For the best doctoral dissertation completed and accepted in 2004 or 2005 in the field of comparative politics.

Award Committee: Timothy Frye, Ohio State University; Terri E. Givens, University of Texas-Austin; Dali L. Yang, University of Chicago

Recipient: Matthew Adam Kocher, University of Chicago

Dissertation: "Human Ecology and Civil War"

Citation: With great enthusiasm, we award the Gabriel A. Almond Award for the Best Dissertation in Comparative Politics completed in 2004 and 2005 to Matthew Kocher for "Human Ecology and Civil War." Drawing on an impressive empirical base, Kocher argues that the key to understanding civil wars lies in the ability of rebel forces to "build states" that hold territory and monopolize violence. Rebels are much more successful in these "state-building" efforts where the cost to existing states of exercising a monopoly on violence is higher, e.g., in the countryside and in moderately rough terrain. His argument suggests that the oft-cited negative correlation between economic development and civil war is spurious once terrain and population density are taken into account.

Kocher's empirical work is methodologically diverse and sophisticated in anticipating possible objections. He uses field work in Kurdistan to hone his intuition and motivate the argument; a cross-national statistical analysis to assess the scope of his theory; a case study of Northern Ireland to address an obvious counterexample; a quantitative analysis of the civil war in Vietnam to extend the geographic boundaries of his argument and a historical analysis of the Ottoman Empire's attempts to preempt civil wars in Kurdistan in the 19th and 20th centuries to expand the temporal basis for his claims. This type of fearless trespassing across methodological and subfield boundaries is comparative politics at its best. It is our pleasure to recognize Matthew Kocher as the winner of the Gabriel Almond A. Award for 2006.