Hi, call me Alan.

I am a postdoctoral research associate at Princeton University.

I investigate the strategic processes that translate microlevel preferences into macrolevel behaviors. Specifically, I examine how constituencies shape the strategic context their leaders navigate at all levels of analysis. My work focuses on answering three questions: How do states navigate a world where international orders and wars coevolve? How does the shape of public preferences bind or free leaders to signal, escalate, or conciliate? Finally, how can we maximize learning from scarce and often strategically selected data? I use formal and computational models to demonstrate the internal validity of my arguments and behavioral experiments and statistical methods to ensure their external validity.

My research has been published in the American Journal of Political Science and has been supported by the Mershon Center for International Security Studies, the National Science Foundation and the Carnegie Corporation of New York, among others.

I received my Ph.D. in Political Science (International Relations and Political Methodology) from The Ohio State University where I was a founding member of Bear Braumoeller’s Models of Emergent Social Order (MESO) Lab. At Princeton, I am part of Markus Prior’s Time in Politics Project. I am also a co-founder of the Korea and the World Podcast.

I can be reached via email at mael.vanbeek@princeton.edu.