Status
Assistant Professor

Contact
majaskos@nps.edu

Curriculum vitae

Research Interests
Latin American Politics; Comparative Politics; state-society relations; military roles; natural resource conflict; and theories of organization.

Biography

Maiah Jaskoski (Ph.D. in Political Science, University of California, Berkeley, 2008) is Assistant Professor of National Security Affairs. Her research focuses on state-society relations in Latin America.

Jaskoski’s book, Military Politics and Democracy in the Andes, (Johns Hopkins University Press, forthcoming May 2013) examines why militaries vary in the missions they perform and neglect. Employing theories of organization, the analysis finds that first and foremost the two armies have prioritized predictability for troops on the ground. The book challenges three prominent explanations of military behavior: (1) militaries, like other bureaucracies, try to maximize their overall budgets, (2) militaries seek to perform missions deemed legitimate by the public, and (3) in the interest of maintaining professionalism, militaries prefer to address sovereignty threats—external enemies and insurgents—rather than fulfill policing functions like crime fighting.

In other work, Jaskoski has contributed to the conceptualization and measurement of civilian control of the armed forces in post-transition settings; and analyzed how private companies in extractive industries pay and influence armed forces through their interactions with local military units, in Latin America, Africa, and Southeast Asia.

Jaskoski’s current research explores further conflict in extractive industries, focusing on why some popular mobilizations trigger technical oversight and even the halting of projects, whereas in other cases conflict remains focused on compensation. She is investigating varying institutions that structure community participation in the approval process for new mining and hydrocarbons projects, the critical stage at which popular opposition is most likely to halt project development. Jaskoski is also engaged in a collaborative, interdisciplinary initiative on the conflicts and harmonies of borderlines and borderlands in the Americas.

Recent Publications

• Military Politics and Democracy in the Andes. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press (forthcoming May 2013).
• “Private Financing of the Military: A Local Political Economy Approach.” Studies in Comparative International Development (forthcoming). Published online September 2, 2012, at http://www.springerlink.com/openurl.asp?genre=article&id=doi:10.1007/s12116-012-9119-2.
• “Public Security Forces with Private Funding: Local Army Entrepreneurship in Peru and Ecuador.” Latin American Research Review 47, no. 2 (2012): 79–99.
• “The Ecuadorian Army: Neglecting a Porous Border while Policing the Interior.” Latin American Politics and Society 54, no.1 (Spring 2012): 127–157.
• “Civilian Control of the Armed Forces in Democratic Latin America: Military Prerogatives, Contestation, and Mission Performance in Peru.” Armed Forces & Society 38, no. 1 (January 2012): 70–91.