Luis De la Calle

Associate professor

Email:- Luis.de-la-Calle@warwick.ac.uk

Room:- D2.09

Profile

I joined Warwick in January 2025, after having taught at Sheffield (2022-2024), CIDE in Mexico City (2013-2022), and Carlos III in Madrid (2011-2013). I hold a PhD in Politics from the European University Institute (Florence) and I'm also a member of the Juan March Institute, where I started my academic career as a Junior Researcher (2009-2013).

Research

I have published extensively in the field of conflict, looking at its determinants, dynamics, and consequences (see below for a full list of publications). My research is usually driven by meaningful questions, with methodological choices dependent on those questions (and not the other way around). For instance, in my recent book with Ignacio Sanchez-Cuenca "Underground Violence: On the Nature of Terrorism" (Oxford University Press, 2024), we combine conceptual work, case studies (Tupamaros in Uruguay, Shining Path in Peru, ETA in Spain, PLO in Palestine-Israel, and ISIS in Iraq-Syria) and statistical analysis of large datasets to show that the defining feature of terrorism is that rebels resorting to it must remain clandestine -- which is a function of their weakness compared to the forces they are fighting against.

My current research agenda looks at the interconnections between war and state capacity. The standard assumption is that civil wars are detrimental for state capacity, as they weaken both physical and human capital. But few times we observe that conflict can contribute to strengthening state capabilities. How can we make sense of this?

Finally, I'm also interested in investigating the outcomes of socialist regimes. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, it was broadly understood that socialist regimes were no longer a threat for the survival of capitalist democracies, and therefore there was little to learn from them. But events during the last decade have changed a little bit the conversation. Unfortunately, there is little empirical work on specific outcomes such as inequality, poverty or economic growth, as debates around socialism tend to focus on hypothetical incarnations of the ideology, rather than their actual products.

Teaching

I usually teach modules on Methods, Comparative Politics, Latin American Politics, and Conflict. Supervision-wise, I look forward to working with students who are motivated by real-world puzzles, usually with a comparative mindset and openness to collect empirical evidence.

Publications

Books

• (2024) Underground Violence: On the Nature of Terrorism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. [With Ignacio Sánchez-Cuenca].
• [Spanish translation: La naturaleza del terrorismo, 2024, Catarata, Madrid].
• (2015) Nationalist Violence in Postwar Europe. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Refereed articles

• (2024) “Fighting Collective Threats: Socialist Revolutions and the Management of the COVID-19 Pandemic.” European Political Science Review online first
• (2024) “When Rebels Lose: The Impact of Civil War on Contemporary Electoral Outcomes in Peru.” Electoral Studies online first
• (2021) “The Legacy of War Dynamics on Fiscal Capacity: Evidence from 19th Century Mexico.” Latin American Research Review 56 (4) [with Luz Marina Arias].
• (2021) “Los legados de la guerra de independencia y la revolución sobre la violencia criminal en México.” América Latina en la Historia Económica 28 (2) [with Luz Marina Arias].
• (2021) “¿Borrón sin cuenta nueva? Injusticia transicional en guerras criminales” Perfiles Latinoamericanos 29 (57) [with Andreas Schedler]
• (2020) “Violence and Mobilization: Probing the Inverted U-Shaped Link between Protest and Terrorism.” Taiwan Journal of Democracy 16 (1): 143-170. [With Ignacio Sánchez-Cuenca].
• (2018) “Economic Sanctions and the dynamics of terrorist campaigns”. Conflict Management and Peace Science 35 (4): 378-401. [With Navin Bapat, Kaisa Hinkkainen and Elena McLean].
• (2017) “Compliance vs. Constraints: A Theory of Rebel Targeting in Civil War". Journal of Peace Research 54 (3): 427-441.
• (2016) “Economic Sanctions, Transnational Terrorism, and the Incentive to Misrepresent”. Journal of Politics 78 (1): 249-264 [With Navin Bapat, Kaisa Hinkkainen and Elena McLean].
• (2015) “How Armed Groups Fight: Territorial Control and Violent Tactics”. Studies in Conflict and Terrorism 38 (10): 795-813 [With Ignacio Sánchez-Cuenca].
• (2013) “Killing and Voting in the Basque Country: An Exploration of the Electoral Link Between ETA and its Political Branch”. Terrorism and Political Violence 25: 94-112 [With Ignacio Sánchez-Cuenca].
• (2012) “Rebels Without a Territory. An Analysis of Non-territorial Conflicts in the World, 1970-1997”. Journal of Conflict Resolution 56 (4): 580-603. [With Ignacio Sánchez-Cuenca].
• (2012) “In Search of the Core of Terrorism”. International Studies Review 14 (3): 481-485. [With Ignacio Sánchez-Cuenca].
• (2012) “How do Spanish Independents vote? Ideology vs. Performance”. South European Society and Politics 17 (3): 411-425. [With Nassos Roussias].
• (2011) “What We Talk About When We Talk About Terrorism”. Politics & Society 39 (3): 451-472. [With Ignacio Sánchez-Cuenca].
• (2011) “The Quantity and Quality of Terrorism: the DTV dataset". Journal of Peace Research 48 (1): 49-58. [With Ignacio Sánchez-Cuenca].
• (2010) “Explaining the electoral effects of public investments: The case of the expansion of the underground in Madrid, 1995–2007”. European Journal of Political Research 49: 393-417. [With Lluís Orriols].
• (2010) “Voting without Ideology. Evidence from Spain (1979-2008)”. Revista Española de Investigaciones Sociológicas 129: 83-105. [With Lluís Orriols and Álvaro Martínez].
• (2010) “Making Nationalists out of Frenchmen?: Substate Nationalism in Corsica”. Nationalism and Ethnic Politics 16 (3-4): 397-419. [With André Fazi].
• (2009) “The End of Three Decades of Nationalist Rule: The 2009 Regional Elections in the Basque Country”. South European Society and Politics 14(2): 211-226. [With Ignacio Sánchez-Cuenca].
• (2009) “Domestic Terrorism: The Hidden Side of Political Violence”. Annual Review of Political Science 12: 31-49. [With Ignacio Sánchez-Cuenca].
• (2008) “Is There More Assimilation in Catalonia than in the Basque Country: Analyzing Dynamics of Assimilation in Nationalist Contexts”. European Journal of Political Research 47(6): 710-36. [With Thomas J. Miley].
• (2007) “Fighting for Local Control: Street Violence in the Basque Country”. International Studies Quarterly 51(2): 431-455.
• (2005) “Carreteras y votos: el PSOE y las políticas territoriales de construcción de coaliciones de apoyo, 1982-1996”. Revista de Investigaciones Políticas y Sociológicas 4 (1): 65-95.
• (2005) “Cuando la proximidad deja de ser importante: modelos espaciales y voto en la política vasca (1994-2001)”. Revista Española de Ciencia Política, 12: 21-52.
• (2004) “La selección de víctimas en ETA”. Revista Española de Ciencia Política 10: 57-79. [With Ignacio Sánchez-Cuenca].
• (2002) “Denominaciones de origen y protección económica”. Revista Española de Estudios Agrosociales y Pesqueros 194: 27-48.

