements that experience tactical radicalization.

Abstract Recent evidence suggests that public support for holding soldiers accountable for war crimes and human rights violations is conditional on the national identity of the soldier. We investigate how information about the status and application of humanitarian and human rights norms, in ways that draw on national identity, might reduce bias in prosecuting soldiers who kill civilians. Using survey experiments in the United States and the United Kingdom, we find that among our four norm-reinforcing information treatments, only references to principled conduct by close and like-minded allies can significantly increase public willingness to prosecute and uphold the rule of law in both countries, although this finding is highly dependent on the specific ally referenced. Depending on the context and application, highlighting national outgroup violations and potential hypocrisy by leveraging the timing of the survey to capture the abuse of Ukrainians by Russian soldiers, at least temporarily increased the willingness to prosecute in the United States. Otherwise, leveraging pride in the military to reinforce norms, or informing the public about their government's commitment to these norms does little to alter attitudes. Although communicating norms in ways that have cultural and national salience has the potential to strengthen public commitment to accountability, where there are strong preexisting partisan and national loyalties it is difficult to do so.

Abstract Recent studies have questioned whether nonviolent tactics can be effective for ethnic minorities. However, they often overlook multiethnic coalitions, shifts in campaign composition, and ethnicity’s parallel role in armed tactics. This paper re-evaluates the relationship between ethnicity, tactics, and outcomes in civil conflicts. To do so, we introduce new data on ethnic groups in contention that offer time-variant measures of the ethnic attributes of campaigns. We find that the effectiveness of nonviolent tactics for ethnic minorities depends on the point of comparison. Campaigns composed solely of excluded groups succeed less often than those made up entirely of privileged groups. However, minorities have still fared better when using nonviolent as compared to violent tactics. Additional analyses explore ethnic diversity, multiethnic coalitions, hybrid tactics, and alternative measures of success. Taken together, our findings complicate a prevailing assertion that nonviolent tactics are only effective for members of privileged groups.

Abstract Do Ukrainians still categorically reject political and territorial concessions to Russia as found by Dill et al. (2024a) in July 2022? Or have their attitudes toward resistance changed given mounting costs and uncertain benefits of self-defense against Russia’s aggression? Between December 2024 and January 2025, we presented the original and a modified conjoint experiment with stronger cost treatments to 2,580 Ukrainian citizens, sampled from largely the same locations as before. We find continued categorical resistance to Russian control. Resistance to accepting political neutrality or conceding territory meanwhile has weakened. Ethnic Ukrainians and less war-affected respondents remain comparatively more willing to resist Russia’s aggression than other respondents. Locations’ exposure to war-related violence is not associated with changes in Ukrainians’ attitudes since 2022. Our findings help us better understand how the attitudes of conflict-affected populations evolve over time and shed light on public support for a potential political settlement in Ukraine.

Abstract Electoral violence is a serious threat to free and fair elections. Theoretical explanations of electoral violence increasingly move beyond simplified incumbent-opposition dichotomies, and yet, there is a lack of nuanced actor data needed to test such explanations. This special data feature introduces the Modes and Agents of Election-Related Violence in Côte d’Ivoire and Kenya (MAVERICK) dataset, an actor-centered georeferenced event report dataset on electoral violence. MAVERICK includes 2,200 electoral violence events in Côte d’Ivoire (1995–2022) and Kenya (1992–2022), covering all multiparty elections since the (re)introduction of democracy in the 1990s. MAVERICK’s granular information on actor characteristics, affiliations, and roles, as well as added indicators of violence intensity, makes the dataset ideal for developing and testing nuanced theories on the causes, dynamics, and consequences of electoral violence. The article introduces the conceptual and operational definitions used, outlines the data structure and data collection approach, and provides a first analysis of the actors of electoral violence in the Côte d’Ivoire and Kenya. Moreover, we highlight the dataset’s value by examining how involvement by different branches of the security forces shapes electoral violence intensity, and demonstrate that police involvement is associated with less intense violence, while paramilitary police involvement is associated with more serious violence.

