Erica De Bruin

I am an Associate Professor of Government at Hamilton College, where my research focuses on civil-military relations, civil war, and policing.

My book, How to Prevent Coups d’état: Counterbalancing and Regime Survival, was published by Cornell University Press in 2020. My research has been published or is forthcoming in the Journal of Peace Research, Journal of Conflict Resolution, Small Wars & Insurgencies, and the Journal of the Middle East and Africa, as well as Foreign Affairs, The Washington Post, and Political Violence at a Glance. It has also been mentioned in The New Yorker, New York Times, Washington Post, Vox, Slate, and MSNBC, among other places.

I am currently working on a National Science Foundation-funded project on the determinants of civilian support for criminal and political armed groups in Colombia, as well as a project on the causes and consequences of militarized policing supported by the American Political Science Association's Centennial Center.

I received a PhD from the Department of Political Science at Yale University in 2014, and a BA from Columbia University in 2004. I worked previously as a Research Associate in U.S. Foreign Policy and International Law at the Council on Foreign Relations and as a Research Associate in the Fellows Program at the New America Foundation in Washington, D.C. During the 2020-2021 academic year, I served as a Non-Resident Fellow at the Modern War Institute at the United States Military Academy at West Point.

At Hamilton, I am the Director of the Justice and Security Program at the Arthur Levitt Public Affairs Center, and organize the Women in Political Science lecture series. I teach courses on international security, civil-military relations, civil wars, and U.S. foreign policy.