Status Aspirations: Decoding the populists appeal to poor minorities in India, United States and Brazil
Once elected, how do economically center-right Right-wing Populist leaders consolidate electoral power and when do they fail? And why does this matter for democratic outcomes?
Together, these two papers explain the mechanisms for why redistributive demands might be suppressed for both socially low status and high status groups using observational data and a field survey experiment
How does social privilege shape perceptions of class position? Using nationally representative data from the United States and India, two democracies structured by durable hierarchies of race and caste, I show that socially dominant groups (white Americans and upper-caste Indians) place themselves higher on the economic ladder than minorities with the same incomes and report less financial hardship on average. I term this pattern \textit{status-conditioned class inflation}. Mediation analyses demonstrate that inflated subjective class rank helps explain stronger opposition to redistribution among high-status groups. The findings show that subjective class is shaped not only by material resources but also by inherited social status. These results clarify how social identity conditions economic self-perception, illuminate a psychological mechanism behind suppressed redistributive demand, and highlight that commonly used survey measures of income and class capture the imprint of social hierarchy as much as material position.
Why do symbolic national status appeals resonate with citizens at the bottom of social hierarchies? Existing explanations emphasize status threat among dominant groups or examine support among the poor without explicitly considering the motivations of those occupying the lowest positions in entrenched social hierarchies. I argue that cues portraying the nation as rising in global standing elevate individuals’ subjective social status, particularly among low-status social groups. A field survey experiment with 2,240 low-income respondents in India shows that national status cues significantly increase perceived personal status and narrow substantial baseline status gaps. These cues also increase support for the incumbent among aspirational low-status voters - those who expect upward income mobility. The results identify subjective status gains as a demand-side mechanism through which symbolic national appeals generate political support among marginalized groups.
Together, these two papers describe how expectations and experiences of economic mobility influence policy attitudes towards social inequality and affirmative action using observational data from a field survey and an online survey experiment
The paper describes how a challenge to institutions that convey information about government performance can lead to different kinds of "Narrative Capture" and its implications .
How can transparency strengthen regulation without expanding formal authority? This paper examines the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s public consumer complaint database and argues that transparent disclosure can operate as a capacity-enhancing form of regulation. By making complaint data publicly available, the CFPB transformed individual grievances into a shared informational infrastructure. This infrastructure enhanced internal regulatory intelligence, enabled distributed analysis by external actors, and reshaped firm and consumer behavior through public visibility. Together, these effects plausibly strengthened the Bureau’s ability to detect emerging problems, prioritize supervisory attention, and shape market conduct, even without new rules or sanctions. Drawing on an in-depth qualitative case study, the paper shows how transparency can generate informational effects that strengthen regulatory capacity over time. The findings extend scholarship on transparency and policy feedback by demonstrating how disclosure reshapes the informational and behavioral environment in which regulation operates, offering a distinct pathway through which states can regulate markets under political and resource constraints.