Erica De Bruin

I am an Associate Professor of Government at Hamilton College, and the author of How to Prevent Coups d’état: Counterbalancing and Regime Survival (Cornell University Press). I am currently serving as Chair of the Government Department at Hamilton.

My research focuses on comparative and American civil-military relations, policing, civil war, and democratic backsliding. It has been centrally concerned with understanding agents of state coercion, including militaries, police, militias, and paramilitaries, and the relationships they have with both political leaders and civilians.

My work has been published in the American Political Science Review, Armed Forces & Society, Journal of Conflict Resolution, Journal of Peace Research, and PS: Political Science & Politics, among other places. It has been supported by grants from the U.S. National Science Foundation, Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, Spencer Foundation, and Stanton Foundation. I am also committed to public scholarship. My writing and expert commentary have been featured in media outlets including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Chronicle of Higher Education, The New Yorker, Forbes, MSNBC, Newsweek, PolitiFact, Slate, and Vox.

At Hamilton College, I direct the Policing Lab at the Arthur Levitt Public Affairs Center, and teach courses in international security. I am currently working on projects on public support for elements of democratic backsliding and domestic military use in the United States, as well as a project on the causes and consequences of police militarization around the globe.

I received a PhD from the Department of Political Science at Yale University, and a BA from Columbia University. I have previously been a Research Associate in U.S. Foreign Policy and International Law at the Council on Foreign Relations; Non-Resident Fellow at the Modern War Institute at the United States Military Academy at West Point; and Visiting Scholar at the Institute for Security and Conflict Studies at The George Washington University's Elliott School of International Affairs.

In case you are interested, here is a podcast discussion of How to Prevent Coups.