Book chapters

• (2023) “Downgrading or Upsizing Strategies: How Rebels learn about the right repertoire of violence,” in Carolin Görzig, Michael Fürstenberg, Florian Köhler and Imad Alsoos, eds., How Terrorists Learn: Organizational Learning and Beyond, Routledge, London.
• (2022) “Zipaioak: the Battle for Public Shaming of Collaborators in low-intensity conflicts,” in Juan Espíndola and Leigh Payne, eds., Collaborationism, Oxford University Press, Oxford.
• (2022) “El impacto de la violencia criminal sobre la recaudación fiscal en México: revisitando a Tilly,” in Aldo Ponce, ed., Consecuencias de la violencia criminal, CIDE, Mexico City. [with Luz Marina Arias]
• (2021) “Terrorismo” in Lesley-Ann Daniels and Martijn Vlaskamp, eds., Violencia en América Latina, Tecnos, Barcelona.
• (2019) “Terrorism in Western Europe: a Homegrown Trademark”. In Erica Chenoweth, Richard English and Stathis Kalyvas (eds.) Oxford Handbook on Terrorism, Oxford: Oxford University Press. [With Ignacio Sánchez-Cuenca].
• (2017) “Weak States”. In William Outhwaite and Stephen Turner (eds.) The Sage Handbook of Political Sociology, London: Sage. [With Luz Marina Arias].
• (2016) “La violence politique”. In Hubert Peres and Christophe Roux (eds.) La démocratie espagnole: Institutions et vie politique, Rennes: Presses Universitaries de Rennes, pp. 187-206.
• (2015) “Fighting the War on Two Fronts: Shining Path and the Peruvian Civil War, 1980–95”. In Lorenzo Bosi, Niall Ó Dochartaigh and Daniela Pisoiu (eds.) Political Violence in Context, Colchester: European Consortium for Political Research, pp. 125-144.

Non-refereed publications

• (2017) “Critical Dialogue with Kristin M. Bakke.” Perspectives on Politics 15 (3): 786-790.
• (2016) “Nationalist Peace Making: A Three-Actor Process“. Turkish Journal of Security Studies 18 (1): 71-94.
• (2016) “Introduction to the Special Issue on Conflict, violence and democracy in Latin America.” Política y Gobierno 23 (1): 5-8 [With Ana Arjona].
• (2015) La genealogía de los ataques terroristas de París. Nexos en línea, 14 enero 2015.
• http://www.nexos.com.mx/?p=23910
• (2015) Liberating Territory: An Empirical Examination of the Determinants of Local Control By Sendero Luminoso. DTEP 273. CIDE: Ciudad de México.
• (2006) The Production of Terrorist Violence: Analyzing Target Selection within the IRA and ETA. Working Paper 2006/230. Instituto Juan March: Madrid. [With Ignacio Sánchez-Cuenca].