Adee Weller

Adee Weller

I am a Ph.D. candidate in Political Science at Emory University. I study how armed groups intersect with and shape politics.

Research

Publications

Weller, Adee. 2025. “Defending the Status Quo? How Re-election Shapes Criminal Collusion in Mexico.” British Journal of Political Science 55:e144. Pdf. Appendix.

Abstract How does the introduction of mayoral re-election shape organized crime's efforts to collude with local officials? While re-election can provide voters with a critical mechanism to hold elected officials accountable, I show that the positive benefits of re-election do not extend to high-crime areas. Where organized crime is powerful and deeply entrenched in local illicit economies, re-election can provide groups opportunities to collude more closely with mayors, engaging in more electoral violence to deter challengers and benefiting from access to state protection. Exploiting exogenous variation in the introduction of mayoral re-election in Mexico using a difference-in-differences design and a novel dataset on violence against local politicians, I show that criminal groups disproportionately killed rival candidates in places where incumbents could run for ree-lection, maintaining the status quo and keeping incumbents in power. Further, re-electable mayors were more likely be found to engage in corruption following the introduction of re-election, only in high-crime areas. This letter highlights the unintended consequences of institutional reforms in high-crime areas, emphasizing the need for tailored guardrails by policy-makers to reduce these collateral effects.
  • Keywords: criminal violence; Mexico; re-election; mayoral assassination; corruption

Working Papers

Please email me for the latest drafts.

“Violence Incorporated? State Response to Pro-Government Militias in Northern Ireland”

Under Review. Pdf.

Abstract Why do states deeply collude with some pro-government militias (PGMs), while merely tolerating or repressing others? We develop a theory of selective state-militia collaboration, arguing that states weigh PGMs' coercive utility against risks of future disloyalty. Drawing on 8,430 declassified documents from the British Prime Minister’s security correspondence files (1969–1973), we examine how the British government navigated these trade-offs during the Northern Ireland conflict. We show that states are more likely to form deep alliances with PGMs seen as both militarily useful and reliably loyal. When loyalty is uncertain, even highly capable PGMs receive only tactical or limited support. Acute survival threats, conversely, can override long-term concerns and prompt collaboration with politically misaligned groups. By offering the first internal account of how a state assessed and managed PGMs during an ongoing conflict, this study contributes to research on civil conflict, state repression, and the strategic use of informal violence.
  • Keywords: Loyalist paramilitaries; UDA; UVF; collusion; pro-government militias; qualitative research; Northern Ireland

“The Politics of Punishment in Mandate Palestine: Administrative Capacity, Social Cleavages, and the Repertoires of Colonial Repression”

Under Review.

Abstract Why do colonial regimes deploy different forms of repression against communities within the colonial domain? Existing explanations emphasize the scale of dissent activity and regime capacity, yet these factors alone are insufficient to explain the local variation in colonial repression. We argue community-level political and social dynamics shape both the information available to the regime and its administrative ability to implement specific repressive tactics. First, long-standing intra-village rivalries generate streams of denunciations that provide authorities with actionable intelligence, increasing the likelihood of lethal violence. Second, local intermediaries expand the regime's administrative capacity, enabling the imposition of non-lethal but institutionally demanding forms of repression, such as collective fines, while also facilitating more targeted lethal force in high-resistance areas. We evaluate this argument in the British Mandate of Palestine during the Arab Revolt (1936–1939) using an original village-level dataset integrating British, Zionist, and Palestinian archival sources to measure repression, social conflict, leadership ties, and resistance across more than 300 localities. The findings show that local social structures systematically conditioned colonial repertoires of coercion, offering new insight into the microfoundations of indirect rule, information politics, and the enduring legacies of late-colonial counterinsurgency.
  • Keywords: Colonial rule; repression; British Mandate Palestine; archival records

“Empires of Blood and Ruin: Selective Protection and Control in Colonial Regimes”

Pdf.

Abstract How do colonial regimes use selective repression to manage elite agents and consolidate authority? I argue that colonial authorities prioritize repression of criminal actors in areas governed by loyal elites while withholding protection from those seen as disloyal, using disorder as both a threat and a justification to extract compliance. Drawing on original data from over 10,000 pages of internal correspondence from the English East India Company (1769–1773), I analyze how British officials responded to criminal violence in early colonial Bengal. Combining qualitative analysis with machine-learning-assisted text digitization and statistical modeling, I show that criminal violence increased repression, but only in districts governed by trusted elites. Where elite loyalty was in doubt, the Company withheld security, weaponizing instability to pressure subordinates into collaboration. This study contributes to research on authoritarian governance, colonial state-building, and the political logic of repression, offering rare insight into how regimes exploit coercion, information asymmetries, and elite competition to consolidate power under conditions of limited state capacity.
  • Keywords: Colonial state-building; strategic repression; crime regulation; English East India Company; archival evidence

“Echoes of Intervention: Conflict in the Interim of the Multinational Security Support Mission in Haiti”

