Research
Peer Reviewed Articles
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Estimating conflict losses and reporting biases
Determining the number of casualties and fatalities suffered in militarized conflicts is important for conflict measurement, forecasting, and accountability. However, given the nature of conflict, reliable statistics on casualties are rare. Countries or political actors involved in conflicts have incentives to hide or manipulate these numbers, while third parties might not have access to reliable information. For example, in the ongoing militarized conflict between Russia and Ukraine, estimates of the magnitude of losses vary wildly, sometimes across orders of magnitude. In this paper, we offer an approach for measuring casualties and fatalities given multiple reporting sources and, at the same time, accounting for the biases of those sources. We construct a dataset of 4,609 reports of military and civilian losses by both sides. We then develop a statistical model to better estimate losses for both sides given these reports. Our model accounts for different kinds of reporting biases, structural correlations between loss types, and integrates loss reports at different temporal scales. Our daily and cumulative estimates provide evidence that Russia has lost more personnel than has Ukraine and also likely suffers from a higher fatality to casualty ratio. We find that both sides likely overestimate the personnel losses suffered by their opponent and that Russian sources underestimate their own losses of personnel.
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Rise and Rebirth of Non-State Actors in Swat: A Phenomenological Study of Shariah as a Popular Demand
Swat — a valley in the north west of Pakistan — has always been famous for its natural beauty and hospitality until it was tagged with the notion of popular demand for imposition of Shariah and allegedly resultant rise of non-state actors in the region in last two decades. Subsequent tallyhos by global war on terror aficionados and thunders of military operation by Pak Army left an important question unheeded : whether Shariah was the actual popular demand and reason for the support and rise of non-state actors like Sufi-Muhammad and Mullah Fazlullah? If yes, then what explains a periodical rise of non-state actors in 1999 and 2006 while PATA Regulation (Nifaz-e-Nizam-e-Shariah) had already been promulgated in 1994? It suggests that either Shariah was not the actual demand or the actual demand — whatever it was — was being misapprehended, or intentionally mislabeled, as Shariah. This study attempts to analyze ‘lived experiences’ of the people and the ‘essence’ these experiences have for them in order to answer the questions like what was the actual demand, if not Shariah; has it been fulfilled or not; and what are the actual causes, if not Shariah, for the rise and support of non-state actors in Swat? Therefore, Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) of semi-structured interviews conducted in Swat has been used in this paper.
Working Papers
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Ideal Points of Large Language Models
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Language, Gender, and Politics
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Leveraging Large Language Models for Qualitative Research
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Measuring the Ideology of Major Laws
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Are Bureaucrats Targets of Conspiracy Theories? Results from a Count Experiment on Conspiracy Theory Beliefs
Invited Talks
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Do Large Language Models (LLMs) Favour Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Policies?
Conference Presentations
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Automatic Prompt Optimization for Policy Documents Classification
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Language, Gender, and Politics in Campaigning
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What if our Senators Actually Were Robots? Ideal Point Estimates of Large Language Models in the United States Congress.
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Leveraging Large Language Models for Qualitative Research
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Are Bureaucrats Targets of Conspiracy Theories?
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Are Bureaucrats Targets of Conspiracy Theories? (Or is Anthony Fauci just special?) Results from a List Experiment on Conspiracy Theory Beliefs
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Are Bureaucrats Targets of Conspiracy Theories? (Or is Anthony Fauci just special?) Results from a List Experiment on Conspiracy Theory Predisposition
- China-Pakistan Economic Corridor : A Baloch Perspective
- Transition from Wali's to State’s Judicial System : The Resultant Gap and Positioning of the Chessboard Pieces
Public Writing
- Estimating troop losses on both sides in the Russia-Ukraine war