Nazli Avdan
Biographic Data
| ID | 1012923 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Nazli Avdan |
| GIVEN NAMES | Nazli |
| FAMILY NAME | Avdan |
| SIGNATURE | AVDAN N |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Kansas |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-0984-6120 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 26 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 106 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 26 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2012 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
Magically powerful leaders and the resilience of rebel groups
Rebel leaders are sometimes believed by followers to be prophets or messiahs, or to possess supernatural powers. Despite their prominence in militant organizations, the consequences of such leadership for rebel group dynamics remain understudied. We examine how perceived supernatural authority shapes the longevity of armed movements. We argue that groups led by leaders believed to possess extraordinary powers survive longer because these leaders …
Magical Practices and Indiscriminate Violence in Armed Conflicts
Name, Shame, and Blame: Terrorist Designation and Peace Negotiations
Credit claims and the survival rates of terrorist organizations
Magical Practices and the Recruitment of Women into Rebel Groups
s Magical practices play a central role in the indoctrination and socialization processes of many rebel organizations. Qualitative scholarship has examined the central role that women play as practitioners of magic in some of these organizations. Some women are believed to have the powers to perform various rituals that help protect recipients, as well as enhance their fighting capabilities. Thus, groups that practice magic often incorporate wome…
The magical practices of rebel organizations: Introducing the Magical Acts by Groups in Civil Conflicts dataset
Magical practices, such as wearing protective amulets, engagement in other rituals, and beliefs that rebel leaders wield magical powers, play a prominent role in many civil wars. These practices help shape the behaviors of militant organizations in a variety of ways. However, despite their relevance, there is a dearth of systematically collected, cross-group data on the magical practices of rebel organizations. In response, we have constructed th…
Assessing border walls’ varied impacts on terrorist group diffusion
Do border walls inhibit the spread of transnational terrorism? Previous research has primarily measured the volume of terrorism without explicitly modeling its diffusion or considering how walls might affect different groups differently. To address these oversights, the study adopts a network-based approach, analyzing the impact of border walls on the spread of violence among 63 extremist organizations from 1970 to 2017. The findings show that ba…
A Ticking Time Bomb: Restrictions on Abortion Rights and Physical Integrity Rights Abuses
Do abortion restrictions augur broader crackdowns on human rights? We examine the relationship between restrictions on abortion and future Physical Integrity Rights (PIR) abuses. We argue that abortion restrictions both directly and indirectly influence PIR. Directly, abortion restrictions serve as a testing ground for repressive policies and behaviors. Indirectly, restrictions worsen inequality across segments of society and winnow support for s…
Where there’s a will, there’s a way: Border walls and refugees
Over the last decade, there has been a notable surge in the movement of refugees across international borders, posing significant challenges for the international community. In response, various policy measures have been implemented, including the construction of border walls, with the aim of impeding refugee influx. However, scholars have expressed doubts regarding the effectiveness of these fortifications, suggesting that walls merely redirect …
Silver Lining? The Effects of Epidemics on Terrorist Groups
In this study we examine the effects of epidemics on terrorist groups’ attack capacities. We consider two theoretical relationships between epidemics and terrorist groups. By weakening government counterterrorism defenses and increasing popular grievances, epidemics can provide a strategic environment that is conducive to terrorist groups, enhancing their capacity to commit more attacks, yield higher casualties and launch more logistically comple…
The Blame Game: Public Outcry and Terrorism within and Exported from the Sanctioned State
What effects do economic sanctions have on the volume of domestic terrorism within target states and transnational terrorism directed toward Americans by targeted nationals? In this article, we theorize that sanctions imposed by the United States increase the likelihood of domestic and transnational terrorism, but the suggested effect is conditioned by the freedom of expression in sanctioned states. When media freedom and other information freedo…
Breaking taboos: Why insurgents pursue and use CBRN weapons
