David S. Siroky, PhD

He studies international security. Most of this work has focused on three areas: (1) nationalism, particularly its separatist and irredentist strains; (2) the dynamics of insurgency and civil wars; and (3) military intervention. He is also engaged in research on methodology, and has worked on (1) AI and machine learning, (2) complex systems, and (3) causal inference with experimental techniques for sensitive topics. His current research integrates political science frameworks with foundation-model AI to produce real-time, theory-grounded conflict forecasts for policy decision-makers.

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 and regional expertise. His latest book, Clients, Rivals and Rogues: Why Great Powers Intervene in Revolutionary Civil Wars (Cambridge University Press, 2026), 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 and derive practical lessons for the emerging order.

​

He is currently working on two new book projects. 

Predicting Secession conceptualizes secession as a dynamic multi-actor, multi-stage process, and uses political economy theories along with computational methods to forecast escalatory dynamics in self-determination movements and provide real-time actionable information for decision-making. Honor and Violence argues that asymmetric wars often occur in areas characterized by invisible institutions that structure behavior, organize loyalty, and produce strategic effects in wartime. Though unwritten and informally enforced, honor codes 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, and carry crucial consequences for counterinsurgencies and governments.

​

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 recognitions such as the Stanley Hoffman Prize and Deil Wright Award from the American Political Science Association. 

​