About Me
I am a Professor (beginning September 1, 2024) in the Department of Political Science and Faculty Associate in the Center for Political Studies at the University of Michigan. I am also an Affiliated Scholar at the Security and Political Economy (SPEC) Lab at the University of Southern California. From 2013 to 2016, I was an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at Penn State University. In June 2013, I graduated with a Ph.D. in political science from the University of California, San Diego. I also studied at the University of North Texas, where I graduated with an M.S. in political science (2007), a B.F.A in drawing and painting (2005), and a B.A. in political science (2005).
My core research focuses on the politics and measurement of human rights, discrimination, violence, and repression. I use computational methods to understand why governments around the world torture, maim, and kill individuals within their jurisdiction and the processes monitors use to observe and document these abuses. Other projects cover a broad array of themes but share a focus on computationally intensive methods and research design. These methodological tools, essential for analyzing data at massive scale, open up new insights into the micro-foundations of state repression and the politics of measurement.
Below you will find links to my publications, working papers, teaching material, several Dataverse archives where you can access replication data and project datasets, and links to human rights data generated from several measurement projects. Preprints for some published and unpublished articles are availabe at arxiv, OSF, or SSRN. Some blog posts are available at Good Authority (formerly The Monkey Cage), Political Violence at a Glance, and Open Global Rights. For more information about my research, teaching, and mentoring, please see my CV and research statement, and teaching and mentoring statement.
Dataverse Archives
- Dataverse Reproduction and Replication Files
- Human Rights Scores Dataverse
- Latent Estimates of Historic Gross Domestic Product, GDP per capita, Surplus Domestic Product, Population, and Military Expenditure Dataverse
- Sub-National Anaysis of Repression Project (SNARP) Dataverse
Peer-Reviewed Journal Articles
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Measuring Arms: Introducing the Global Military Spending Dataset
Miriam Barnum, Christopher J. Fariss, Jonathan Markowitz, and Gaea Patrice Morales
Journal of Conflict Resolution (Forthcoming) -
Disaster Experience Mitigates the Partisan Divide on Climate Change: Evidence from Texas
Ted Hsuan Yun Chen, Christopher J. Fariss, Hwayong Shin, and Xu Xu
Global Environmental Change 89(102918):1-9 (December 2024) -
The Global Resonance of Human Rights: What Google Trends Can Tell Us
Geoff Dancy and Christopher J. Fariss
American Political Science Review 118(1):252-273 (February 2024)- DOI:10.1017/S0003055423000199
- Reproduction and Replication Files on github
- Dataverse Reproduction and Replication Files
- Supplementary Appendix
- Supplementary Appendix (extended version)
- OSF version
- University of Michigan Press Release
- University of Toronto Press Release
- Human Rights at 75: The End of Endism by César Rodríguez-Garavito
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When Do Private Actors Engage in Censorship? Evidence From a Correspondence Experiment with Russian Private Media Firms
Quintin H. Beazer, Charles Crabtree, Christopher J. Fariss, and Holger Kern,
British Journal of Political Science 52(4):1790-1809 (October 2022) -
Recording repression: Identifying physical integrity rights allegations in annual country human rights reports
Rebecca Cordell, K. Chad Clay, Christopher J. Fariss, Reed M. Wood, and Thorin Wright
International Studies Quarterly 66(2):sqac016 (June 2022) -
New Estimates of Over 500 Years of Historic GDP and Population Data
Christopher J. Fariss, Therese Anders, Jonathan N. Markowitz, and Miriam Barnum
Journal of Conflict Resolution 66(3):553-591 (April 2022) -
Misgovernance and Human Rights: Experimental Evidence of Illegal Detention without Intent
Tara Slough and Christopher J. Fariss
American Journal of Political Science 65(1):148-165 (January 2021) -
Innovations in Concepts and Measurement for the Study of Peace and Conflict
Christopher J. Fariss and James Lo
Journal of Peace Research 57(6):669-678 (November 2020) -
Estimating one-sided-killings from a Robust Measurement Model of Human Rights
Christopher J. Fariss, Michael R. Kenwick, and Kevin Reuning
