Research
Peer-Reviewed Publications:
Hlatky, Roman and Joshua Landry. 2025. Ethnic Preferences, Domestic Audiences, and Military Coalition Formation (Conflict Management and Peace Science)
Ethnically-motivated domestic pressure can incentivize leaders to support co-ethnics via military cooperation during international crises. When a leader requires the support of an ethnic group to retain office, she may face pressure to support foreign co-ethnics involved in an international crisis. Supporting co-ethnics can bolster a leader domestically, but constraints on the executive limit a leader's ability to respond to ethnically-motivated pressure. Using data on 257 international crises from 1949-2001 and two case studies, we find robust evidence for the conditional relationship between co-ethnicity, the domestic political salience of ethnicity, and executive constraints on the likelihood of military coalition formation.
Dissertation:
The Politics of Arming, Postwar Power, and War Outcomes
My dissertation explains why a war's outcome is often an unreliable predictor of the postwar distribution of power among participants. I find that war outcome most directly shapes postwar power when a victorious government pursues war goals intended to constraint their opponent's ability to invest in their military following the war, such as installing a new government, or annexing territory. Governments are most likely to pursue such goals when they expect domestic political constraints will limit their own ability to invest in the military in the future. Therefore, expectations about the postwar distribution of power, a product of the domestic political economy of military investment, shape war outcomes, rather than reflecting them. My findings help us understand when and why governments pursue more ambitious war goals, when war changes the distribution of power in the international system, and as a consequence, when war changes who exerts the most influence in international politics, and whose interests and values take precedence the international arena.
Working Papers:
The Politics of Arming, Postwar Power, and War Outcomes
The distribution of military power following interstate war does not consistently reflect who wins and loses. What explains postwar power, and how might it relate to war outcome? I analyze a model in which a state and an opponent attempt to reach a settlement dividing a disputed good in an ongoing war, and do so again in a postwar period. The postwar distribution of power reflects arming costs: as postwar arming becomes increasingly increasingly costly, states arm less, and therefore bargain from a weaker position. High postwar arming costs create a commitment problem which compel states to pursue more extreme war outcomes to avoid postwar weakness. The introduction of a coalition partner can mitigate the commitment problem created by high postwar arming costs. However, the prospect of postwar cooperation can also compel a state to pursue more extreme war goals even with low postwar arming costs. The model clarifies the relationship between war outcome and postwar power: rather than reflecting outcome, concern about the postwar distribution of power and its implications for future bargaining determine the war outcomes governments pursue.
Ethnic Politics and Alliance Formation (with Roman Hlatky)
Does co-ethnicity motivate alliance formation? We argue co-ethnic governments form alliances to either protect their own regime from potential threats or their protect the regime of their alliance partner. Further, the specific obligations included in alliance agreements reached by co-ethnic governments will reflect the nature of the threat to each regime. Internal threats from ethnic minorities motivate co-ethnic governments to form consultation agreements, while external security threats lead to defense pacts. Using data including 8,785 directed-dyads from 1946-2003, we find evidence the effect of co-ethnicity on alliance formation depends on (a) the nature of the threat (internal vs external) each government faces, and (b) the type of alliance formed.
Interstate War Demobilization: How Domestic Political Pressure Shapes Interstate Peace Settlements, awarded Best Paper at the Formal Models of Conflict Conference (October, 2024)
Theories of domestic politics and wartime bargaining between countries generally end when the shooting stops. How do domestic politics continue to shape interstate bargaining following ceasefire? I analyze a formal model in which a government seeks to maximize its gains while negotiating a peace settlement while subject to removal from office by its domestic public. When leaders face political punishment for failing to demobilize their military, fear of losing office motivates them to begin sending soldiers home, reducing their bargaining power during peace negotiations. However, leaders may expect greater political costs should they begin demobilization, such as unemployment and inflation created by returning soldiers and reversion to a peacetime economy. In this case, leaders are incentivized to remain mobilized throughout peace negotiations, improving their negotiating position in comparison.
Collective Deterrence (with Kevin Galambos and Scott Wolford)
We analyze a model of collective deterrence in which (a) a revisionist may challenge a status quo defended by a great power and multiple potential coalition partners, (b) the status quo generates public goods for its defenders, and (c) defenders' war costs are private information. We show first that higher potential capabilities encourage all defenders to fight, but more potential partners makes the great power more and other partners less likely to fight. Second, deterrence failures are more likely when great power commitments are less certain and potential coalitions are larger, but these weaknesses can be offset by increasing potential military capabilities. Third, system stability decreases in the size of status quo coalitions and great power commitment but increases in potential capabilities. Finally, we derive a public-goods version of the size principle, where overlarge coalitions lead not to post-victory conflict but to deterrence failures.