Escaping the Ethnic Trap Project

The Escaping the Ethnic Trap research project explores the conditions under which inclusive governance and human rights can be fostered in contexts where prior conflict dynamics have created costly identity-politics traps—syndromes where political institution design and identity-based social mobilization undermines social cohesion and threatens sustainable peace. Efforts to end wars and address historical exclusion through ethnic power sharing pacts have been shown to provide initial stability, but in so doing, they can create nefarious social dynamics of exclusive elite networks, constraints on women’s participation, and corruption, engendering social discontent, inflaming grievances, and introducing new forms of fragility. When such conditions exist, expanding inclusion is elusive as exclusive identity-based networks stymy the realization of broader human rights of representation by a wider range of social identities and interests.

This project will address pathways from rigid, identity-defined power sharing toward more dynamic and inclusive forms of inclusive governance that can better realize human rights. A critical contribution will be to address the question: In what ways can identity-based power sharing pacts be transformed to allow for more inclusive governance while at the same time protecting and advancing minority and indigenous Rights?

The project features comparative analysis and case-study research with project author experts on six case study contexts: Bolivia, Colombia, Iraq, Kenya, Lebanon, and South Sudan. The project will yield a scholarly book, a policy research report related to United Nations and broader international peacemaking and development assistance, and a series of blog posts by the project team and case-study authors to disseminate case study analyses and comparative findings.

Meet the Team

  • Principal Investigator

    Timothy D. Sisk, University of Denver

    Timothy D. Sisk is Professor of International and Comparative Politics at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies, University of Denver. His research, teaching and policy-oriented work focuses on armed conflict and political violence together with understanding and evaluation of processes of conflict prevention, management, and peacebuilding in fragile and post-war contexts. He teaches graduate and undergraduate courses on comparative politics, politics of deeply divided societies, elections and conflict dynamics, and sport and international politics.

    Sisk has conducted extensive research on the role of international and regional organizations, particularly the United Nations, in peace operations, peacemaking, and peacebuilding. Prior to joining the University of Denver in 1998, Prof. Sisk was a Program Officer and Research Scholar in the Grant Program of the United States Institute of Peace in Washington D.C. He holds a doctoral degree in political science from The George Washington University and an MA in international journalism and BA in international studies and German from Baylor University.

  • Research Director

    Fletcher D. Cox, William Jewell College

    Fletcher D. Cox is an Associate Professor in the Political Science Department at William Jewell College. During the 2022 – 2023 academic year, he was a Visiting Researcher in the Department of Peace and Conflict Research (DPCR) at Uppsala University where he was working with the new Protecting Elections Initiative at the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA) and on a study of inclusive governance programming with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Crisis Bureau. He specializes in international peace and security, civil wars and political violence, and peacebuilding in divided societies from a comparative perspective. His research on political violence and democratization has been published with Oxford University Press, Palgrave Macmillan, Routledge, Peace & Change, International IDEA, and the German Institute for Development and Sustainability (IDOS), among others. He holds a Ph.D. in International Studies from the University of Denver and an MTS from Harvard University.

  • Project Associate

    Priya Guduru, University of Denver

    Priya Guduru graduated from Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IIT-Madras) in India with an Integrated M.A. in Development Studies. She is an M.A. International Studies Candidate at Josef Korbel School of International Studies, University of Denver. Before joining the Escaping Project, she was a research assistant on the Women’s Activities in Armed Rebellions (WAAR). In her capacity as a student and researcher at the Korbel School, she has extensively worked on issues of armed conflicts, democracy, politics and gender in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. She wrote her dissertation on the armed conflict in Cabo Delgado to analyze the impact of agents and forces of globalization on the insurgency and vice-versa. She has done internships at the Wilson Center and the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (International IDEA) in DC and at the V-Dem Institute at University of Gothenburg, Sweden. Priya aims to pursue a PhD in Political Science with a focus on Comparative Politics to continue her research in Democracy, Political Violence and Peace studies and join academia to pursue her passion for teaching. Priya enjoys reading political fiction, playing Geoguessr and traveling.

Authors

Fanar Haddad

Fanar Haddad is assistant professor at the Department of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies, University of Copenhagen. Prior to joining the University of Copenhagen, he was senior advisor on international affairs to the Prime Minister of Iraq. He previously taught at the University of Exeter, at Queen Mary, University of London and at the National University of Singapore. Prior to obtaining his PhD, Haddad was a research analyst at the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office's Middle East and North Africa Research Group. He has since published widely on issues relating to historic and contemporary Iraq and on identity politics in the Middle East. He is the author of Sectarianism in Iraq: Antagonistic Visions of Unity (Hurst/Columbia University Press, 2011) and Understanding 'Sectarianism': Sunni-Shi'a Relations in the Modern Arab World (Hurst/Oxford University Press, 2020).

