Papers

"Industrialization and Democracy" Forthcoming in World Politics. [pdf]

I provide a new theory of the relationship between economic development and democracy. I argue that a larger share of employment in manufacturing—that is, a higher level of industrialization—makes mass mobilization both more likely to occur and more costly to suppress. This in turn increases the power of the masses vis-à-vis autocratic elites, making democracy more likely. Novel manufacturing employment data for 145 countries over 170 years (1845–2015) suggests that industrialization is strongly correlated with democracy, even after accounting for income, inequality, education, and urbanization. Unlike with many other socioeconomic determinants, the effect of industrialization is robust to country and time fixed effects, occurs on both transitions to and consolidations of democracy, is present in both the short and long run, and is equally large after 1945. Results from a novel instrument and several sensitivity analyses suggest that the correlation is unlikely to be spurious.

"Does Industrialization Cause Democratization? Quasi-Experimental Evidence from the Norwegian Industrial Revolution" (with Magnus Rasmussen and Tore Wig) [pdf]

Recent work has shown that a high share of employment in manufacturing (i.e., industrialization) is strongly correlated with democracy, even after accounting for country and time fixed effects, time trends, and a wide range of plausible control variables. In this paper we exploit a unique quasi-experiment in 19th and early 20th century Norway that allows us to examine whether this correlation between industrialization and democracy is causal. Using novel roll-call data from the Norwegian national parliament we study whether MPs that represented more rapidly industrializing districts were more likely to vote for suffrage extensions over the 1891 to 1906 period. For causal identification we exploit that Norwegian districts with a greater geographical potential for hydropower generation were significantly more likely to industrialize after the nationwide introduction of hydroelectricity in 1892. Preliminary results suggest that industrialization caused democratization in Norway.

"How Does American Public Opinion React to Overt Anti-Democratic Behavior by Politicians? Quasi-Experimental Evidence from the January 6 Insurrection" Electoral Studies, 86: 1–11. [pdf] 

Do American politicians that clearly violate democratic norms lose significant public support, or does public opinion impose little constraint on anti-democratic politicians? Existing studies have examined this fundamental question using hypothetical survey experiments which, while valuable, suffer from ecological validity and weak treatment concerns. I overcome these problems by studying a novel quasi-experiment created by the fact that Donald Trump's incitement of the January 6 insurrection unexpectedly occurred while Gallup was conducting a nationally representative public opinion survey using random digit dialing. Comparing party identification among respondents that happened to be interviewed just before, and just after, January 6, 2021 suggests that the Republican Party retained 78% of its pre-insurrection support base during the first 1.5 weeks. Even this modest loss was short-lived—in February 2021 the Republican Party already stood at 93% of its pre-insurrection support level. While not zero, the public constraint on anti-democratic behavior is remarkably limited.

"Does Money in Politics Cause Democratic Backsliding? Difference-in-Differences Evidence from Citizens United and the US State Democracy Index" (with Amelia Feiner)

The literature on money in politics has focused on the effect of campaign spending on electoral and policy outcomes. While such outcomes are obviously important, money in politics may also cause institutional changes that structurally dilute the influence of the median voter in favor of the rich. We are the first to test whether such a negative effect on political institutions exists. To do so we employ the US State Electoral Democracy Index, and exploit the Citizens United Supreme Court decision as a plausibly exogenous shock to campaign finance in a difference-in-differences design. We find that Citizens United caused significant democratic backsliding in the states affected by the decision. In terms of mechanisms we find that Citizens United tipped several close elections in favor of Republicans just before the 2010 electoral redistricting cycle, which allowed these Republicans to institutionally lock-in disproportionate influence through partisan gerrymandering.

"The January 6 Insurrection and America's Standing in the World: Quasi-Experimental Evidence from Five Unexpectedly Interrupted Public Opinion Surveys" [pdf] 

American geopolitical power partly relies on foreign public support for its leadership. Pundits worry that this support is evaporating now that the United States—which claims to be the world's beacon of democracy—has itself experienced democratic backsliding. I provide the first quasi-experimental test of this hypothesis by exploiting that the January 6 insurrection of the U.S. Capitol unexpectedly occurred while Gallup was conducting nationally representative surveys in India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Romania, and Vietnam. Because Gallup recruits respondents using random digit dialing I can identify the effect of the January 6 insurrection by comparing U.S. leadership approval among respondents that happened to be interviewed just before, and just after, January 6, 2021. Surprisingly, I find that the insurrection had no effect on U.S. approval abroad. This suggests that American soft power may rely significantly less on America actually living up to its ‘beacon of democracy’ mantra than typically presumed.

