Madison Schramm

I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Toronto and a Non-resident Fellow in the Reimagining US Grand Strategy Program at the Stimson Center. Previously, I was an Assistant Professor in the Department of National Security and Strategy at the US Army War College (2021-2022), a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institute for Politics and Strategy at Carnegie Mellon University (2020-2021), the Postdoctoral Fellow in Innovative Approaches to Grand Strategy at the International Security Center at the University of Notre Dame (2019-2020) and the Hillary Rodham Clinton Research Fellow at the Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace, and Security (2018-2019). I received my PhD from Georgetown University in Government (2019) and my dissertation, entitled “Making Meaning and Making Monsters: Democracies, Personalist Regimes, and International Conflict,” was the recipient of the 2020 Kenneth N. Waltz Best Dissertation Award from the American Political Science Association’s International Security Section.

My research focuses on international security, the domestic politics of foreign policy, political psychology, and gender and foreign policy. My new book,Why Democracies Fight Dictators (Oxford University Press), investigates how leaders in liberal democracies have made sense of opponent dictators and how this, in turn, has conditioned their foreign policy behavior. I argue that when conflicts of interest between liberal democracies and personalist regimes arise—as they are wont to do in international politics—leaders in liberal democracies have been predisposed to perceive personalist dictators as more threatening, and to respond with anger, an emotional response that elicits more risk acceptance and aggressive behavior. More than a particular type of conflict behavior, this book explores how these tendencies facilitate a dramatic increase in hostility. In other words, I argue that this framework can help explain not only cases of war and more limited uses of what US policymakers have come to euphemistically call “kinetic action,” but also low-level disputes and serious tensions that stop short of the use of military force.

I have published peer-reviewed research exploring US covert foreign-imposed regime change (Cambridge University Press Elements Series in International Relations), democratic constitutional systems and international security (Political Science Quarterly and the Journal of Global Security Studies), gender and conflict initiation (Security Studies), corruption charges against women heads of government (Canadian Journal of Political Science), and diversity and inclusion in post-conflict states (in Untapped Power, Oxford University Press 2022). I have working papers in progress and articles under review exploring the role of ambivalence and blame in foreign policy; variations in democratic threat perception; instability and the election of women heads of government; and gender and US alliance politics. You can find more information about these and other ongoing research projects on the "Research" page.

My commentary and reviews have been published in Foreign Affairs, Perspectives on Politics, the Texas National Security Review, the National Interest, the Atlantic, the Christian Science Monitor, Inkstick, the Duck of Minerva, Stimson.org, and CFR.org; and my research and analyses have been cited in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Jerusalem Post. I have previously worked with the Council on Foreign Relations; the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs; Yale University's Political Violence FieldLab; and the RAND Corporation. The Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, the University of Notre Dame International Security Center, the Cosmos Foundation, the Smith Richardson Foundation, the Georgetown Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, and the Department of Government at Georgetown University have generously supported my research.