Michael Weintraub left PRIO in 2021. The information on this page is kept for historical reasons.
Research Interests
My research agenda focuses on crime and political violence in Latin America, particularly in Colombia, Central America, and Mexico. I am also interested in historical legacies of violence and how they affect contemporary outcomes. To study these and other topics I use a combination of primarily experimental and quasi-experimental methods. While I wrote my dissertation on Colombia, and live in Bogotá, I also study Mexico and the three countries in the so-called "Northern Triangle" of Central America: El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. Prior to graduate school, I worked for three years on human rights and development, primarily in East and Southern Africa.
Background
I am an Associate Professor at the Escuela de Gobierno Alberto Lleras Camargo at Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá, Colombia, Director of the Security and Violence Area of the Center for the Study of Security and Drugs (CESED at the same university, and Senior Researcher at Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO).
PRIO Departments
Historical
PRIO Projects
Ongoing:
Finished:
Events
PRIO started tracking events online in 2007. This listing is not complete. Past events may be mentioned in our news archive.
Publications
2021. “Legacies of Resistance: Mobilization Against Organized Crime in Mexico,” with Javier Osorio and Livia I. Schubiger. Comparative Political Studies.
2020. “Urban Concentration and Civil War,” with Dani Nedal and Megan Stewart. Journal of Conflict Resolution 64(6): 1146-1171.
2018. “Trust in the Executive: Requiring Consensus and Turn-Taking in the Experimental Lab,” with T.
Clark Durant, Daniel Houser, and Shuwen Li. Journal of Peace Research 55(5): 609-624.
2018. “Disappearing Dissent? Repression and State Consolidation in Mexico,” with Javier Osorio and
Livia Schubiger. Journal of Peace Research 55(2): 252–266. Part of special issue on archival re-
search edited by Laia Balcells and Chris Sullivan.
2017. “Doctrine and Violence: the Impact of Combatant Training on Civilian Killings,” with Ben Oppenheim. Terrorism and Political Violence 29(6): 1126-1148.
2016. “Do All Good Things Go Together? Development Assistance and Violence in Civil War.” Journal
of Politics 78(4): 989-1002.
2015. “True Believers, Deserters, and Traitors: Who Leaves Insurgent Groups and Why,” with Ben Oppenheim, Abbey Steele and Juan F. Vargas. Journal of Conflict Resolution 59(5): 794-823. Part of
special issue on militias, edited by Corinna Jentzsch, Livia Schubiger, and Stathis N. Kalyvas.
2015. “Vote Choice and Legacies of Violence: Evidence from the 2014 Colombian Presidential Elections,”
with Juan F. Vargas and Thomas Flores. Research & Politics 2(2).
2015. “Bargaining Between Rebel Groups and the Outside Option of Violence,” with Håvard Mokleiv
Nygård. Terrorism and Political Violence 27(3): 557-580.
2014. “How to Make Democracy Self-Enforcing after Civil War,” with T. Clark Durant. Conflict Management and Peace Science 31(5): 521-540.
2014. “An Institutional Remedy for Ethnic Patronage Politics,” with T. Clark Durant. Journal of Theoretical Politics 26(1): 59-78.
2012. “Altruism, Righteousness and Myopia,” with T. Clark Durant. Critical Review 23(3): 257-302.
All Publications
Peer-reviewed Journal Article