Much ado has been made about the specter of unconventional weapons in the hands of militant groups. Despite the alarmism of the policy community, the pursuit of chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear capabilities by non-state actors is rare. What explains why some violent non-state organizations pursue chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear weapons while most do not? Using new data on organizational behaviors and attributes from…
Human Trafficking-Terrorism Nexus: When Violent Non-State Actors Engage in the Modern-Day Slavery
Why do some militant organizations participate in human trafficking? We investigate this question by introducing a new dataset that records insurgent organizations’ involvement in four types of human trafficking: sexual exploitation, forced recruitment, slavery, and kidnapping. Marrying our data to the BAAD2I population of insurgent organizations, we uncover the organizational attributes related to human trafficking. We find that groups with wide…
Women Too: Explaining Gender Ideologies of Ethnopolitical Organizations
What explains the gender ideologies of ethnopolitical organizations? Recently, scholarship has cast attention to the determinants of violent organizations’ female recruitment patterns. Others have examined the effects of gender ideology on organizational tactics. There is a paucity of work on the determinants of gender ideologies. The article redresses this lacuna by exploring how organizational characteristics influence the gender platforms of e…
Abuse by association: Migration from terror-prone countries and human rights abuses
A burgeoning body of work examines the connection between migration and security. Studies link migration to an increased volume of terrorism in destination states. More recent work examines the humanitarian consequences for political migrants and shows that refugees confront repression by state agents in recipient states. We argue that these consequences can generalize to society writ large and may point to a broader erosion of human rights. We b…
Visas and Walls: Border Security in the Age of Terrorism
Not in My Back Yard: Public Perceptions and Terrorism
Why does the public care more about some terrorist attacks than others? In recent years, there has been a wave of terrorist attacks carried out by similar terrorist organizations, but these attacks have produced disparate public responses. Existing research shows that terrorist attacks are more traumatic for people who live near terrorist targets, but this research cannot explain differences in public attitudes about attacks occurring in other co…
The big, the bad, and the dangerous: Public perceptions and terrorism
Does coordination affect threat perceptions? The attacks in Paris and Brussels in 2015 and 2016 received a significant amount of attention in the media. The attacks were transnational, fatal, and perpetrated by the same group in western European countries. We argue that these are not the only features of the attacks that matter. The attacks involved coordination among teams of militants. This coordination signals sophistication. Sophistication am…
Outlawing sexual violence: Rape law and the likelihood of civil war
An expanding body of literature maintains that gender inequality heightens the probability of intrastate conflict by creating a structure of violence. The paper proposes the legal system as the missing link between social norms and conflict occurrence. Gender neutrality of the penal code coheres with norms of equality and, further, embodies egalitarian, progressive values associated with pacific norms of conflict resolution. The criminalization o…
V for Vendetta: Government Mass Killing and Domestic Terrorism
Scholarship explores the impact of human rights abuse and state repression on terrorism. Heretofore, scholarship has ignored the impact of government-sponsored killings on domestic terrorism. This article proposes that mass killings create a focal point for terrorist mobilization. The vendetta agenda fuels violence by animating retributory violence. Additionally, mass atrocities create a permissive environment for violent nonstate activity. A spi…
Do Good Fences Make Good Neighbors? Border Barriers and the Transnational Flow of Terrorist Violence
States traditionally build walls to repel the armies of adversaries and consolidate control over territory. More recently, the growth in violence by nonstate groups has led governments to use fences to prevent insurgent activity and transnational terrorism. This practice, which has accelerated since the end of World War II, challenges liberal expectations of a borderless world. We use a new and unique data set on twentieth century interstate bord…
Democracies at risk? A forecasting analysis of regime type and the risk of terrorist attack
How substantial is democracy as a cause of transnational terrorist attacks? Can our identification of democratic political systems help us to anticipate the flow of transnational terrorism? We seek to address these questions by analyzing data on transnational terrorist incidents from 1968 to 2007. We rely on receiver operating curves as a diagnostic tool to assess forecasting ability of various models of terrorist activity. Our analyses yield fou…
New Appointments
