Published work

"The minimal effects of union membership on political behavior". 2025. Forthcoming at Quarterly Journal of Political Science.

Abstract: What is the source of labor unions’ power? A large literature argues that union membership powerfully affects political behavior, in turn making unions an influential interest group. However, union members may not receive, may ignore, and may deprioritize their union’s political messages. Previous research faced empirical challenges with causal inference, limited sample sizes, and limited outcomes. I marshal data from 14 panel surveys from 1956 to 2022 with 48,629 respondents to help better understand the causal effects of union membership. I use difference-in-difference designs to evaluate whether gaining union membership causes voters to liberalize their attitudes and participate in politics. I do not find any evidence that union membership substantively affects political behavior, and I show that we can reject modest effects in many cases. I also show that a prominent previous result is not robust. These results suggest a reconsideration of how labor unions influence politics.

"What Do Americans Want from (Private) Government? Experimental Evidence Demonstrates that Americans Want Workplace Democracy" with Soumyajit Mazumder. 2023. American Political Science Review.

Abstract: A majority of Americans spend a substantial amount of time at work where they have little to no say over many issues—a phenomenon that philosophers have likened to a “private government” that resembles a dictatorship. Is this because Americans are indifferent to or even prefer to work for firms that resemble dictatorships? To answer this question, we field a conjoint experiment on a nationally-representative sample of Americans to isolate public preferences over “corporate regime type.” We find that Americans prefer workplace democracy. In a second experiment, we find that most Americans support workplace democracy even after being exposed to framing emphasizing democratization’s costs. The results suggest that social scientists must look beyond public opinion to understand the lack of workplace democracy in the United States. This article forges new ground by applying a political science lens to corporate governance—a field ripe with politics but bereft of political science.

"The Silenced Text: Field Experiments on Gendered Experiences of Political Participation" with Rachel Bernhard. 2023. American Political Science Review.

Abstract: Who gets to “speak up” in politics? Whose voices are silenced? We conducted two field experiments to understand how harassment shapes the everyday experiences of politics for men and women in the United States today. We randomized the names campaign volunteers used to text supporters reminders to participate in a protest and call their representatives. We find that female-named volunteers receive more offensive, silencing, and withdrawal responses than male-named or ambiguously named volunteers. However, supporters were also more likely to respond and agree to their asks. These findings help make sense of prior research that finds women are less likely than men to participate in politics, and raise new questions about whether individual women may be perceived as symbolic representatives of women as a group. We conclude by discussing the implications for gender equality and political activism.