Pearce is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institute for Politics and Strategy at Carnegie Mellon University. His research agenda focuses on repression and resistance in authoritarian regimes. He studies how non-state actors affect regime repression, showing how social elites and ordinary citizens may constrain or enable the efforts of security institutions to eliminate popular threats to authoritarian rule. He applies these theories to regimes in Latin America, particularly the archival study of Cold War-era dictatorships.
Related areas of interest are how repression affects politics and public attitudes in the short and long term. He examines these effects across regime types, with particular attention to the effects of accountability measures for past repression and the effects of regimes’ efforts to build support for repression through framing and labeling of resistance.
His research has been published in the British Journal of Political Science, the Journal of Conflict Resolution, and the Journal of Peace Research. Prior to CMU, Pearce received a PhD and MA in Political Science at Emory University and a BS in Political Science at Texas Christian University.
Posts by Pearce Edwards
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- On the One-Year Anniversary of Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine, February 21, 2023.
- Why Hosting the World Cup May Have Worsened Human Rights Abuses in Qatar, December 14, 2022.
- Political Violence, Ex-Presidents, and Upcoming Elections, August 31, 2022.
- Civilian Collaboration and Reprisals Behind Ukraine’s Front Lines, June 21, 2022.
- Nobody Wins with Violence Around Elections, October 26, 2020.
- More Than Reporting: Media Portrayal of Protests Can Impact Their Success (And Failure), November 11, 2019.
- More Than Military: Understanding Maduro’s Strategy of Social Control, February 6, 2019.