An abstract is not available for this content. As you have access to this content, full HTML content is provided on this page. A PDF of this content is also available in through the ‘Save PDF’ action button
Do asylum recognition rates in Europe respond to transnational terrorism? The migration-security nexus revisited
Scholars assume that transnational terrorism has culminated in policy securitization with expansive restrictions on migration. I evaluate the impact of transnational terrorism on asylum recognition among European Union and Schengen member-states from 1980 until 2007. I unpack the impact of terrorism according to the location of incidents. The article illustrates that policy tightening is more pronounced when recipient states experience terrorism …
Controlling Access to Territory: Economic Interdependence, Transnational Terrorism, and Visa Policies
Previous scholarship has largely failed to address the effect of economic interdependence on issue areas other than interstate conflict. This study seeks to redress this lacuna by focusing on states’ visa policies and examining the impact of trade and capital interdependence in the context of transnational terrorism. The article argues that economic ties affect visa policies through a reconfiguration of preferences and the opportunity costs of ec…
Not in My Back Yard: Public Perceptions and Terrorism
Why does the public care more about some terrorist attacks than others? In recent years, there has been a wave of terrorist attacks carried out by similar terrorist organizations, but these attacks have produced disparate public responses. Existing research shows that terrorist attacks are more traumatic for people who live near terrorist targets, but this research cannot explain differences in public attitudes about attacks occurring in other co…
Do Good Fences Make Good Neighbors? Border Barriers and the Transnational Flow of Terrorist Violence
States traditionally build walls to repel the armies of adversaries and consolidate control over territory. More recently, the growth in violence by nonstate groups has led governments to use fences to prevent insurgent activity and transnational terrorism. This practice, which has accelerated since the end of World War II, challenges liberal expectations of a borderless world. We use a new and unique data set on twentieth century interstate bord…
Do asylum recognition rates in Europe respond to transnational terrorism? The migration-security nexus revisited
Scholars assume that transnational terrorism has culminated in policy securitization with expansive restrictions on migration. I evaluate the impact of transnational terrorism on asylum recognition among European Union and Schengen member-states from 1980 until 2007. I unpack the impact of terrorism according to the location of incidents. The article illustrates that policy tightening is more pronounced when recipient states experience terrorism …
Controlling Access to Territory: Economic Interdependence, Transnational Terrorism, and Visa Policies
Previous scholarship has largely failed to address the effect of economic interdependence on issue areas other than interstate conflict. This study seeks to redress this lacuna by focusing on states’ visa policies and examining the impact of trade and capital interdependence in the context of transnational terrorism. The article argues that economic ties affect visa policies through a reconfiguration of preferences and the opportunity costs of ec…
Human trafficking and migration control policy: Vicious or Virtuous Cycle
This paper examines the relationship between states’ migration control policies and human trafficking in origin, transit and destination states. Using cross-sectional data on states’ visa policies for 192 states and indicators for human trafficking from the Global Patterns report by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, the paper analyses feedback mechanisms between policies and trafficking. The empirical evidence suggests that, contrary …
V for Vendetta: Government Mass Killing and Domestic Terrorism
Scholarship explores the impact of human rights abuse and state repression on terrorism. Heretofore, scholarship has ignored the impact of government-sponsored killings on domestic terrorism. This article proposes that mass killings create a focal point for terrorist mobilization. The vendetta agenda fuels violence by animating retributory violence. Additionally, mass atrocities create a permissive environment for violent nonstate activity. A spi…
Human Trafficking-Terrorism Nexus: When Violent Non-State Actors Engage in the Modern-Day Slavery
Why do some militant organizations participate in human trafficking? We investigate this question by introducing a new dataset that records insurgent organizations’ involvement in four types of human trafficking: sexual exploitation, forced recruitment, slavery, and kidnapping. Marrying our data to the BAAD2I population of insurgent organizations, we uncover the organizational attributes related to human trafficking. We find that groups with wide…
Democracies at risk? A forecasting analysis of regime type and the risk of terrorist attack
