Research

As an international relations scholar, my main substantive interests lie in disaster politics. I am primarily interested in understanding how countries and supranational organizations work together to manage disaster risk and response with a special eye on cooperation in this field.

As a methodologist, I am primarily interested in network and survival analysis models. I believe the interconnectedness of the international system requires a methodology that embraces and uses that to its advantage. Additionally, I work with survey experiments and text analysis of open-ended survey responses.

Dissertation

Catastrophic Politics: The International Community’s Role in Preventing and Responding to Man-Made Disasters

Since 2000, over 16,000 disasters have occurred around the world. Of these disasters, approximately one in every three disasters is of man-made origin. However, studies of man-made disasters make up a very small part of the disaster politics literature with studies mostly using case studies. I start by creating a dataset of technological disasters that will allow me and future researchers in this area to merge the technical data of disasters with relevant political, social, and economic variables to research studies.

Using this dataset, I introduce a variety of analytical tools to answer the question of when, how, and why does the international community intervene when a technological disaster strikes a country. First, I use data on governance structures, development, and corruption levels to estimate the effect of a country’s institutions on disaster occurrence. Fundamentally, man-made disaster occurrence is a failure of regulations and regulatory enforcement and this study looks at the environments surrounding these. Next, I use and experimental survey to examine support for foreign disaster aid in potential donor countries. I vary the strategic relationship between the responding and the disaster affected country - ally or adversary - and the party most responsible for the disasters - the affected country’s government or a corporation. Lastly, I use a multiplex network model and community detection algorithms that estimates the effect of relationships between countries on the quality and expediency of a response to a man-made disaster in another country.

This research contributes to the larger body of work on disaster politics; helping to expand the study of these man-made disasters that affect and are affected by the countries they occur in. In the larger sense, as climate change continues to change our environment and new technologies stream onto the market, it is important to keep in mind the effect of these things on the people and the environment. Moreover, this research may also highlight the importance of international relationships as predictors of disaster responses and differential recoveries between states.

Dissertation Committee Chair: Gabriella Montinola, Professor - University of California, Davis

Dissertation Committee Members: Brandon Kinne, Professor - University of California, Davis and Christopher Hare, Associate Professor - University of California, Davis

Chapter Summaries:
Built for Disaster? Examining Structural Factors Within Countries that Can Increase the Likelihood of or Exacerbate a Disaster Occurrence - Abstract

Abstract: Many existing studies of technological disasters have examined them as individual events. However, according to the EM-DAT dataset that tracks and logs disaster occurrences, almost 6000 technological disasters have occurred around the world since the year 2000. Unlike their natural counterparts, these types of disasters are markedly different as political phenomenon. While political choices can make natural disasters worse, their cause is ultimately a function of natural processes. Technological disasters, on the other hand, may have root causes that stem from political or public policy factors. This study will look at governance systems, institutional factors, and other country-level characteristics’ effects on the occurrence, severity, and impact of technological disasters in a country. This project aims to be one of the first that looks at structural and institutional factors - such as level of development, government structure, etc. - within countries that might contribute to the occurrence of technological disasters.

Humanitarianism or Strategic Benefits? Donor Publics’ Support for Foreign Disaster Aid and Blame Attribution for Technological Disasters - Abstract

Abstract: Previous studies of domestic support for foreign aid have explored the various reasons that individuals support or do not support foreign aid. In this study, I examine disaster-related foreign aid specifically to determine whether the nature of disaster situations will affect individuals support for foreign disaster aid. Using a randomized survey experiment, I explore the impact of the relationship between an affected country and a donor country - whether these countries are allies or adversaries - and what type of disaster the affected country is facing - natural or technological. In a pilot study using a sample of UCDavis undergraduate political science students, I find broad support for the assertion that disasters in allies generate more support for disaster aid while the type of disaster appears to be an insignificant determinant of opinions on foreign disaster aid. Subsequent studies are planned to determine how blame attribution for disasters may also play a role in this process and to use samples from beyond the university. This study broadens our understanding of how individuals determine who deserves foreign aid relief when disasters strike. It also starts to compare the two broad categories of disasters in a systematic way to explore how natural and man-made disasters might be different as political phenomenon.

