This dissertation examines how parties respond and adapt their behavior to political violence. Building a theoretical argument about strategic party behavior and party capture, I address the following questions: How do parties select and recruit their candidates in regions with high levels of violence and the pervasive presence of VNAs? Do parties respond to violence by selecting certain types of candidates who are more capable of fighting these organizations? Do parties react differently at different levels of government? And finally, how do VNSAs capture political selection across at different levels of government? I argue that in regions where there is high "uncertainty," candidate selection becomes highly important for both party leaders and DTOs. Second, I argue that as violence increases and the number of DTOs also, criminal organizations, as risk-averse actors, will capture candidate selection. I posit that as violence increases, there is a greater likelihood that candidates will have criminal connections. To test my theory, I use the case of Mexico. Violence in Mexico and the presence of criminal organizations across the country has experienced a great deal of variation since the 1990s. In Chapter 2, I find that violence affects the gubernatorial candidate selection of the PRI, PAN …

This dissertation examines the effects of micro-level inequality on political preferences and voting behavior.

Scholars generally assume that states are shamed for their own behavior, but they can also be shamed for the lack of investigation for violence perpetrated by domestic non-state actors. I engage this previously-unstudied phenomenon and develop a theory to explain how states will respond to being shamed for failing to control domestic violence. I examine two types of outcomes: the governments' change in behavior, and the accountability efforts against state agents that have abused human rights. For the government's reaction to being shamed for violence from non-state organizations, I develop a theory to examine changes in coercive state capacity – including military and police personnel – since this reaction may largely exacerbate human rights violations. I hypothesize that states shamed due to abuses by violent non-state organizations (VNSO) will increase military personnel to halt criminal violence and respond to the international spotlight. I then examine the relationship between naming and shaming states over physical integrity abuses by different types of perpetrators and human rights prosecutions. Using newly coded data on the types of perpetrators shamed in the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) country reports, I find that shaming over abuses that include VNSO as perpetrators decreases the likelihood of …

Since the 1970s, a curious phenomenon has emerged, suggesting that resource rich countries are "cursed" by their resources. Over the last couple of decades, researchers have argued that rentier countries are more likely to have educational underachievement, the Dutch disease, corruption, slower democratization, and conflict. Although current research has proven helpful and productive, some aspects still remain contested in both theoretical and empirical terms. This dissertation aims to fill certain lacunae in this literature. My dissertation examines how ordinary citizens turn into dissidents and then to rebels in rentier states. I build and test an innovative theoretical argument, which focuses on individuals' daily lives, and explains how policies by rentier governments discourage merit-based employment. This, in turn, yields a high level of grievance among segments of the population. I also develop a comprehensive theory that combines macro-level and micro-level explanations of conflict onset in rentier states. Finally, I analyze an important, but previously neglected aspect of civil wars in rentier states: conflict outcomes. I suggest that the existence of abundant natural resources would have a significant impact on conflict outcomes. Accordingly, government victory would be more likely, and negotiated settlement would be less likely in rentier countries compared to non-rentier …