How substantial is democracy as a cause of transnational terrorist attacks? Can our identification of democratic political systems help us to anticipate the flow of transnational terrorism? We seek to address these questions by analyzing data on transnational terrorist incidents from 1968 to 2007. We rely on receiver operating curves as a diagnostic tool to assess forecasting ability of various models of terrorist activity. Our analyses yield fou…
Where there’s a will, there’s a way: Border walls and refugees
Over the last decade, there has been a notable surge in the movement of refugees across international borders, posing significant challenges for the international community. In response, various policy measures have been implemented, including the construction of border walls, with the aim of impeding refugee influx. However, scholars have expressed doubts regarding the effectiveness of these fortifications, suggesting that walls merely redirect …
The big, the bad, and the dangerous: Public perceptions and terrorism
Does coordination affect threat perceptions? The attacks in Paris and Brussels in 2015 and 2016 received a significant amount of attention in the media. The attacks were transnational, fatal, and perpetrated by the same group in western European countries. We argue that these are not the only features of the attacks that matter. The attacks involved coordination among teams of militants. This coordination signals sophistication. Sophistication am…
Credit claims and the survival rates of terrorist organizations
The magical practices of rebel organizations: Introducing the Magical Acts by Groups in Civil Conflicts dataset
Magical practices, such as wearing protective amulets, engagement in other rituals, and beliefs that rebel leaders wield magical powers, play a prominent role in many civil wars. These practices help shape the behaviors of militant organizations in a variety of ways. However, despite their relevance, there is a dearth of systematically collected, cross-group data on the magical practices of rebel organizations. In response, we have constructed th…
A Ticking Time Bomb: Restrictions on Abortion Rights and Physical Integrity Rights Abuses
Do abortion restrictions augur broader crackdowns on human rights? We examine the relationship between restrictions on abortion and future Physical Integrity Rights (PIR) abuses. We argue that abortion restrictions both directly and indirectly influence PIR. Directly, abortion restrictions serve as a testing ground for repressive policies and behaviors. Indirectly, restrictions worsen inequality across segments of society and winnow support for s…
Breaking taboos: Why insurgents pursue and use CBRN weapons
Much ado has been made about the specter of unconventional weapons in the hands of militant groups. Despite the alarmism of the policy community, the pursuit of chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear capabilities by non-state actors is rare. What explains why some violent non-state organizations pursue chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear weapons while most do not? Using new data on organizational behaviors and attributes from…
Women Too: Explaining Gender Ideologies of Ethnopolitical Organizations
What explains the gender ideologies of ethnopolitical organizations? Recently, scholarship has cast attention to the determinants of violent organizations’ female recruitment patterns. Others have examined the effects of gender ideology on organizational tactics. There is a paucity of work on the determinants of gender ideologies. The article redresses this lacuna by exploring how organizational characteristics influence the gender platforms of e…
Outlawing sexual violence: Rape law and the likelihood of civil war
An expanding body of literature maintains that gender inequality heightens the probability of intrastate conflict by creating a structure of violence. The paper proposes the legal system as the missing link between social norms and conflict occurrence. Gender neutrality of the penal code coheres with norms of equality and, further, embodies egalitarian, progressive values associated with pacific norms of conflict resolution. The criminalization o…
Human trafficking and migration control policy: Vicious or Virtuous Cycle
This paper examines the relationship between states’ migration control policies and human trafficking in origin, transit and destination states. Using cross-sectional data on states’ visa policies for 192 states and indicators for human trafficking from the Global Patterns report by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, the paper analyses feedback mechanisms between policies and trafficking. The empirical evidence suggests that, contrary …
New Appointments
An abstract is not available for this content. As you have access to this content, full HTML content is provided on this page. A PDF of this content is also available in through the ‘Save PDF’ action button
Do asylum recognition rates in Europe respond to transnational terrorism? The migration-security nexus revisited
