Patricia Sullivan

Patricia Sullivan is an associate professor in the Department of Public Policy and the Curriculum in Peace, War, and Defense at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. She received her Ph.D. in political science from the University of California, Davis in 2004 with a concentration in international relations, comparative politics and research methodology. She teaches courses in foreign policy, international conflict, national security policy and research design.

Sullivan’s research explores the utility of military force as a policy instrument; the effects of foreign military aid and assistance provided to both state and nonstate actors; and factors that affect leaders’ decisions to initiate, escalate, or terminate foreign military operations. She was recently named a 2015 Andrew Carnegie Fellow. Her book, "Who Wins? Predicting Strategic Success and Failure in Armed Conflict," was published by Oxford University Press in 2012. She has published articles on the determinants of conflict outcomes in the Journal of Conflict Resolution and International Interactions and articles on the duration of major power military interventions in the Journal of Politics and Conflict Management and Peace Science. Her research, which combines rigorous quantitative and qualitative research methodology, has been funded by the National Science Foundation, the Carnegie Corporation, the Smith Richardson Foundation, the Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation and the Office of Naval Research. Sullivan’s dissertation, which explores why militarily strong states frequently fail to achieve their political objectives when they use military force, received both the 2004-2006 Walter Isard Dissertation Award, given every two years by the Peace Science Society International, and the 2005 Dissertation Award from the Committee on the Analysis of Military Operations and Strategy, a group affiliated with the American Political Science Association.