Abstract Foreign military interventions in fragile states often echo earlier eras of imperial policing by projecting power into contested spaces under the banner of order. This paper examines how the anticipation of such an intervention, rather than its physical presence, alters the strategic behavior of armed criminal groups and constrains civilian life. Focusing on the U.N. Multinational Security Support (MSS) Mission in Haiti (2023–2024), we exploit a daily panel of commune-level data on gang violence, using data from ACLED, Haitian press reports, and Flowminder mobile-phone mobility records, to trace the impact of five exogenous information shocks on the mission's likelihood and timing. We find that as the intervention appeared more imminent, gangs reduced inter-gang clashes and forged tactical alliances, redirected violence toward the state, and escalated remote attacks on infrastructure. These anticipatory shifts had immediate civilian consequences, as heightening violence reduced both intra- and inter-communal movement, revealing how violence shapes everyday mobility. By integrating high-frequency measures of both violence and movement, this study contributes to research on the consequences of external security governance, showing that the pre-deployment phase of intervention is a politically charged period in which armed actors and civilians adapt in ways that can entrench insecurity before the first foreign boots touch the ground.
  • Keywords: Haiti; Gang Violence; Signaling; ITS; MSS; Kenyan Intervention

“Do Election Observers Increase Trust in Democracies?: Messenger Effects from a National Experiment in the United States”

Abstract How does the provision of public goods by foreign corporations shape electoral engagement? While voters often rely on public goods as indicators of incumbent quality, foreign corporate actors can shape the responsiveness of politicians and the ability of voters to hold them accountable. When corporations, rather than the state, provide public goods, traditional forms of democratic accountability weaken, prompting politicians to prioritize foreign corporate interests and leading citizens to turn to alternative mechanisms, like protest or collective action, to hold both political and corporate actors accountable. We examine the multinational corporate provision of public goods in Northern Mozambique, following the discovery of liquefied natural gas (LNG) in 2006, utilizing a novel collection of concession agreements between the Mozambican government and multinational corporations. We show that, following substantial investments in public infrastructure in areas relevant to LNG extraction, voters were much less likely to vote or campaign, while other non-electoral activities were not affected. This project offers insight into how multinational corporate actors indirectly shape democratic engagement, particularly in developing countries.
  • Keywords: Elections; election observers; trust in institutions; polarization; democracy; survey experiment

“Unelected Providers: How does Foreign Corporate Goods Provision Shape Political Participation?”

  • Written with: Gavin Kiger, Americo Maluana, William Wainwright, and Danielle Jung
Abstract American voters' trust in the integrity and accuracy of national, state, and local elections has declined rapidly in the past decade, despite no clear evidence of fraud, in a trend mirrored across the globe. In other countries, election observers (EOs) play a key role in providing voters with reliable information on fraud and abuse, yet Americans are unaccustomed to them, and it is unclear how EOs shape Americans' perceptions of electoral integrity. We explore how an electoral observer's \textit{identity} affects Americans' trust in elections using a pre-registered, randomized controlled trial on a nationally representative survey of 7,032 U.S. respondents. By varying the group-level identity of EOs, including their international and partisan reputations, we show that non-partisan election observers significantly improve Americans' trust in elections and support for democratic norms, while concerns about partisan EOs are accelerated by pre-existing polarized beliefs and can even undermine trust in electoral institutions. To verify quantitative findings, we use adaptive-LLM questions to draw out participants' thinking. While voters quantitatively report trust in their personal experiences with elections, they voice deep anxiety about the future security of elections and democratic stability, particularly through partisan lenses. Our theory and findings show that the messenger, not just the message, shapes Americans' evaluations of democratic processes, and emphasize non-partisan transparency as a tool to mitigate skepticism toward domestic institutions. This research expands our understanding of how electoral legitimacy is constructed in polarized contexts and how institutional trust can be reinforced.
  • Keywords: Accountability; public goods provision; corporate governance; Mozambique; LNG

Works in Progress

“Empires of Blood and Ruin: How Criminal Violence Shapes State Formation” (Book Project)

“Understanding Gang Reactions to International Humanitarian Intervention in Haiti”

“Informal Empire: How to Coerce Your Allies and Manipulate Your Friends”

“Resource Extraction and the Displacement of Conflict in Northern Mozambique”

  • Written with: Gavin Kiger, Americo Maluana, William Wainwright, and Danielle Jung

“Providence”

Data Collection

“Digitizing Private Correspondence from the East India Company (1769-1773)”

Abstract The English East India Company (EIC) has been called one of the most well-documented corporations in human history. In this qualitative dataset, I gather all recorded correspondence, internal and external, from the Company records kept at the Asia and Africa Reading Room at the British Library. I particularly focus on the Presidency of Bengal, where the EIC first obtained the rigth to extract land taxes and began to govern as an administrative body during this period. Thus, this period covers one of the most influential moments in Company history -- defining how British colonial policy in India would be organized for more than a century. With more than 4,000 pages of handwritten documents, the first goal of this project is to digitize these letters and clearly record their contents.
  • Keywords: Computer Vision; Natural Languange Processing; Predictive LLM; archival records

“Mapping Criminal Governance”

Abstract How do criminal groups govern? While our understanding of governance by criminal organizations has grown, there is little systematic data to map it. This project seeks to address this gap. Using newspaper articles from _The New York Times_ containing the names of more than 50 randomly selected groups from across Latin America, this project implements a supervised machine learning approach to code more than thirty indicators of criminal governance. This indicators include who is governing (what group or groups), how they are governing (enforcing rules, collecting taxes, distributing goods), and who they are governing (civilians, other criminals, or the state). This project seeks to expand our understanding of criminal governance across the globe.
  • Keywords: Criminal Governance; Latin America; Natural Language Processing; supervised machine learning