David S. Siroky, PhD

He studies conflict, cooperation and collective action in politics and economics. Most of this work has focused on three areas: (1) nationalism, particularly its separatist and irredentist strains; (2) the dynamics of insurgencies; and (3) military interventions. He is also engaged in research on methodology, and has mainly worked on (1) AI and machine learning, (2) microscale models of complex systems, and (3) causal inference with experimental techniques for sensitive topics.

These efforts appear in more than forty peer-reviewed articles, printed in some of the leading journals, and two co-authored books. Defection Denied: A Study of Civilian Support for Insurgency in Irregular War (Elements in Experimental Political Science, Cambridge University Press, 2022) analyses the sources of civilian support for militant groups and limitations of defection during wartime utilizing unobtrusive survey experiments. Clients, Rivals and Rogues: Why Great Powers Intervene in Revolutionary Civil Wars (Cambridge University Press, 2025) investigates why and where great powers have (and have not) intervened in regime conflicts around the world, from the Second World War to the present, using innovative data and modeling to test a new theory of major power intervention.

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He is currently working on two new book projects. Predicting Secession conceptualizes secession as a dynamic multi-actor process, and uses political economy theories along with machine learning methods to forecast escalatory dynamics in self-determination movements. Honor and Violence argues that asymmetric wars are governed not solely by weapons, resources, doctrines or formal institutions, but by invisible institutions. Honor-based informal norms structure behavior, organize loyalty, and produce strategic effects in wartime. Though unwritten and informally enforced, they operate as powerful social institutions that define what is permissible and obligatory in conflict. These invisible institutions, enforced by stigma, obligation, and retaliatory threat, form the intangible infrastructure of war in zones of limited statehood.

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He has received major grants as PI and co-PI from the U.S. National Science Foundation, U.S. Department of State, and National Council for Eurasian and East European Research, along with research fellowships from the Fulbright Foundation, Zentrum fuer Interkulturelle Studien in Germany and Fondation Maison des Sciences de l'Homme in France, and research awards such as the Stanley Hoffman and Deil Wright Awards from the American Political Science Association. 

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