Scholars assume that transnational terrorism has culminated in policy securitization with expansive restrictions on migration. I evaluate the impact of transnational terrorism on asylum recognition among European Union and Schengen member-states from 1980 until 2007. I unpack the impact of terrorism according to the location of incidents. The article illustrates that policy tightening is more pronounced when recipient states experience terrorism …
Controlling Access to Territory: Economic Interdependence, Transnational Terrorism, and Visa Policies
Previous scholarship has largely failed to address the effect of economic interdependence on issue areas other than interstate conflict. This study seeks to redress this lacuna by focusing on states’ visa policies and examining the impact of trade and capital interdependence in the context of transnational terrorism. The article argues that economic ties affect visa policies through a reconfiguration of preferences and the opportunity costs of ec…
Democracies at risk? A forecasting analysis of regime type and the risk of terrorist attack
How substantial is democracy as a cause of transnational terrorist attacks? Can our identification of democratic political systems help us to anticipate the flow of transnational terrorism? We seek to address these questions by analyzing data on transnational terrorist incidents from 1968 to 2007. We rely on receiver operating curves as a diagnostic tool to assess forecasting ability of various models of terrorist activity. Our analyses yield fou…
V for Vendetta: Government Mass Killing and Domestic Terrorism
Scholarship explores the impact of human rights abuse and state repression on terrorism. Heretofore, scholarship has ignored the impact of government-sponsored killings on domestic terrorism. This article proposes that mass killings create a focal point for terrorist mobilization. The vendetta agenda fuels violence by animating retributory violence. Additionally, mass atrocities create a permissive environment for violent nonstate activity. A spi…
Do Good Fences Make Good Neighbors? Border Barriers and the Transnational Flow of Terrorist Violence
States traditionally build walls to repel the armies of adversaries and consolidate control over territory. More recently, the growth in violence by nonstate groups has led governments to use fences to prevent insurgent activity and transnational terrorism. This practice, which has accelerated since the end of World War II, challenges liberal expectations of a borderless world. We use a new and unique data set on twentieth century interstate bord…
Outlawing sexual violence: Rape law and the likelihood of civil war
An expanding body of literature maintains that gender inequality heightens the probability of intrastate conflict by creating a structure of violence. The paper proposes the legal system as the missing link between social norms and conflict occurrence. Gender neutrality of the penal code coheres with norms of equality and, further, embodies egalitarian, progressive values associated with pacific norms of conflict resolution. The criminalization o…
The big, the bad, and the dangerous: Public perceptions and terrorism
Does coordination affect threat perceptions? The attacks in Paris and Brussels in 2015 and 2016 received a significant amount of attention in the media. The attacks were transnational, fatal, and perpetrated by the same group in western European countries. We argue that these are not the only features of the attacks that matter. The attacks involved coordination among teams of militants. This coordination signals sophistication. Sophistication am…
Visas and Walls: Border Security in the Age of Terrorism
Not in My Back Yard: Public Perceptions and Terrorism
Why does the public care more about some terrorist attacks than others? In recent years, there has been a wave of terrorist attacks carried out by similar terrorist organizations, but these attacks have produced disparate public responses. Existing research shows that terrorist attacks are more traumatic for people who live near terrorist targets, but this research cannot explain differences in public attitudes about attacks occurring in other co…
Women Too: Explaining Gender Ideologies of Ethnopolitical Organizations
What explains the gender ideologies of ethnopolitical organizations? Recently, scholarship has cast attention to the determinants of violent organizations’ female recruitment patterns. Others have examined the effects of gender ideology on organizational tactics. There is a paucity of work on the determinants of gender ideologies. The article redresses this lacuna by exploring how organizational characteristics influence the gender platforms of e…
Abuse by association: Migration from terror-prone countries and human rights abuses
A burgeoning body of work examines the connection between migration and security. Studies link migration to an increased volume of terrorism in destination states. More recent work examines the humanitarian consequences for political migrants and shows that refugees confront repression by state agents in recipient states. We argue that these consequences can generalize to society writ large and may point to a broader erosion of human rights. We b…
Human Trafficking-Terrorism Nexus: When Violent Non-State Actors Engage in the Modern-Day Slavery
