Comparative Politics
Political Culture
Language
Religion
National Identities
Ethnic Conflict

• Elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1995)
• The Mary Parker Follett Prize for the best article on politics and history from the Politics and History Section of the American Political Science Association, for "Language and the Construction of States", at the Annual Meeting, New York, 1995.
• The Gregory M. Luebbert Memorial Award in Comparative Politics, awarded by the Comparative Politics Section of the American Political Science Association, for "The Tower of Babel as a Coordination Game", at the Annual Meeting, New York, 1995.
• Invited as a long-term Resident to the Rockefeller Center at Bellagio (Italy), September, 1996
• Invited to spend sabbatical year at Center for International Affairs, Harvard University, May, 1996.
• The Gregory M. Luebbert Memorial Award in Comparative Politics, awarded by the Comparative Politics Section of the American Political Science Association, for "Explaining Interethnic Cooperation" [co-authored with James Fearon] at the Annual Meeting, Washington, D.C., 1997.
• The Heinz Eulau Award, for the best article in the American Political Science Review in 1996, awarded by the American Political Science Association, for "Explaining Interethnic Cooperation" [co-authored with James Fearon] at the Annual Meeting, Washington, D.C., 1997.
• The Mattei Dogan Award from the Society for Comparative Research; the Gregory M. Luebbert Memorial Award from the Comparative Politics Section of the American Political Science Association; the David Easton Award from the Foundations of Political Theory Section of the American Political Science Association; and the Wayne Vucinich Book Prize from the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies -- all for Identity in Formation: The Russian-Speaking Populations of the Near Abroad.
• Invited as a Fellow to the Center for the Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (1999-2000)
• Fellow at the Russell Sage Foundation (2003-2004)
• 1979-80 National Endowment for the Humanities, Fellowship to engage in a year of field research pursuing the theme of "Religion and Political Culture Among the Yoruba"
• 1984-85 German Marshall Fund Fellowship and Howard Foundation Fellowship, to engage in a year of field research in Spain, pursuing the theme of "Language in the Modern State"
• 1987 Short Term Fellowship from the American Institute of Indian Studies, to engage in a summer of field research in India
• 1988 Social Science Research Council grant to organize conference on "Institutionalization of the State" as part of the "States and Social Structures" Project (with Ian Lustick)
• 1990 Spencer Foundation grant to conduct field research in Ghana for a project "National Language and Education in Ghana"
• 1992-94 National Science Foundation, two year grant to engage in field research in Estonia and to support related research activities in the former Soviet Union, entitled "Nationality and Politics: The Dismemberment of the Soviet Union" (in collaboration with Jerry Hough)
• 1995-98 MacArthur Foundation, three year grant of $750,000 to direct research and graduate education in the field of peace and international cooperation.
• 1995-96 John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, Fellow.
• 1997 Fellow at the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Study Center
• 1997-99 Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, two year grant of $70,000 to examine ethnic and nationality relations in Moldova and Azerbaijan
• 1999 National Science Foundation Grant, in collaboration with James D, Fearon, on "’Minorities at Risk’ Data Base and Explaining Ethnic Violence"
• 2000-01 Carnegie Corporation Grant, in collaboration with James D. Fearon, on "Ethnicization of Civil Wars as a Problem for an International Gendarmerie" ($203,000)
• 2001-2004 National Science Foundation Grant, in collaboration with James D. Fearon, to support semi-annual meetings of the Laboratory in Comparative Ethnic Processes (LiCEP)

• American Political Science Association
• Institute of African Studies, University of Nairobi, Research Associate (1973-74)
• Institute of African Studies, University of Ibadan, Research Associate (1977-80)
• University of Ife, Visiting Senior Lecturer in Political Science (1979-80)
• Founding Member, Somali Studies International Association (1978)
• Visiting Fellow, ESADE, Barcelona, Spain (1983-84)
• Social Science Research Council, Member Joint Committee on African Studies (1988-90)
• Visiting Lecturer, Autonomous University of Barcelona, Department of Political Science (December, 1989)
• Social Science Research Council, Member of Planning Group for a Research Project on "Marginal Populations" (1990--)
• Cornell University Press, Editor of "Wilder House Series in Politics, History and Culture" (contracted for 1989-96)
• American Political Science Association, Section Chair for the 1991 Annual Meeting, for "Politics in Developing Areas"
• American Political Science Association, Chair of Committee to choose winner of the "Eulau" award for best article in APSR
• American Political Science Association, President of Comparative Politics Subsection (1993-95)
• American Political Science Association, Executive Committee of Political Economy Subsection (1992-94)
• American Political Science Association, Committee to choose winner of "Ralph Bunche" award for the best book in the field of cultural or ethnic pluralism (1995-96)
• American Political Science Association, Elected for a Three Year Term to serve on the Executive Council of the Association (1996-99).
• American Political Science Association, Appointed to serve on the Administrative Committee of the Executive Council of the Association (1998-99)
• National Science Foundation, Appointed to serve on the Political Science Panel (1998-2000)
• American Political Science Association, Task Force on Terrorism (2004--)
• American Political Science Association, Vice-President (2005-2006)

