Graeme Blair: Research on Violence Reduction and Credible Social Science
Graeme Blair is an associate professor of political science at UCLA. His work focuses on reducing violence and enhancing the credibility, ethics, and utility of social science. He employs experiments, field research, and statistical methods in his studies, primarily working in Nigeria, often in collaboration with government, civil society, and international organizations. Blair is also a faculty affiliate in statistics and the California Center for Population Research. He is the Co-Director of the Deportation Data Project.
Academic Affiliations and Publications
Graeme Blair's research is published in journals including Science, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, Journal of Politics, Journal of the American Statistical Association, and Political Analysis. His statistical software, including DeclareDesign, has been widely used, with over a million downloads.
Focus Areas of Research
State Violence
Blair studies state violence and methods for enhancing the credibility, ethics, and utility of social science research.
Resource Rent Distribution
Blair has researched resource rent distribution bargains in oil-rich countries, particularly in West Africa, and their consequences for conflict.
Citizen Support for Armed Groups
He also investigates the determinants of citizen support for armed groups in various contexts, including Nigeria and Afghanistan, and develops methods for asking sensitive survey questions.
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Community Policing
His work includes research on community policing, exploring its effectiveness in building citizen trust in the police and reducing crime.
Key Publications and Research Findings
Research Design in the Social Sciences
Blair’s book, Research Design in the Social Sciences: Declaration, Diagnosis, and Redesign, published in 2023 by Princeton University Press, received the best book award from the American Political Science Association Experiments Section. This book introduces the MIDA framework (Model, Inquiry, Data Strategy, and Answer Strategy) for describing empirical research designs in the social sciences. It enables researchers to characterize observational and experimental designs, qualitative and quantitative designs, and descriptive and causal designs.
Crime, Insecurity, and Community Policing
Blair’s second book, Crime, Insecurity, and Community Policing, was published in 2024 by Cambridge University Press in the Studies in Comparative Politics series. This book presents the results of field experiments conducted in diverse political contexts to assess the efficacy of community policing. The research investigates whether community policing increases trust in the police or reduces crime and under what conditions this strategy is effective.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement Data
Blair, along with David Hausman and Phil Neff, created a dataset based on records obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, tracking United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) individual enforcement actions from September 2023 through July 2025. The dataset includes five tables, linked by anonymized individual identifiers, tracking ICE encounters, detainer requests, arrests, detentions, and removals.
Oil and Armed Conflict
In a paper accepted by the Journal of Politics, Blair explores the relationship between oil and armed conflict in Africa. The research shows that armed groups rarely attack sites with the most oil, such as oil terminals and wells, but instead target pipelines. The study integrates crisis bargaining and Blotto games to explain this finding, suggesting that armed groups attack to steal oil and signal strength, strategically randomizing their attacks on pipelines due to government defenses.
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Accessing Justice for Survivors of Violence Against Women
Blair's research in Science (2022) examines the effectiveness of reforms aimed at increasing women's access to justice for crimes of violence against them. The study, conducted in Madhya Pradesh, India, focused on the introduction of "women's help desks" in police stations. While the reforms led to more incidents being reported and some changes in police attitudes, they did not significantly increase crime reporting by women or arrest rates. The paper highlights the mixed results of gender-based reforms, ranging from integration to separation.
Armed Conflict and Investment
A study published in the Journal of Politics (2022) investigates how armed conflict shapes investment decisions, particularly in the mining sector. The research finds that conflict has divergent effects depending on firms’ exposure to violence. Firms operating at conflict sites reduce investments, while those in surrounding territories increase investment. Firms far from violence experience a small negative effect.
Community Policing in the Global South
In Science (2021), Blair and colleagues found that community policing does not build citizen trust in the police or reduce crime in the Global South. The study involved six field experiments with Global South police agencies, assessing locally-designed models of community policing. The interventions led to mixed implementation, failed to improve citizen-police relations, and did not reduce crime.
Trusted Authorities and Conflict Resolution
Blair's research in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2021) explores how messages from trusted authorities can change minds and shift norms during conflict. A study in Maiduguri, Nigeria, found that a message from a religious leader emphasizing forgiveness and calling for the reintegration of former Boko Haram members significantly increased support for reintegration and shifted perceptions of social norms.
Commodity Price Shocks and Armed Conflict
In the American Political Science Review (2021), Blair and co-authors conducted a meta-analysis of 46 natural experiments to estimate the causal effect of international commodity price changes on armed conflict. The study found that commodity price changes, on average, do not change conflict risks. However, price increases in labor-intensive agricultural commodities reduce conflict, while increases in the price of oil provoke conflict.
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Motivating Community-Minded Behaviors
A study in Science Advances (2019) tested campaigns in Nigeria to encourage people to report corruption by text message. The campaigns, designed based on psychological theories, led to a significant number of people reporting corruption.
Support for Combatants During Wartime
In the American Political Science Review (2013), Blair and colleagues investigated civilian attitudes toward combatants in Afghanistan. The study found that harm inflicted by the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) reduced support for ISAF and increased support for the Taliban, but Taliban-inflicted harm did not translate into greater ISAF support.
Poverty and Support for Militant Politics
Research published in the American Journal of Political Science (2013) examined the relationship between poverty and support for militant politics in Pakistan. Contrary to expectations, the study found that poor Pakistanis dislike militants more than middle-class citizens, particularly in urban areas affected by violence.
Ethical Considerations in Social Science
Blair has also contributed to discussions on ethical considerations in social science research. In Science (2023), he co-authored an article emphasizing the need for evidence in ethical social science, highlighting the importance of assessing the benefits and costs of research and addressing potential biases in such assessments. He also co-authored an article in PS: Political Science & Politics (2022), developing a set of questions for RCT research in the Global South, suggesting ways to involve scholars and research staff from the study site at every research stage.
Methodological Contributions
Blair has made significant contributions to experimental methodology, including the development of new experimental methods for sensitive survey questions. His work on list experiments and endorsement experiments has been published in journals such as the American Journal of Political Science and Political Analysis.
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