"Is Ethnic Violence Self-Perpetuating? Quasi-Experimental Evidence from Hindu-Muslim Riots in India" (with Tanushree Goyal) [pdf] Under Review.

The conflict trap literature suggests that ethnic violence is self-perpetuating. Testing this hypothesis is challenging, however, as both past and current violence could be determined by the same underlying factors. To overcome this endogeneity problem we exploit that in India the date of Hindu festivals is exogenously determined by the lunar calendar and that when a major Hindu festival falls on a Friday, the holy day for Muslims, the probability of Hindu-Muslim riots rises sharply. In line with the existing literature we find that Hindu-Muslim riots are strongly serially correlated over the 1950 to 2006 period. Importantly, however, this effect turns to null when employing the Hindu festivals instrument. This suggests that Hindu-Muslim riots in India do not tend to be self-perpetuating. This result is especially noteworthy because the literature considers Hindu-Muslim riots to be particularly likely to conform to the conflict trap hypothesis.

"Does Local Leadership Lower Bias in Law Enforcement? Evidence from Survey Experiments with India’s Rural Politicians" (with Tanushree Goyal and Mats Ahrenshop) [pdf] Under Review.

Do elected local representatives lower bias in law enforcement? We conducted four vignette experiments with a representative sample of rural politicians in Bihar. Each vignette randomly varies the gender and caste of a citizen in a law enforcement situation—enforcement of lockdown rules, inheritance law, land encroachment, and the anti open-defecation policy. We find that local representatives intervene to ensure citizens compliance and, regardless of their gender or caste, strongly discriminate against (minority) women but mainly in inheritance enforcement. Conversely, we find little evidence for overt caste or gender discrimination in non-gender-progressive vignettes. We find strikingly similar results on conducting the inheritance experiment with local politicians who have judicial powers. Data indicate entrenched gender norms as a key explanation for bias. The findings show that local leaders are unlikely to enforce progressive reforms that clash with entrenched gender norms, with implications for the study of decentralization and law enforcement in patriarchal rural settings.

"Positional Deprivation and Support for Radical Right and Radical Left Parties" (with Brian Burgoon, Matthijs Rooduijn, and Geoffrey Underhill) Economic Policy, 34(97): 49–93. [pdf]

We explore how support for radical parties of both the left and right may be shaped by what we call ‘positional deprivation’, where growth in income of individuals at a given point in the income distribution is outpaced by income growth elsewhere in that distribution. We argue that positional deprivation captures the combination of over-time and relative misfortune that can be expected to distinctly spur support for radical left and right parties. We explore this possibility by matching new measures of positional deprivation to individual-level survey data on party preferences in 20 European countries from 2002 to 2014. We find that positional deprivation is robustly correlated with supporting radical populist parties. First, positional deprivation generally, measured as average income growth across deciles of a country’s income distribution minus a respondent’s own decile’s growth, is associated with respondents’ retreat from mainstream parties and with support for both radical right and, particularly, radical left parties. Second, positional deprivation relative to the highest and the lowest ends of the income spectrum play out differently for radical right and for radical left support. A respondent’s positional deprivation relative to the wealthiest decile’s growth in his or her country tends to spur support for radical left but not radical right parties. In contrast, positional deprivation relative to the poorest decile’s growth in a respondent’s country tends to spur support for radical right but not left parties. The results suggest that the combination of over-time and relative economic misfortune may be key to how economic experience shapes radical backlash of the left and right.

"Positional Deprivation and Support for Redistribution and Social Insurance in Europe" (with Brian Burgoon and Sharon Baute) Comparative Political Studies, 56(5): 655–693. [pdf]

We argue that support for redistribution increases when one experiences ‘positional deprivation,’ situations when one's own income increases slower or decreases faster compared to that of others. This specific combination of economic suffering over-time and relative to others has effects beyond well-studied measures of suffering that are static and/or absolute in nature, such as income level. We empirically explore this hypothesis by using “objective-material” measures of positional deprivation derived from the Luxembourg Income Studies and the European Social Survey, and by using “subjective” measures derived from an original survey in 13 European countries. We find that those whose income growth is outpaced by the average and/or richest members of their country are more likely to support redistribution. We also find that the objective and subjective measures of positional deprivation are significantly correlated, and that positional deprivation’s fostering of support for redistribution holds above-and-beyond static and/or absolute measures of economic experience.