Undergraduate Courses
Political Science 45N: Civil War Naratives

Graduate Courses
Political Science 440A: Theories in Comparative Politics
Political Science 440C: Methods in Comparative Politics Required of Political Science
Political Science 344U: Political Culture

Books

Identity in Formation: the Russian-speaking Populations in the Near Abroad (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998)

Language Repertoires and State Construction in Africa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992).

Hegemony and Culture: The Politics of Religious Change Among the Yoruba (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986).

Somalia: Nation in Search of a State (Boulder, Colorado: Westview, 1987) (co-authored with Said Samatar).

Politics, Language and Thought: The Somali Experience (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977)

Papers

“The De-Cosmopolitanization of the Russian Diaspora: A View from Brooklyn in the ‘Far Abroad’” in Acta Universitatis Latviensis (Riga, Latvia), 680: 13-33 (2005); revised and to be reprinted in Diaspora (University of Toronto Press, 2006).

“Culture Shift in a Postcommunist State”, in Zoltan Barany and Robert G. Moser Ethnic Politics After Communism (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2005)

“Hard Targets: Theory and Evidence on Suicide Attacks”, NBER Working Paper 11740 (November 2005) (With Eli Berman).

“Civil War Narratives” Centro de Estudios Avanzados en Ciencias Sociales, Working Paper 2005/218 (June 2005) (With James Fearon).

“Ethnic Unmixing and Civil War” (Summer 2004)  Security Studies 13 (4): 350-65

“’Misunderestimating’ Terrorism: The State Department’s Big Mistake” (with Alan Krueger) Foreign Affairs (September/October 2004)

“Las contribuciones de la ciencia política” (in a symposium with Giovanni Sartori and Josep M. Colomer) Política y gobierno (Mexico) XI, 2 (2004); reprinted and translated as “Whither Political Science? Reflections on Professor Sartori’s claim that ‘American-type political science…is going nowhere. It is an every growing giant with feet of clay” in PS (October 2004)

“A Theory of Endogenous Institutional Change” (with Avner Greif), American Political Science Review (November 2004)

“The Political Science Discipline” in Edward Mansfield and Richard Sisson, eds. The Evolution of Political Knowledge (Columbus: The Ohio State University Press, 2004)

“Somalia” in William J. Lahneman Intervention: Lessons of the 1990s for the 21st Century (Rowman and Littlefield, 2004)

“Language Policy and Civil War” in Philippe Van Parijs, ed. Cultural Diversity versus Economic Solidarity, Brussels: Deboeck Université, Francqui Scientific Library (September 2004)

“Peacekeeping, Nation-building, and the Problem of Weak States” (with James Fearon) International Security (Spring 2004)

“The Perestroikan Challenge to Social Science” Politics & Society 31, 1 (2003): 163-84

“A Liberal Democratic Approach to Language Justice” (with Rob Reich) in Will Kymlicka and Alan Patten, eds., Language
Rights and Political Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2003)

“Three Models of Integration and the Estonian/Russian Reality” Journal of Baltic Studies 34, 2, (2003): 197-223

“Ethnicity, Insurgency, and Civil War” (with James Fearon) American Political Science Review 97, 1 (February 2003): 75- 90

“La Modelisation formelle et la science politique americaine: les debats actuels” Sociologie et Societés, 34, 1 (Spring 2002): 67-78 [and “Réponse aux commentaires pour le numéro sur le choix rationnel” pp. 155-63]

“Comparative Politics: The State of the Subdiscipline” in Ira Katznelson and Helen V. Milner, eds. Political Science: The State of the Discipline (New York: Norton, 2002).

“Culture and National Identity: ‘The East’ and European Integration” West European Politics 25, 2 (April 2002): 56-80 [Reprinted in Peter Mair and Jan Zielonka, eds. The Enlarged European Union: Diversity
and Adaptation. (London: Frank Cass, 2002)]

“Language Conflict and Violence” Archives Européennes de Sociologie 41/1 (2001) [Reprinted in Daniel Druckman and Paul Stern, eds. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War (Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, Fall 2000)]

“Comment on Lowell Barrington” (2001) Post-Soviet Affairs 17: 2, pp. 159-63.

