Etter dagens #dax18 så sitter jeg igjen med følgende spørsmål: Hva forklarer at Donald Trump har vunnet større støtte blant svarte velgere enn noen republikansk presidentkandidat siden Richard Nixon i 1960? Spørsmålet bør stå helt sentralt når partiet skal se seg selv i speilet.

Happy to announce that I survived the Viva (pun intended by the university) and have now officially taken on a new doctoral feature (the title!) Many thanks to @Hegghammer and Kristian Gleditsch (the glorious committee) and of course @aruggeri_eu (the allknowing supervisor)

Jeg fortsetter metodedebatten med medlemmer av ekstremismekommisjonen. Det handler ikke om kvant. vs. kvalitativ, men hva som må til for å si noe om årsaker. Også NOU'er må ha sterk metodebevissthet når man skal foreslå tiltak på viktige samfunnsområder. https://t.co/Zxv8TKF2Ni

Exciting to share my findings for UCL’s @uclconflict about *how* exactly militants exploit borders to dodge counterinsurgency operations. Important topic atm., and great input from @NilsWMetternich @KristinMBakke & the brilliant bunch of PhD students they’d gathered. På gjensyn!

(4/4) This is a sizable puzzle piece in understanding conflict trajectories in today's world politics. To grasp it we must stop underestimating "weak states" and instead look closer at decisionmaking. The full text is available here:

(3/4) This leads to new questions: why do some "weak" states leave foreign rebels alone while others suppress them? Why do policies vary over time? My study from Chad and the CAR (1990-2000s) highlights domestic politics. Leaders are sensitive to costs to their regime security..

(2/4) Is it true that "weak states" are unable to deny rebel groups safe haven? Most conflict scholars assume so, but I argue otherwise. States that are small (like Bhutan) or "underdeveloped" (like Cent. Afr. Rep.) can make life very hard for foreign militants - quite cheaply!

🚨 Excited to share my latest article 🚨 now out in Les Cahiers du CCRAG (link below) along with several fascinating studies from the Central African context. In it I ask an overlooked question: (1/4)

After our last Brasenose workshop of the year, a drink to celebrate our little but great intellectual community. Thanks to @jakobschram @tirilrahn @samseitz3 @amiadharan and @VilhelminaAna who keep me up to speed with new literature, data and methods. Evviva le giovini menti!

9/n: Borders, in short, are best sealed by diplomacy. My PhD project (under @aruggeri_eu at @Politics_Oxford) tackles the more iffy questions that these insight prompt. How do CB rebels respond to crackdowns? How does neighbourly diplomacy affect conflict resolution? Stay tuned!

10/n: A major security-policy implication is that unilateral attacks (often the norm today) don’t really pay. Joint operations may require patience and compromise, but they tend to be more successful (and I hint at why).

9/n: But even when neighbours come together, does it really help? When are crackdowns on CB sanctuaries effective? I give some tentative answers. Police and military operations where both countries cooperate succeed far more often in expelling rebels from CB bases.

8/n: In short, the more dependent state X was on the US, the higher the likelihood that it stopped supporting CB rebels following 9/11. Examples are Pakistan, Sudan and India. Now they couldn’t afford to be named & shamed by Western diplomats!

7/n: The 9/11 attacks prompted US + allies to call out states hosting ‘terrorists’, and many CB groups were given the label. We can measure this effect by looking closer at the countries that stopped their support:

6/n: Secondly, the share who receive material support (as coded by @UCDP ) fell from 40% in 1999 to 15% in 2003 – and it’s stayed there ever since. Why are CB rebels receiving less support than before? I say two words: naming and shaming.

5/n: Firstly, the share being under attack rose from 20% in 1995 to 60% in 2017. CB rebels are simply having a harder time now than before. Why? Key answers have to do with who’s in gov’t (and you can read more about it in the paper)...

4/n: I show that, actually, neighbouring countries very often intervene and throw the rebels out. Here’s a graph showing the annual proportion of CB groups being supported (yellow), tolerated (light blue), and attacked (dark blue) by their host. Two facts stand out:

3/n: CB bases (or ‘sanctuaries’) matter greatly because they allow rebels to hit-and-run, to regroup and access supplies. Scholars agree that CB rebels thus fight for longer and win more often (see @IdeanSalehyan). We tend to think of this advantage as unstoppable -- but:

2/n: The geographic spread of CB conflict is immense and uneven. Focusing on Africa and Asia, for the period since 1989, here’s a map showing (1) the location of major camps, as well as (2) the countries affected by CB combat. Can you spot the clusters? 🌍

1/n: (Btw, by ‘cross-border’ (CB) we mean insurgents that have military camps in the country next to the country they’re fighting. Think of the Kurdish militias in Turkey hiding in Iraq, or Boko Haram in Nigeria hiding in Cameroon. Around half of rebel groups do this!)