Natalie Letsa is an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of South Carolina. Previously, she was the Wick Cary Assistant Professor of Political Economy in the Department of International and Area Studies at the University of Oklahoma and the Director of OU’s African Studies Institute. She received her Ph.D. in Government from Cornell University in 2017, and in 2018-19 she was a Postdoctoral Scholar at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law at Stanford University.
Ethnic Discrimination Or Persecution
Government/State Actor Persecution
Journalist Persecution
Political Persecution
Prison Conditions
Risk of Return
Risk Of Retaliation
Safe Internal Relocation
Torture
I have written expert testimony reports for 70 or so Cameroonian asylum cases, and provided telephonic testimony for around a dozen of these (as well as in-person testimony once). The reports include country conditions background conditions as well as an assessment of the asylum seeker's claims and risk of harm should they return. The large majority of these cases are Anglophones; I have written a small number of reports for asylum seekers fleeing other forms of political persecution.
Letsa, Natalie Wenzell. 2025. The Autocratic Voter: Partisanship and Political Socialization under Dictatorship. Cambridge University Press.
Lasky, Joseph and Natalie Wenzell Letsa. Forthcoming. “Legacies of Violence in the UPC Conflict: Grievance and Opposition in Cameroon.” African Affairs.
Letsa, Natalie Wenzell. 2025. “Partisanship and Political Socialization in Electoral Autocracies,” American Political Science Review, 119(1): p. 208-223.
Letsa, Natalie Wenzell and Yonatan Morse. 2023. “Autocratic Legalism, Partisanship, and Popular Legitimation inAuthoritarian Cameroon,” Public Opinion Quarterly, 87(4): p. 935-955.
Letsa, Natalie Wenzell. 2020. “Expressive Voting in Autocracies: A Theory of Non-Economic Participation withEvidence from Cameroon.” Perspectives on Politics, 18 (2): p. 439- 453.
Letsa, Natalie Wenzell. 2019. “The Political Geography of Electoral Autocracies: The Influence of Party Strongholds on Political Beliefs in Africa.” Electoral Studies, Volume 60.
Letsa, Natalie Wenzell. 2017. “‘The People’s Choice’: Popular (Il)Legitimacy in Autocratic Cameroon.” Journal of Modern African Studies, 55 (4): p. 647-679.
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