The Effects of Post-Conflict Injustice Gaps on Local Leaders’ Legitimacy

Evidence from Quasi-Experimental Data in lraq
March 24, 2025
12:00–1:30pm ET

Speaker:

Kristen Kao, Associate Professor of Political Science, University of Gothenburg.

Bio:

Kristen Kao is a Docent (Associate Professor) with the Department of Political Science at the University of Gothenburg. She holds a Ph.D. and M.A. in political science from the University of California, Los Angeles. Kristen has published work on post-conflict reconciliation, non-state authorities, ethnic politics, and forced migration in the American Political Science Review, the American Journal of Political Science, Comparative Political Studies, Comparative Politics, the American Journal of Comparative Law, World Development, and the Oxford Handbook of Politics in Muslim Societies, among others. Her edited volume Decentralization, Local Governance, and Inequality in the Middle East and North Africa with Ellen Lust was recently published with the University of Michigan Press. Kristen is an expert in in-depth interviewing, large-n survey methods, and experimental design. She has been conducting fieldwork-based studies since 2006 across countries as varied as Jordan, Syria, Kuwait, Lebanon, Tunisia, Oman, Iraq, Turkey, Malawi, Kenya, Zambia, and Egypt. She has served as an advisor to the Carter Center, the National Democratic Institute, and the World Bank, and is a country expert for the Freedom House and the Varieties of Democracy Institute. Kristen is a former Fulbright Scholar in Egypt and a Boren Fellow in Jordan and Kuwait. You can read more about Kristen’s research at www.kristenkao.com.

Cosponsored by the Global Scholars Network on Identity and Conflict.