Journal of Peace Research 57(6):801-814 (November 2020)- DOI:10.1177/0022343320965670
- Human Rights Scores (version 4) (download the data)
- Dataverse Reproduction and Replication Files (reproduce the data)
- Supplementary Appendix
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Productive Pacifists: The Rise of Production-Oriented States and Decline of Profit-Motivated Conquest
Jonathan N. Markowitz, Suzie Mulesky, Benjamin A.T. Graham, and Christopher J. Fariss International Studies Quarterly 64(3):558-572 (September 2020)
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Bread before guns or butter: Introducing Surplus Domestic Product (SDP)
Therese Anders, Christopher J. Fariss, and Jonathan N. Markowitz
International Studies Quarterly 64(2):392-405 (June 2020) -
Changing standards or political whim? Evaluating changes in the content of the US state department human rights reports
Rebecca Cordell, K. Chad Clay, Christopher J. Fariss, Reed M. Wood, and Thorin Wright
Journal of Human Rights 19(1):3-18 (January 2020) -
Patterns of Disagreement in State Repression Measures
Kevin L. Cope, Charles Crabtree, and Christopher J. Fariss
Political Science Research and Methods 8(1):178-187 (January 2020) -
Exploring the Dynamics of Latent Variable Models
Kevin Reuning, Michael R. Kenwick, and Christopher J. Fariss
Political Analysis 27(4):503-517 (October 2019) -
Examining the Influence of International Norms and Sanctioning on State Respect for Prisoners Rights: A Field Experiment with Foreign Embassies
Zhanna Terechshenko, Charles Crabtree, Kristine Eck, and Christopher J. Fariss
International Interactions 45(4):720-735 (September 2019) -
Yes, Human Rights Practices Are Improving Over Time
Christopher J. Fariss
American Political Science Review 113(3):868-881 (August 2019)- DOI:10.1017/S000305541900025X
- Human Rights Scores (version 3) (download the data)
- Dataverse Reproduction and Replication Files (reproduce the data)
- Supplementary Appendix
- Line by line reponse to Cingranelli and Filippov (v2)
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Producing Goods and Projecting Power: How What You Make Influences What You Take
Jonathan N. Markowitz, Christopher J. Fariss, and Blake McMahon
Journal of Conflict Resolution 63(6):1368-1402 (July 2019) -
The Heavens are Always Fallen: A Neo-Constitutive Approach to Human Rights in Global Society
Geoff Dancy and Christopher J. Fariss
Law & Contemporary Problems (December 2018) -
It's All About Race: How State Legislators Respond to Immigrant Constituents
Micah Gell-Redman, Neil Visalvanich, Charles Crabtree, and Christopher J. Fariss
Political Research Quarterly 71(3): 517-531 (September 2018) -
Ill Treatment and Torture in Sweden: A Critique of Cross-Case Comparisons
Kristine Eck, and Christopher J. Fariss
Human Rights Quarterly 40(3):591-604 (August 2018) -
Enhancing Validity in Observational Settings When Replication Is Not Possible
Christopher J. Fariss and Zachary M. Jones
Political Science Research and Methods 6(2):365-380 (April 2018) -
Are Things Really Getting Better?: How To Validate Latent Variable Models of Human Rights
Christopher J. Fariss
British Journal of Political Science 48(1):275-282 (January 2018) -
The Changing Standard of Accountability and the Positive Relationship between Human Rights Treaty Ratification and Compliance
Christopher J. Fariss
British Journal of Political Science 48(1):239-272 (January 2018) -
Power, Proximity, and Democracy: Geopolitical Competition in the International System
Jonathan N. Markowitz and Christopher J. Fariss
Journal of Peace Research 55(1):78-93 (January 2018) -
Measuring the Impact of Human Rights: Conceptual and Methodological Debates
Christopher J. Fariss, and Geoff Dancy
Annual Review of Law and Social Science 13:273-294 (November 2017) -
Social network clustering of sexual violence experienced by adolescent girls
Holly B. Shakya, Christopher J. Fariss, Christopher Ojeda, Anita Raj, and Elizabeth Reed
American Journal of Epidemiology 186(7):796-804 (October 2017) -
The Bar Fight Theory of International Conflict: Regime Type, Coalition Size, and Victory
Benjamin A.T. Graham, Erik Gartzke, and Christopher J. Fariss
Political Science Research and Methods 5(4):613-639 (October 2017) -
Social Endorsement Cues and Political Participation in an Experiment Involving 61 Million Facebook Users
Robert M. Bond, Jaime E. Settle, Christopher J. Fariss, Jason J. Jones, and James H. Fowler
Political Communication 34(2):261-281 (May 2017) -
Rescuing Human Rights Law from International Legalism and Its Critics
