Research

 I am Associate Professor (as of July 2020) in the Department of International Studies at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana. I am a political scientist by training, and I work in the areas of comparative politics, political economy of development, and conflict studies, with a focus on sub-national outcomes.  The topics I research include:

• politics of natural resources
• violent conflict
• non-state goods provision
• ungoverned spaces  

I am interested in the ways state behavior varies across space, within sovereign borders.  Specifically, my research focuses on the following overlapping questions: How do states broadcast power over space? How does political, economic, and environmental geography shape sub-national political and economic outcomes? When do non-state entities assume the functions of extraction, distribution, and security that are commonly the purview of the sovereign state, and what are the incentives of the state in allowing these actors to do so?  For many groups, the relevant institution is not the government, but a firm, a charity, or a rebel group. The interaction among this third actor, the population, and the government yields puzzling outcomes, ranging from legitimate authority of non-state actors, to tacit agreements between supposed enemies, such as local governments and rebel groups. To what extent do these political actors rely on other, non-state actors to perform the functions that sustain legitimacy? I explore these questions by looking at regions of natural resource extraction, violent conflict, and non-state goods provision. 

In my book, “Mines, Communities, and States: The Local Politics of Natural Resource Extraction in Africa” (Cambridge University Press, 2019), I explore why in some regions of natural resource extraction, firms provide goods and services such as schools, roads, to local communities and the environmental consequences of extraction are mitigated. However, in other regions, communities mobilize against resource extraction, leading to government regulatory or repressive intervention. I focus on these outcomes in Africa, where natural resource extraction is a particularly important source of revenue for states with otherwise limited capacity. I argue that local populations are important actors in extractive regions because they have the potential to impose political costs on the state, and economic costs on the state and the extractive firm. Governments, in turn, must assess the economic benefits of extraction and the value of political support in the region and make a calculation about how to manage trade-offs that might arise between these alternatives. This book won the International Studies Association's 2020 Harold Sprout Award for the Best Book in Environmental Politics. 

My next book length project explores the use of common pool resources (forestry in particular) in conflict and post conflict contexts to explore the effect of common pool resource management participation on local stability. 

Other areas of interest include:

• technologies of repression
• conflict events reporting
• private investment in unstable regions

Methodologies: 
mixed methods, formal theory, quantitative analysis and GIS, structured case comparison (qualitative)

Regional interests: 

• Africa 
• India

I have conducted field work in Democratic Republic of Congo, Congo-Brazzaville, Mozambique, Senegal, and Zambia.  I have also spent time in India, South Africa, Haiti, Thailand, and the Balkans.

Representative Publications:

• Mines, Communities, and States: The Local Politics of Natural Resource Extraction in Africa. Cambridge University Press, 2019.
• Steinberg, J. (2018). ‘Strong’ states and strategic governance: A model of territorial variation in state presence. Journal of Theoretical Politics, 30(2), 224–245. 
• Steinberg, J. (2018) Protecting the capital? On African geographies of protest escalation and repression. Political Geography, Volume 62, 12-22
• Steinberg, J. (2016). Strategic Sovereignty: A Model of Non-state Goods Provision and Resistance in Regions of Natural Resource Extraction. Journal of Conflict Resolution, 60(8), 1503–1528. 

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For more more information, please find my CV here.