Donald Grasse

Donald Grasse

Visiting Assistant Professor | Government | International Relations | Cornell University

Posts by Collection

portfolio

FWL FTW

Published:

Have you ever needed to plot a relationship between two variables, but you wanted the visualization to adjust for confounding features?

Intro to Mapping in R

Published:

Maps are a great tool for data visualization, but the data structure can be tricky. This short tutorial will walk you through how to make different types of maps in R.

publications

Opportunistic Repression: Civilian Targeting by the State in Response to COVID-19

Published in International Security, 2021

Summary: We propose opportunistic repression as a framework for understanding repression under authoritarian regimes. We test our argument by studying patterns of state violence against civilians in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, which created a window of opportunity for dictators to use force against opposition figures under the auspice of public health.

Recommended citation: Donald Grasse, Melissa Pavlik, Hilary Matfess, Travis B. Curtice (2021). "Opportunistic Repression: Civilian Targeting by the State in Response to COVID-19." International Security (2021) 46 (2): 130–165. https://direct.mit.edu/isec/article/46/2/130/107696/Opportunistic-Repression-Civilian-Targeting-by-the

Oil Crops and Social Conflict: Evidence from Indonesia

Published in Journal of Conflict Resolution, 2022

When do agricultural transformations impact social stability? Cash crops are typically associated with economic prosperity and social peace. I argue agricultural booms may spur violent conflict over resource allocation by pitting would-be producers against incumbent landowners when the gains from production are concentrated and the negative externalities are diffuse. I study the rapid expansion of oil palm in Indonesia, a growingly important crop in the global economy. I find when oil palm grows more valuable and expands within producing districts, violent resource conflicts increase. The positive relationship does not exist for other cash crops, nor other types of conflict, and is moderated by the presence of sustainability certified processing mills. The results connect commodity shocks to non-state violence over resources, and suggest land use change is an important mechanism connecting agricultural booms to social conflict.

Recommended citation: Grasse, Donald. (2022). "Oil Crops and Social Conflict: Evidence from Indonesia"; Journal of Conflict Resolution. Volume: 66 Issue: 7-8, page(s): 1422-1448. http://donaldgrasse.github.io/files/crops-conflict-2022-accepted.pdf

State Terror and Long-run Development: The Persistence of the Khmer Rouge

Published in American Political Science Review (Accepted), 2022

Abstract: Does mass repression have a long-term economic legacy, and if so, what explains persistence? I argue repression can undermine development by delimiting human capital. I study the aftermath of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. The regime implemented a campaign of violence to reorganize society, yet governing elites varied across the communist ideological spectrum. I exploit an arbitrary border that allocated villages to either the loyalist Mok or the relatively moderate Sy in Kampong Speu province. Using a regression discontinuity design, I find villages in the more extremist Southwest zone are poorer today compared to villages in the adjacent West zone, and had lower human capital immediately after the regime. Exposure to more intense repression shapes labor markets and child health, explaining intergenerational persistence. I find no conclusive evidence for other persistence channels. My findings add a novel pathway to the library of mechanisms which explain why historical coercion undermines development.

Recommended citation: Grasse, Donald (2022). "State Terror and Long-term Development: The Persistence of the Khmer Rouge." American Political Science Review http://donaldgrasse.github.io/files/state-terrror-long-term-development-grasse-apsr.pdf

Courting Civilians During Conflict: Evidence from Taliban Judges in Afghanistan

Published in International Organization, 2024

Rebels regularly provide public services - especially legal services - but the consequences of such programs are unclear. We argue rebel courts can boost civilian support for insurgency and augment attack capacity by increasing the legitimacy of the rebellion, creating a vested interest in rebel rule, or by enabling rebel coercion of the civilian population. We study the impact of the Taliban’s judiciary by leveraging cross-district and overtime variation in exposure to Taliban courts using a trajectory balancing design. We find courts reduced civilian support for the government and increased support for the Taliban, and were associated with more attacks and coalition casualties. Exploring mechanisms, we find courts resolved major interpersonal disputes between civilians, facilitated more insurgent intimidation of civilians, and that changes in public opinion are unlikely to have been driven solely through social desirability bias. Our findings help explain the logic of rebel courts and highlight the complex interactions between warfare and institutional development in weak states.

Recommended citation: Donald Grasse, Renard Sexton, Austin Wright "Courting Civilians During Conflict: Evidence from Taliban Judges in Afghanistan" https://donaldgrasse.github.io/files/Courting_Civilians_During_Conflict__Evidence_from_Taliban_Judges_in_Afghanistan.pdf

talks

teaching

Political Science 120: Introduction to Comparative Politics

Undergraduate course, Emory University, Political Science, 2020

Course Descrpition: This course offers an introduction to the comparative study of modern political systems. It outlines a number of the major theories of comparative political analysis and applies to them to a selection of democratic, authoritarian, and hybrid systems. It examines how these systems function internally and how they interact with their societies, economies, and international environments, as well as how they change over time and how they undergo transitions from one tyepe to another.

Climate Change and International Security

Undergraduate Seminar, Cornell University, Government, 2024

This course concerns the interrelationship between climate change and violent conflict across the globe. In the class, we explore both how climate change threatens to intensify violent conflict, and how armed conflict feeds back into environmental damage. Further, we discuss solutions to the problem, and make abstract theories concrete by discussing policy approaches to mitigation and adapation as it relates to environmental security.

Controversies in Security Studies

Undergraduate course, Cornell University, Government, 2025

Does nuclear proliferation create stability or the potential for security crisis? Do international institutions constrain aggressive actors? Can international courts hold human rights abusers accountable? This course covers crucial debates in the field of security studies. Each week, we will review both sides of a claim with mixed theoretical and empirical evidence and review the evidence and arguments for either side. Throughout the class, students will learn the substance of these debates, along with processes for evaluating arguments, interpreting data and evidence, and argumentitive writing.

Advanced Regression Analysis

Graduate course, Cornell University, Government, 2025

Regression is perhaps the most ubiquitous tool for quantitative analysis in the social sciences. Why? What can it be used for, how can we interpret results, when do its assumptions fail, and what can analysts do if the core assumptions no longer hold? This course will answer all of these questions by providing building blocks for causal modeling (potential outcomes and structural causal models), the multiple motivations of linear regression (plug-in estimator, geometric, linear algebra, FWL), modifications required for limited dependent variables (logistic regression), how it operates in the presence of covariates (moderation, mediation), examine its various use cases for drawing inferences from data (selection on observables, instrumental variables, panel data and differencing, regression discontinuity) while providing students with practical lessons on statistical programming.