Geoff Dancy and Christopher J. Fariss
Human Rights Quarterly 39(1):1-36 (February 2017) -
The Paradox of Weak Ties in 55 Countries
Laura K. Gee, Jason J. Jones, Christopher J. Fariss, Moira Burke, and James H. Fowler
Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization 133:362-372 (January 2017) -
A Method to Account for and Estimate Underreporting in Crash Frequency Research
Jonathan S. Wood, Eric T. Donnell, and Christopher J. Fariss
Accident Analysis and Prevention 95(Part A):57-66 (October 2016) -
From Posting to Voting: The Effects of Political Competition on Online Political Engagement
Jaime E. Settle, Robert M. Bond, Lorenzo Coviello, Christopher J. Fariss, James H. Fowler, and Jason J. Jones
Political Science Research and Methods 4(2):361-378 (March 2016) -
Recouping after Coup-Proofing: Compromised Military Effectiveness and Strategic Substitution
Cameron S. Brown, Christopher J. Fariss, R. Blake McMahon
International Interactions 42(1):1-30 (January 2016) -
Human Rights Texts: Converting Human Rights Primary Source Documents into Data
Christopher J. Fariss, Fridolin J. Linder, Zachary M. Jones, Charles Crabtree, Megan A. Biek, Ana-Sophia M. Ross, Taranamol Kaur, and Michael Tsai
PLOS ONE 10(9):e0138935 (September 2015) -
Uncovering Patterns Among Latent Variables: Human Rights and De Facto Judicial Independence
Charles Crabtree and Christopher J. Fariss
Research & Politics 2(3):1-9 (September 2015) -
International Trusteeship: External Authority in Areas of Limited Statehood
David A. Lake and Christopher J. Fariss
Governance 27(4):569-587 (October 2014) -
Respect for Human Rights has Improved Over Time: Modeling the Changing Standard of Accountability
Christopher J. Fariss
American Political Science Review 108(2):297-318 (May 2014)- DOI:10.1017/S0003055414000070
- Human Rights Scores (version 2) (download the data)
- Dataverse Reproduction and Replication Files (reproduce the data)
- Supplementary Appendix
- Slides
- Penn State Press Release
- Podcast: "Are we better at human rights than we used to be?" The Rights Track: Sound evidence on human rights, hosted by Todd Landman. Season 1, Episode 1, (December 15, 2015)
- News and Blog Coverage: Foreign Policy's Democracy Lab, Dart-Throwing Chimp, Analog (the anti-blog), The Washington Post: The Monkey Cage Blog, Political Violence at a Glance
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Dynamic Patterns of Human Rights Practices
Keith E. Schnakenberg and Christopher J. Fariss
Political Science Research and Methods 2(1):1-31 (April 2014)- DOI:10.1017/psrm.2013.15
- Human Rights Scores (version 1) (download the data)
- Dataverse Reproduction and Replication Files (reproduce the data)
- Poster
- Slides
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Measuring Mutual Dependence Between State Repressive Actions
Christopher J. Fariss and Keith E. Schnakenberg
Journal of Conflict Resolution 58(6):1003-1032 (September 2014)
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Going the Distance: The Price of Projecting Power
Jonathan N. Markowitz and Christopher J. Fariss
International Interactions 39(2):119-143 (April 2013) -
Yahtzee: An Anonymized Group Level Matching Procedure
Jason J. Jones, Robert M. Bond, Christopher J. Fariss, Jaime E. Settle, Adam D. I. Kramer, Cameron Marlow, and James H. Fowler
PLOS ONE 8(2):e55760 (February 2013) -
Inferring Tie Strength from Online Directed Behavior
Jason J. Jones, Jaime E. Settle, Robert M. Bond, Christopher J. Fariss, Cameron Marlow, and James H. Fowler
PLOS ONE 8(1):e52168 (January 2013)- DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0052168
- News and Blog Coverage: The Atlantic
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A 61-Million-Person Experiment in Social Influence and Political Mobilization
Robert M. Bond, Christopher J. Fariss, Jason J. Jones, Adam D. I. Kramer, Cameron Marlow, Jaime E. Settle, and James H. Fowler
Nature 489:295-298 (13 September 2012)- DOI:10.1038/nature11421
- Supplementary Information
- Commentary by Sinan Aral
- UCSD press release
- San Diego Supercomputer Center article
- News and Blog Coverage: Top Ten Social Media Papers of 2012, New York Times, Washington Post, Time, BBC, Los Angeles Times, NPR All Things Considered, Ars Technica, The Monkey Cage Blog
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Emergency and Escape: Explaining Why States Derogate from Human Rights Treaties
Emilie Hafner-Burton, Laurence R. Helfer, and Christopher J. Fariss
International Organization 65(4): 673-707 (October 2011) -