“Secessionist Rebellion in the Former Soviet Union” Comparative Political Studies 34, 8 (2001): 839-861

“The Theoretical Contribution of Ethnic Conflict and Civic Life” in Robert Hardgrave, Jr. “Ethnic Conflict and Civic Life: Hindus and Muslims in India” A Review Symposium, on the publication of a book by Ashutosh Varshney, Commonwealth and Comparative Politics 39.1 (March 2001) pp. 97-110

Commentary on Francisco J. Gil-White “Are Ethnic Groups Biological ‘Species’ to the Human Brain?” Current Anthropology 42: 4 (August-October 2001) pp. 542-3

"Political Science and Nationalism" in Alexander Motyl, ed. Encyclopedia of Nationalism (San Diego: Academic Press, 2000).

"Violence and the Social Construction of Ethnic Identities" (with James Fearon) in International Organization (October, 2000)

"Post-Soviet Politics" in Annual Review of Political Science, vol. 3 (2000)"What is a Language Community?" American Journal of Political Science 44(1), 2000, pp.142-55

"Language Conflict and Violence", in Paul C. Stern and Daniel Druckman, eds., International Conflict Resolution After the
Cold War (National Academy of Sciences Press, Washington, D.C., 2000); reprinted in European Journal of Sociology
(2000)

"What is a Language Community?" American Journal of Political Science 44(1), 2000, pp.142-55

"Thinking a Way out of Karabakh" (with Ronald Grigor Suny) in Middle East Policy 7, 1 (1999):145-76.

"Identity Choice Under Conditions of Uncertainty" in Competition and Cooperation : Conversations With Nobelists About Economics and Political Science, eds. James E. Alt, Margaret Levi, and Elinor Ostrom (New York: Russsell Sage, 1999)

"The Cultural Elements of Ethnically Mixed States" in State/Culture: State-Formation after the Cultural Turn, George Steinmetz, ed. (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999)

"Somalia -- Civil War and International Intervention" in Barbara F. Walter and Jack Snyder, eds. Civil War, Insecurity, and Intervention (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999)

"Toward a Political Science Discipline: Authority Patterns Revisited" Comparative Political Studies 31, 4 (August, 1998), 423-443

"Liberal Theory and the Nation" Political Theory 26, 2 (April, 1998), pp. 221-36.

"The Cultural Identities of a European State" Politics and Society 25, 3 (1997). pp. 277-302.

"Explaining Interethnic Cooperation" American Political Science Review (co-authored with James D. Fearon) 90, 4, (December, 1996), pp. 715-35.

"Nationalism and Language: A Post-Soviet Perspective" , in John A. Hall, ed. Ernest Gellner and the Theory of Nationalism (Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 135-57.

"Introduction" (pp. 2-3), "Language and Nationalism in the Post-Soviet Republics" (pp. 4-24), and "National Revival and Competitive Assimilation in Estonia" (pp. 25-39), in Post-Soviet Affairs vol. 12, January-March, 1996.

"Transitions to Democracy and Territorial Integrity" chap. 1 in Adam Przeworski et al (1995) Sustainable Democracy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 19-33.

"Identity in Formation: The Russian-Speaking Nationality in the Post-Soviet Diaspora" Archives Européennes de Sociologie, 36, 2 (1995) [Printed earlier, in a slightly different version, in Studies in Public Policy, no. 249, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow], 281-316.

"Language Planning in the Former Soviet Union: The Case of Estonia", International Journal of the Sociology of Language Hans Dua, ed. (July, 1995), pp. 43-62.

"The Qualitative-Quantitative Disputation", a symposium with James Caporaso, David Collier, Ronald Rogowski, Sidney Tarrow, Gary King, Robert Keohane, and Sidney Verba, in American Political Science Review 89, 2 (June, 1995), pp. 454-56.

"Russian Nationalism in Post-Soviet Estonia" , in Justo G. Beramendi et. al Nationalism in Europe: Past and Present (Santiago de Compostela: Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, 1994), vol. 2, pp. 521-44.

"Political Culture at 30" American Political Science Review 89, 1 (March, 1995), pp. 168-73.

"National Revivals and Violence" European Journal of Sociology (Spring 1995) [Translated into Spanish and published in Sistema 132/33, June, 1996] pp. 3-43.

"The Tower of Babel as a Coordination Game: Political Linguistics in Ghana American Political Science Review (September, 1994), pp. 622-34.

"Marginality: A Micro Perspective" Rationality and Society (1995), 7, 1 (January), pp. 31-57