"Industrialization and Democracy" World Politics, 76(3): 457–498. [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 other socioeconomic factors and two-way fixed effects. In this paper we exploit a unique quasi-experiment in 19th and early 20th century Norway that allows us to examine whether the 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.
"Citizens United Caused Democratic Backsliding" (with Amelia Feiner) [pdf]
Prior research has shown that Citizens United—which legalized unlimited independent expenditures by corporations—has shifted public policy in a more conservative, pro-business direction. We argue that Citizens United has had an even deeper impact by contributing to recent democratic backsliding in the United States. Using a state-level difference-in-differences design, we find that Citizens United (which forced 23 states to remove pre-existing limitations on independent expenditures while leaving the other 27 states untouched) led to a significant decline in the freeness and fairness of state elections. This effect is attributable to Citizens United tipping several close elections in favor of Republicans just before the 2010 redistricting cycle, enabling extensive Republican-led gerrymandering and voter suppression—anti-democratic institutional changes that largely persist to this day. Our study is the first to empirically establish a direct connection between money in politics and democratic backsliding.
"Populist Incumbents and Democratic Backsliding" (with Abigail Poprocki)
Do populist state executives push political institutions toward autocracy? While many scholars assume they do, the empirical evidence is surprisingly limited. Existing studies primarily rely on two-way fixed effects models using data from 1970 onwards. Our first contribution is to show that these results are biased by differential pre-treatment trends and forbidden comparisons between countries where populists take office in the current year and those where they assumed power earlier but remain in office. To correct these biases, we use data from 1900–2020 and generalized synthetic control models. Additionally, we address endogeneity more credibly by employing a close-election regression discontinuity design in Brazil, Colombia, and Italy, using electoral fraud cases as our measure of undemocratic behavior. Preliminary results suggest that the negative effect of populist incumbents on democracy is even larger than the existing literature suggests.
"How Many People Are Truly Committed to Democracy? Evidence from a Cross-National List Experiment"
Voters often support political leaders who engage in clearly undemocratic behavior. Existing explanations emphasize either misinformation or the prioritization of policy and partisan considerations that override abstract democratic commitments. I instead estimate the share of individuals who lack a commitment to democracy in the first place. I conduct a list experiment across several major democratic countries. In the control group, respondents receive a list of four non-sensitive statements. In the treatment group, respondents receive the same list with one additional item: “On the whole, I think it would be better to have a strong leader who does not have to bother with parliament and elections.” Respondents report only the number of statements they agree with, not which ones. The difference in mean counts between treatment and control groups identifies the proportion agreeing with the sensitive item. This project is currently in the data collection phase.
"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.
"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) Journal of Conflict Resolution. Online First. [pdf]
Ethnic riots tend to occur in the same places over time. We study whether this serial correlation exists because ethnic riots tend to be self-perpetuating or because both past and future riots are caused by the same underlying factors that persist through time. To answer this question, we leverage the fact that the timing of major Hindu festivals in India is exogenously determined by the lunar calendar and that when a major Hindu festival happens to fall on a Friday—the principal day Muslims attend mosque—the likelihood of a Hindu-Muslim riot increases significantly. Using this instrument, we find that the well-documented serial correlation in Hindu-Muslim riots disappears entirely (T= 1950-2006). This suggests that the observed recurrence of riots is not driven by the riots themselves, but by underlying conditions that remain unaddressed. Once these confounding factors are accounted for, we find no "additional'' effect of past riots on future riots.
"Politicians Discriminate when Women Claim their Rights: Evidence from Experiments with India's Rural Politicians" (with Tanushree Goyal and Mats Ahrenshop) [pdf] Under Review.
Are politicians equally responsive to their constituents? We provide strong experimental evidence of gender bias in political responsiveness in rural India. Using vignette experiments embedded in a state-representative survey of local politicians in Bihar, we randomly varied the gender and caste of citizens requesting help with lockdown enforcement, inheritance rights, land encroachment, and sanitation. Politicians, including women and lower-caste leaders, generally assisted across scenarios, but starkly discriminated against women (both upper- and lower-caste) when claims invoked gender-based inheritance rights. We find little evidence of caste or gender bias in other scenarios. Results replicate among elected leaders with judicial authority over inheritance disputes. Quantitative text analysis reveals pervasive rhetorical gender discrimination. Our paper uncovers a consequential barrier to political equality, showing that women face discrimination, including by women leaders, precisely when seeking access to the very entitlements designed to empower them.
"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.