Phone a Friend: Evaluating the Responses of Other Countries to a Disaster-Affected Country - Abstract

Abstract: How do states respond when others are facing technological disasters? While the crisis collaboration has tried to answer this question in relation to other types of political crises, I seek to expand these ideas into the realm of technological disasters. This paper focuses on examining the effect of international relationships between countries in three key ways using network analysis and spatial modeling methods. First, I look at how the relationships between responding countries and affected countries influences whether – and what kind of – a response occurs in an affected country. Second, I examine how the relationships between responding countries and multinational corporations responsible for disasters abroad affects their response. Lastly, I look at diffusion effects of one country’s response on other responding countries.

Stay tuned…Details and initial visualizations for the disaster dataset are forthcoming!

Peer-Reviewed Publications

Kinne, Brandon, Juan Tellez, Anya Stewart, Iliyan Iliev, Brandon Derr, Shreya Murthy, and Patrick Bernhard. 2026. “Interstate Competition and Transnational Threats: How Networks of Nonstate Actors Increase Conflict between States” International Organization. - Abstract

Abstract: Scholars and policymakers alike now view competition between states as the primary threat to international security. Yet, the nontraditional threats that previously defined the global security landscape, such as terrorism and civil war, continue to flourish. Recent interstate conflicts have featured nonstate armed groups as central actors, and governments rely on these groups to extend their interests. This paper examines how government support for foreign nonstate actors affects interstate competition. We conceptualize state-nonstate ties as transnational networks comprised of cooperative relationships between governments and foreign terrorist organizations, rebel groups, militias, and civilian groups. We argue that these transnational networks exacerbate interstate tensions in two ways. First, they increase a state's capacity relative to adversaries, which emboldens the government, increases its bargaining leverage, and leads to increased aggression toward other states. Second, they increase a government's liability for the actions of sponsored groups, which leads to unintended confrontations and retaliatory actions by affected targets. To measure interstate competition, we use high-resolution event data on verbal and material conflict between governments. We incorporate these data into network models that allow transnational ties and interstate conflict to co-evolve, such that states form ties to nonstate actors in response to interstate conflict, and those ties in turn influence conflict probability. We find that both the size and structure of governments' respective transnational networks are associated with an increase in verbal and material conflict. Further, this association is particularly strong for states that lack conventional military strength. These findings suggest that cooperation between governments and nonstate actors is integrally connected to interstate competition.

Working Papers

Built for Disaster? Examining Structural Factors Within Countries that Can Increase the Likelihood of or Exacerbate a Disaster Occurrence

Humanitarianism or Strategic Benefits? Donor Publics’ Support for Foreign Disaster Aid and Blame Attribution for Technological Disasters

Grants and Conferences

Grants

  • 2026 Political Science Research Award, $1,500 - May 2026
  • UCDavis Political Science Robert Jackman Research Award, $500 - May 2026
  • 2025 Political Science Living Expense Fellowship, $3,000 - May 2026
  • University of California, Davis Dean’s Summer Graduate Support Award, $6,000 - May 2025
  • 2025 Political Science Summer Methods Travel Support Award, $1,795 - May 2025
  • Alan Templeton Dissertation Improvement Award, $2,000 - May 2025
  • 2025 Political Science Living Expense Fellowship, $3,000 - May 2025
  • 2024 Political Science Living Expense Fellowship, $5,000 - May 2024
  • Faculty-Student Summer Research Collaborative Grant, $5,000 - May 2023
    • With Gabriella Montinola

Conferences

  • American Political Science Association: 2026 - Upcoming
  • International Studies Association: 2026
  • Midwestern Political Science Association: 2024, 2025