The Strategic Substitution of United States Foreign Aid
Christopher J. Fariss
Foreign Policy Analysis 6(2):107-131 (April 2010) -
The Path to Asylum in the US and the Determinants for Who Gets In and Why
Andy J. Rottman, Christopher J. Fariss, and Steven C. Poe
International Migration Review 43(1):3-34 (Spring 2009) -
International Criminal Defense: The Influence of Attorney Background on Judicial Decision Making at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda
James D. Meernik and Christopher J. Fariss
Judicature 89(6):326-333 (May-June 2006)
Peer-Reviewed Conference Proceedings
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Social Activity Hubs (SAHs): A New Method for Estimating User Specific Contextual Factors From Social Media Data
Ted Hsuan Yun Chen, Paul McLachlan, and Christopher J. Fariss
CSSSA's Annual Conference on Computational Social Science (Santa Fe, NM 19-22 October 2017)
Editor-Reviewed Articles and Book Chapters
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Measurement Models
Christopher J. Fariss, Michael R. Kenwick, and Kevin Reuning
In SAGE Handbook of Research Methods is Political Science and International Relations, edited by Luigi Curini and Robert J. Franzese, Jr., SAGE Press (May 2020). -
Network Experiments through Academic-Industry Collaboration
Robert M. Bond, Christopher J. Fariss, Jason J. Jones, and Jaime E. Settle
In Spreading Dynamics in Social Systems, edited by Yong Yeol Ahn and Sune Lehmann, Springer (2018) -
Stylized Facts and Experimentation
Charles Crabtree and Christopher J. Fariss
Sociological Science 3:910-914 (October 2016) -
The Presidential Election in Belarus, October 2015
Charles Crabtree, Christopher J. Fariss, and Paul J. Schuler
Electoral Studies 42:304–307 (June 2016)
Editor-Reviewed Editorials and Other Publications
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Human rights are still in demand
Geoff Dancy and Christopher J. Fariss
Open Global Rights (3 July 2023) -
Violence Against FARC ex-Combatants Threatens Peace in Colombia
Angela D. Nichols and Christopher J. Fariss
Political Violence at a Glance (3 December 2020) -
Swedish Report Shows No Connection Between Immigration and Rape
Kristine Eck and Christopher J. Fariss
Political Violence at a Glance (24 June 2019) -
How Does the Trump Administration Think about Human Rights? Evidence from the State Department Country Reports
Rebecca Cordell, K. Chad Clay, Christopher J. Fariss, Reed M. Wood, and Thorin Wright
Political Violence at a Glance (1 June 2018) -
Do lawmakers respond to immigrants' requests? The answer depends on ethnicity and race
Micah Gell-Redman, Neil Visalvanich, Charles Crabtree, and Christopher J. Fariss
The Washington Post: The Monkey Cage Blog (16 January 2018) -
Duterte has put part of the Philippines under martial law. Here’s how dangerous that can be
Jessica Trisko Darden and Christopher J. Fariss
The Washington Post: The Monkey Cage Blog (14 June 2017) -
What Crime Data from Sweden Can – and Cannot – Tell Us
Christopher J. Fariss and Kristine Eck
Political Violence at a Glance (19 April 2017) -
In Belarus, Europe’s "last dictator" is actually allowing protest. Here’s why.
Charles Crabtree, Christopher J. Fariss, and Paul J. Schuler
The Washington Post: The Monkey Cage Blog (24 March 2017) -
Crime in Sweden: What the Data Tell Us
Christopher J. Fariss and Kristine Eck
Center for Political Studies (CPS) Blog (17 March 2017) -
No, Sweden isn’t hiding an immigrant crime problem. This is the real story
Kristine Eck and Christopher J. Fariss
The Washington Post: The Monkey Cage Blog (24 February 2017) -
How War is Like a Barfight
Benjamin A.T. Graham, Christopher J. Fariss, and Erik Gartzke
The Washington Post: The Monkey Cage Blog (15 December 2015) -
Morsi's Potential Counterweight
Cameron S. Brown, R. Blake McMahon, and Christopher J. Fariss
INSS Insight No.367, (4 September 4 2012) -
New Takes on Human Rights Measurement
Christopher J. Fariss and Keith E. Schnakenberg
Wrongs & Rights: The Newsletter for the APSA Human Rights Section (May 2012)
Policy Publications
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Luces y sombras de la implementación del Acuerdo de Paz en Colombia: Actitudes y percepciones en los territorios PDET [Lights and shadows of the implementation of the Peace Agreement in Colombia: Attitudes and perceptions in the PDET territories]
Håvard Mokleiv Nygård, Abbey Steele, Helga Malmin Binningsbø, Michael Weintraub, Christopher J. Fariss, and Pablo Ruiz Hiebra, and Pablo Ruiz Hiebra and Håvard Mokleiv Nygård, eds.