Kathleen Klaus

Kathleen Klaus is an associate senior lecturer in the Department of Peace and Conflict Research at Uppsala University and a visiting scholar at UC Berkeley’s Department of Political Science (2024-25). Her research examines the causes and dynamics of political violence and democratic breakdown, as well as the prospects for (re)building resilient and inclusive societies after war and violence and amidst climate change. Her work pays particular attention to the role of land in shaping both violence and political order, especially in East Africa. Kathleen’s recent book, Political Violence in Kenya: Land, Elections, and Claim-making (Cambridge University Press, 2020), examines the relationship between land rights and patterns of electoral violence in Kenya. She is now beginning a three-year research project, funded by the Swedish Research Council, to study local sources of refugee inclusion in Uganda. Kathleen’s previous research has been supported by the United States Institute of Peace, the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, the Social Science Research Council, and the National Science Foundation, among others. She received her PhD and MA in Political Science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and her BA in Government from Smith College.

Mónica L. Espinosa Arango

Mónica L. Espinosa Arango is associate professor of social and cultural anthropology in the Department of Anthropology, specializing in political and ecological anthropology. She is currently researching the relationship between the state, peasant families of Las Mesas (Nariño), and the impacts of the extractive and illicit poppy economy. Her ethnographic research focuses on the productive, social, and cultural transformations of rural women and their projects on food sovereignty, social innovation, and territorial care. She also investigates issues of recognition in current democracies, particularly concerning processes derived from the 1991 Constitution (Colombia) and the territorial, civil, and political rights acquired by indigenous pueblos and, more recently, by peasant communities.

Her interdisciplinary research on socionatures and socio-ecological relationships in the southwestern Andes of Colombia articulates geology, environmental studies, politics, and culture. She is a founding member of the Historical Ecology and Social Memory (EHMS) group and leader of the Antropolítica group. Over the past decade, she has worked on the relationship between anthropology and phenomenology, the posthuman turn, and multispecies ethnographies. She maintains her grounding in practice theory, political theory, embodiment, feminism, and collaborative methodologies, integrating Latin American Participatory Action Research with Community-Based Participatory Research.

Eduardo Wassim Aboultaif

Eduardo Wassim Aboultaif is an assistant professor of politics in the Department of Political and Administrative Sciences at the School of Law and Political Sciences (SLPS). Having joined USEK in 2021 as an assistant professor, he currently serves as a member of the Research Committee in the SLPS. He is an expert in the politics of deeply divided societies, with extensive publications in this field providing thorough cross-disciplinary analysis. His work examines institutional and constitutional provisions of power-sharing dynamics, identity politics in deeply divided societies, civil-military relations, collective memory and trauma. Aboultaif is also interested in Middle East politics, maritime borders in the Eastern Mediterranean, and minorities in the region.

Aboultaif is the sole author of two books, Power Sharing in Lebanon: Consociationalism since 1820 (Routledge, 2019), and Armed Forces in Deeply Divided Societies: Militaries and Power Sharing in Lebanon, Bosnia, Iraq and Burundi (Brill, 2024). He is also a co-editor of the book Power-Sharing in the Global South – Patterns, Practices and Potential (Palgrave Macmillan, December 2023), and has over fifteen publications in peer-reviewed journals.

Madhav Joshi

Madhav Joshi is research professor and associate director of the Peace Accords Matrix (PAM). He oversees the data coding on the implementation of peace agreements worldwide for the PAM project and leads the research initiatives on peace agreement design, implementation, and post-implementation political and economic developments. Joshi earned his Ph.D. in comparative politics and research methodology from the University of North Texas in 2010. His research and teaching focus on civil wars, mediation, post-civil war democratization and democratic survival, peace duration and peacebuilding, quality peace, and the Maoist insurgency in Nepal. He has published on these topics in Social Science Research, the British Journal of Political Science, the Journal of Conflict Resolution, the Journal of Peace Research, International Studies Quarterly, Democratization, Global Governance, and many other journals.

Joshi has authored and co-authored over 70 policy briefings to facilitate ongoing negotiations on issues related to peace accord contents and implementation challenges for the Office of the Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process (Philippines), Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Nepal Transition to Peace, the Office of the High Commissioner for Peace (Colombia), the United Nations Development Programme, and many civil society organizations involved in peace processes around the world.