Research 

Research Statement

As a scholar specializing in the Political Economy of Development and Conflict and Security, with a regional emphasis on Northeast Africa, my research engages with two broad themes, both of which center on institutions, incentives, and constraints in comparative politics and international relations. By merging the two research agendas presented below, I aim to contribute to policy-relevant issues in development, diplomacy, education, and civil society. This research has so far resulted in five peer-reviewed publications in journals such as Nations and Nationalism, Third World Quarterly, and Society.

In the first research track, I explore how governing elites employ rents to manage contending elites, who pose a threat of violence, and the resulting political order. My dissertation, “Violence, Rents, and Elites: Institutional Determinants of Political Order in Ethiopia, Rwanda, and South Sudan,” used a new institutionalist lens and a methodology that included elite interviews to examine how institutional constraints and elite choices shape political development in Ethiopia, Rwanda, and South Sudan. I argue that the violent capabilities of contending elite groups shape patronage-rents relations, and institutional incentives direct political transitions. My findings suggest that standardization of elite privileges enhances political maturity, as evidenced in Rwanda, whereas ethnicization of political rents and lack of elite cohesion impede development, as in Ethiopia and South Sudan. I have expanded this research to account for institutional discourse effects using my vast set of data from elite interviews, and am developing a manuscript on institutions and discourse. The culmination of this research program will be a book manuscript titled, Violence, Rents, and Institutions: Political Development and State-building in Africa. I am also calibrate new institutionalist theory to account for policy challenges, such as the interplay between discourse and violence in African states, and institutional norms of diversity in American higher education.

Simultaneously, my secondary research program evaluates external constraints like foreign policy and globalization on statecraft and institutional outcomes in African states. Through case studies of conflicts over the Nile River and the Red Sea, I have developed accounts of interstate rivalry and resource competition, where domestic and ideational variables mediate anarchy’s effects. I have published my findings on this in the journals, Third World Quarterly and African Security, and am currently co-editing a book on Nile Basin Politics. Looking forward, I intend to move beyond the effects of structural anarchy to explore how economic globalization impacts development in African states. In an article published in Review of Austrian Economics, I developed a liberal theory of contractualism that addresses the sovereignty and governmentality gaps in African states, which I shall to assess political and economic transactions and transformations in the African context. This work involves field research in Rwanda, investigating the microeconomic outcomes of emerging development technologies like ICT and blockchain on impoverished communities. The goal of this research is to understand the outcomes of interactions between entrepreneurs, the state, and new technologies, culminating in a second book, tentatively titled, Contracting the State: Self-Governance and Economic Freedom in Africa. Ultimately, I aim to devise responsive solutions for reorienting development policy that balances liberal ideals of contractualism with the structural realities of globalization.