PRIO-UNDP joint report (December 2020) -
Impact Evaluation of USAID Haiti PROJUSTICE Program Pretrial Detention Component
Tara Slough and Christopher J. Fariss
USAID. Prepared under Contract No.: GS-10F-0033M/AID-OAA-M-13-00013 (April 2017)
Selected Unpublished Manuscripts
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An Active Learning Seminar and Sequential Research Project Experience
Christopher J. Fariss -
Comparing State Repressive Actions: Classifying the Content of Physical Integrity Rights Abuse Allegations using Machine Learning Methods
Rebecca Cordell, K. Chad Clay, Christopher J. Fariss, Reed M. Wood, and Thorin Wright -
Replicating, Validating, and Extending the Measurement of Government Purges
Nick Dietrich, Christopher J. Fariss, and Alpha L. Parrott -
The Effect of Disaster-induced Displacement on Social Behaviour: The Case of Hurricane Harvey
Ted Hsuan Yun Chen, Christopher J. Fariss, and Xu Xu -
Who Protests? Using Social Media Data to Estimate How Social Context Affects Political Behavior
Ted Hsuan Yun Chen, Paul McLachlan, and Christopher J. Fariss -
Measuring Geopolitical Competition
Jonathan Markowitz, Miriam Barnum, and Christopher J. Fariss
Teaching
- PS 373/498: Data Science for International Studies, Department of Political Science, University of Michigan (Winter 2020, Winter 2021, Winter 2022, Winter 2023, Fall 2023)
- PS 447/498: The Politics of Human Rights, Department of Political Science, University of Michigan (Winter 2017, Winter 2018, Winter 2019, Winter 2020, Winter 2021, Fall 2021, Winter 2022, Fall 2022, Winter 2023, Fall 2023, Fall 2024)
- PS 680: Research Design (Behavioral Research Methods), Department of Political Science, University of Michigan (co-taught with Nicholas Valentino, Fall 2023, Fall 2024)
- PS 688: Human Rights, Department of Political Science, University of Michigan (Winter 2018, Winter 2019)
- PS 688: Measurement, Department of Political Science, University of Michigan (Winter 2017)
- PLS 451/497: Human Rights, Department of Political Science, Pennsylvania State University (Spring, 2015, Spring 2014, Fall 2013)
- PLS 501: Methods of Political Analysis (Research Design), Department of Political Science, Pennsylvania State University (Fall 2015, Fall 2014, Fall 2013)
- PLS 597: The Politics of Human Rights, Department of Political Science, Pennsylvania State University (Fall 2015)
- PLS 597: Measurement, Department of Political Science, Pennsylvania State University (Spring 2015)
- Programming and Simulation Methods for Computational Social Science, The 57th Essex Summer School in Social Science Data Analysis (Summer 2024)
- Advanced Computational Methods for Social Media and Textual Data, The 53rd, 54th, 55th, 56th Essex Summer School in Social Science Data Analysis (Summer 2020, Summer 2021, Summer 2022, Summer 2023)
- Advanced Methods for Social Media and Textual Data, The 51st and 52nd Essex Summer School in Social Science Data Analysis (Summer 2018, Summer 2019)
- Exploration and Analysis of Social Media Data, The 49th and 50th Essex Summer School in Social Science Data Analysis (Summer 2016, Summer 2017)
- Analyzing Big Data, The 48th Essex Summer School in Social Science Data Analysis (Summer 2015)
- Designing Validity for Studies of Political Violence, Human Rights, and Conflict (Research Design), Department of Peace and Conflict Research, Uppsala University (Summer 2017)
- Introduction to Latent Variable Models with R and STAN, Department of Peace and Conflict Research, Uppsala University (May 2015); Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan (February 20, 2020).
- Introduction to R and statistical analysis of data using R, San Diego Super Computer Center (July 2013)
- Introduction to R for Programmers, San Diego Super Computer Center (April 2013 and May 2012)
- Introduction to R, College of William & Mary, with Jaime E. Settle (October 2012)
- Introduction to R and Stata, Math Boot Camp, Department of Political Science UCSD, with Dimitar Gueorguiev (August 2010)
Contact
Center for Political Studies (CPS)
Institute for Social Research, 4200 Bay
University of Michigan
426 Thompson Street
Ann Arbor, Michigan, 48106-1248
USA
cjf0006@gmail.com