Under REview & IN Progress

• Penalties for Particularism and Partisanship? Citizens’ Preferences for Legal Punishment of Clientelism with Jeremy Horowitz  and Giacomo Lemoli Toulouse School of Economics Working Paper N. 24-1603 (Under Review)

In weak-state settings, clientelism is persistent yet normatively fraught, constituting a “legal gray area”. This study examines two key features of commonplace clientelism that may govern whether and to what extent citizens deem it punishable by the law. We posit a “particularism penalty,” by which citizens desire greater punishment for actions targeting narrower social groups, and an “outgroup actor penalty”, by which preferred punishment is greater for ethnic-political opponents. A survey experiment with Kikuyu and Luo respondents in Kenya reveals that respondents prefer more punishment for explicitly targeting supporters — coethnics or copartisans — versus general people, with little difference between coethnics and co-partisans, regardless of the perpetrator’s partisanship. At the same time, they systematically prefer more punishment for partisan outgroup actors. These findings underscore that public opinion would support a legal evolution away from clientelism towards supporters, even as citizens remain more lenient towards ingroup members.

• Networks and the Size of the Gender Gap in Politician Performance Across Job Duties with  Guy Grossman and Ana Garcia Hernandez (Under Review)

Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions Working Paper 3-2018 

The share of women in legislatures has increased dramatically in the past decade. Yet female politicians continue to face barriers that undermine their performance relative to men. We argue that those barriers have different implications across job duties, which can result in performance gender gaps of different magnitudes across duties. In particular, where female politicians are excluded in politician networks,  duties requiring interaction with fellow politicians (e.g., legislative activities) may exhibit larger gender gaps as compared to duties (e.g., constituency services) that can be undertaken independently. We find support for this argument when comparing women and men politicians' performance across 50 subnational Ugandan legislatures (where 1/3 of seats are reserved for women). Using original network data, we find that women are significantly more peripheral in professional networks, and that this network peripherality drives gender gaps in duties requiring more interaction with fellow politicians, but not independently-performed duties. Women are not more peripheral in personal networks, and such networks are not correlated with performance.

• Can Information on Incumbent Egalitarian Public Service Distribution Quell Expectations and Desires for Ethno-partisan Favoritism? Evidence from Kenya's Electrification Program with Jeremy Horowitz  

According to conventional scholarship, citizens expect and desire that parties favor their own ethno-partisan supporters with public service distribution, despite viewing such favoritism as trecherously reinforcing ethno-partisan conflict. Yet, newer research shows incumbents often distribute in ``egalitarian'' patterns. Given citizens have little information about service distribution, we investigate through a survey experiment in Kenya whether information about the incumbent's egalitarian distribution quells expectation and desire for ethno-partisan favoritism. The information does not budge sticky, segregated beliefs about incumbent behavior. Ethno-partisan insiders believe the incumbent has been and will be egalitarian, while ethno-partisan outsiders believe the incumbent has been and will be favoritistic. However, the information increases the egalitarianism of citizens' desired distribution, especially among ethno-partisan insiders. We conclude: (a) different/stronger information provision may be necessary to alter entrenched beliefs about party behavior, but it takes little to prompt one's own "moral high ground,'' and (b) partisan-motivated reasoning and cuing are stronger than previously thought in contexts with weakly-institutionalized parties.

• Shortcomings in Substantive Representation for Women: Accountability Gaps and Policy Preference Incongruence with SangEun Kim Supplemental Information  

CSDI Working Paper 1-2019

We use plenary session meeting minutes to investigate whether and why politicians might better substantively represent same-gender citizens across 49 subnational Ugandan legislatures (where one-third of seats are reserved for women). Male politicians' legislative actions better mirror male citizens' top policy priorities (roads/transport), yet significant gaps exist between reserved-seat female politicians' (RS-females') legislative actions and female citizens' top policy priorities (water). Why? We find evidence that male citizens exert overall more accountability pressures, and male politicians receive more accountability pressures, especially from male citizens. Additionally, male politicians have more congruence with same-gender citizens in their personal policy priorities. Finally, although women's welfare has low salience for both citizens and politicians, RS-females are significantly more active in this domain. 

• Islam, Christianity, and Attitudes Towards Women: Evidence from Mixed-Religion Countries in sub-Saharan Africa with Keith R. Weghorst Paper 

Kellogg Working Paper Series #418)

What determines the success of women in attaining elected political office and socioeconomic gender equality more broadly? A recent surge in the literature on this burning question has centered around whether adherence to Islam versus Christianity, or rather politico-economic factors coinciding with these religions, is responsible for cross-national variation in gender inequality. We view religion not as fixed, but fluid - its interpretation regarding gender equality is endogenous to contextual factors such as political institutions and economic development. Our new approach is thus to conduct analyses on gender attitudes within mixed religion countries in Africa, matching Muslims and Christians on individual level socioeconomic traits to better isolate the role of religion.  We find cross-national variation in the within-country Muslim and Christian gap, whereby Muslims are either equally, more, or less conservative than Christians in sub-Saharan Africa. However, within-country gaps are small. On the other hand, the gaps between men's and women's attitudes towards women's leadership and equality are much larger.   

• Does Increased Mobilization and Descriptive Representation Intensify Partisanship Over Election Campaigns? Evidence from 3 US Elections with Steve Utych  Paper . 

Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions Working Paper 7-2017

We theorize that partisanship intensifies more as elections near for certain citizens due to campaign-specific factors that buoy partisan identity salience and perceived congruence with their party: (a) citizens targeted with more mobilization activities, and (b) citizens from politically-marginalized groups that share social identity with their party's nominees. Using daily cross-sectional survey data from a nationally-representative sample collected for one year prior to the US 2000, 2004, and 2008 elections, we find partisanship substantially intensifies over a campaign year (5 percentage points). The effect is larger in states receiving more mobilization activities (swing states). While black Democrats and female Republicans received increased descriptive representation from a presidential and vice-presidential nominee in 2008, respectively, only black Democrats' partisanship intensifies significantly more than comparison groups in this election. We conclude that campaigns matter because they intensify partisanship and exacerbate  polarization on partisan cleavages; who becomes more polarized, however, depends on campaign-specific factors.