Why do some militant organizations participate in human trafficking? We investigate this question by introducing a new dataset that records insurgent organizations’ involvement in four types of human trafficking: sexual exploitation, forced recruitment, slavery, and kidnapping. Marrying our data to the BAAD2I population of insurgent organizations, we uncover the organizational attributes related to human trafficking. We find that groups with wide…
The Blame Game: Public Outcry and Terrorism within and Exported from the Sanctioned State
What effects do economic sanctions have on the volume of domestic terrorism within target states and transnational terrorism directed toward Americans by targeted nationals? In this article, we theorize that sanctions imposed by the United States increase the likelihood of domestic and transnational terrorism, but the suggested effect is conditioned by the freedom of expression in sanctioned states. When media freedom and other information freedo…
Breaking taboos: Why insurgents pursue and use CBRN weapons
Much ado has been made about the specter of unconventional weapons in the hands of militant groups. Despite the alarmism of the policy community, the pursuit of chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear capabilities by non-state actors is rare. What explains why some violent non-state organizations pursue chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear weapons while most do not? Using new data on organizational behaviors and attributes from…
Where there’s a will, there’s a way: Border walls and refugees
Over the last decade, there has been a notable surge in the movement of refugees across international borders, posing significant challenges for the international community. In response, various policy measures have been implemented, including the construction of border walls, with the aim of impeding refugee influx. However, scholars have expressed doubts regarding the effectiveness of these fortifications, suggesting that walls merely redirect …
Silver Lining? The Effects of Epidemics on Terrorist Groups
In this study we examine the effects of epidemics on terrorist groups’ attack capacities. We consider two theoretical relationships between epidemics and terrorist groups. By weakening government counterterrorism defenses and increasing popular grievances, epidemics can provide a strategic environment that is conducive to terrorist groups, enhancing their capacity to commit more attacks, yield higher casualties and launch more logistically comple…
Assessing border walls’ varied impacts on terrorist group diffusion
Do border walls inhibit the spread of transnational terrorism? Previous research has primarily measured the volume of terrorism without explicitly modeling its diffusion or considering how walls might affect different groups differently. To address these oversights, the study adopts a network-based approach, analyzing the impact of border walls on the spread of violence among 63 extremist organizations from 1970 to 2017. The findings show that ba…
A Ticking Time Bomb: Restrictions on Abortion Rights and Physical Integrity Rights Abuses
Do abortion restrictions augur broader crackdowns on human rights? We examine the relationship between restrictions on abortion and future Physical Integrity Rights (PIR) abuses. We argue that abortion restrictions both directly and indirectly influence PIR. Directly, abortion restrictions serve as a testing ground for repressive policies and behaviors. Indirectly, restrictions worsen inequality across segments of society and winnow support for s…
Magical Practices and Indiscriminate Violence in Armed Conflicts
Name, Shame, and Blame: Terrorist Designation and Peace Negotiations
Credit claims and the survival rates of terrorist organizations
Magical Practices and the Recruitment of Women into Rebel Groups
s Magical practices play a central role in the indoctrination and socialization processes of many rebel organizations. Qualitative scholarship has examined the central role that women play as practitioners of magic in some of these organizations. Some women are believed to have the powers to perform various rituals that help protect recipients, as well as enhance their fighting capabilities. Thus, groups that practice magic often incorporate wome…
The magical practices of rebel organizations: Introducing the Magical Acts by Groups in Civil Conflicts dataset
Magical practices, such as wearing protective amulets, engagement in other rituals, and beliefs that rebel leaders wield magical powers, play a prominent role in many civil wars. These practices help shape the behaviors of militant organizations in a variety of ways. However, despite their relevance, there is a dearth of systematically collected, cross-group data on the magical practices of rebel organizations. In response, we have constructed th…
Political science (21 works) · Law (18 works) · Law (17 works) · Terrorism (15 works) · Terrorism, Counterterrorism, and Political Violence (15 works) · Sociology (13 works) · Criminology (12 works) · Political Conflict and Governance (9 works) · Politics (9 works) · Economics (8 works)