In non-linear models, the effect of a given variable cannot be gauged directly from the associated coefficient. Instead, researchers typically compute the average effect in the population to assess the substantive significance of the variable of interest. Based on the average response, analysts often make policy recommendations that are to be implemented at the individual level (i.e. the unit of analysis level). Such extrapolations, however, can lead to gross generalizations or incorrect inferences. The reason for this is that the mean may obscure a large variation in individual effects, in which case the real-world applicability of the average value is limited. Correctly interpreting the average response may prevent unwarranted extrapolations but does not solve the problem of the lack of practical relevance. Particularly when cases carry special meaning (e.g. countries), the political and socioeconomic relevance of research findings should be assessed at the individual level. This article outlines the conditions under which aggregation to mean is problematic, and advocates a case-centered approach to model evaluation. Specifically, we advise researchers to compute and report the quantity of interest for each case in the data. Only by seeing the full spread of cases can the reader assess how well the average summarizes the population. Our approach allows researchers to draw more meaningful inferences, and makes the connection between research and practical applications more realistic.

In the Sahel region, disputes between farmers and herders are often linked to religious, ethnic, and resource conflicts. Farmer–herder relations are put under pressure by negative out-group perceptions and affected by resource constraints, particularly those created by changes in climatic conditions. This study makes two key contributions: first, it examines the impact of in-group and out-group identities on farmer–herder relations under uncertainty; and second, it integrates qualitative and quantitative methods. In this study, a public good experiment was conducted with 332 farmers and herders in Senegal comparing in-group and out-group identity priming effects under individual and collective risks. The experiment was paired with 14 in-depth focus group discussions (FGDs) to elicit key mechanisms for in-group and out-group cooperation. The results show that priming out-group membership reduces cooperation towards out-group members, especially among farmers. Interestingly, herders reduced cooperation in response to in-group primes, likely attributable to rivalry between local and mobile herders. FGDs revealed that negative perceptions of mobile herders (transhumant pastoralists) drive this behavior. Additionally, introducing collective risks, such as those resulting from climate change, worsens in-group–out-group biases. The findings highlight the need to address negative stereotyping of mobile herders to prevent escalations of conflicts in relatively peaceful areas like Senegal, where farmers and herders regularly interact.

Are politicians who have previously experienced human rights violations more supportive of promoting human rights abroad? Much of the literature on human rights advocacy has centered on actors at the international or state levels. By contrast, this article focuses on individual politicians and their personal life experiences. Understanding variations in commitment to global human rights among political leaders within a country is particularly important in legislative resolutions where each legislator’s roll-call vote directly impacts a bill’s outcome. I argue that legislators with firsthand experience of state repression are more likely to support promoting international human rights. Their shared experience with foreign victims fosters greater empathy and a moral obligation to stand with them. They also have electoral motivations, as human rights promotion is an issue of their ownership and aligns with voter expectations. I test my theory using original micro-level data on South Korean legislators’ state repression experiences during the country’s democratization in the 1980s and their roll-call votes on global human rights between 2020 and 2023. I address two major barriers to inference, generational and selection effects, by comparing politicians from the same generation who participated in protests based on the intensity of violence they experienced. I find that those who experienced severe forms of repression, such as torture, injury, and imprisonment, are more likely to support promoting human rights in other countries than those who faced lower-level repression. The results suggest that prior repressed experience is an important source of political elites’ preferences for international human rights, a topic that has received little attention in previous research.

The literature on election violence lacks a consistent set of core predictors for why certain elections are violent and others are not. Between 2010 and 2022, 97 scholars published 65 peer-reviewed journal articles on this topic using quantitative research designs involving over 440 predictor variables. As a distinct research area, therefore, the study of election violence has reached a size and maturity where it is useful to take stock. Through a meta-analysis of 581 models, this article makes three key contributions. First, it finds that 13 of 44 variables consistently predict election violence, which highlights both the field’s fragmentation and most promising avenues for future research. Second, it reveals that election-specific factors like fraud and competitiveness are more reliable predictors than commonly studied structural conditions like democracy or economic development. Third, it shows that many predictors operate differently at national and subnational levels, with only population size and domestic conflict significant at both levels. This article’s findings suggest a greater focus is needed on election-specific triggers, explicit discussions about perpetrators and targets, and measurement issues.