Peer-Reviewed Articles:
Using committee amendments to improve estimates of state foreign policy preferences (with Courtenay R. Monroe and Nathan W. Monroe). 2024. Conflict Management and Peace Science.
Ideal point estimates, used as measures of state foreign policy preference, are typically constructed from country votes cast on resolutions in the plenary of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA). In this article, we argue that revealed preferences on UNGA votes are dependent on the procedural context in which they are cast. We develop a theory of measurement and show empirically that constructing estimates using committee amendment votes yields more precise scores for countries with preferences that do not fall in the center of the policy space. Scholars should consider using both plenary and committee votes when operationalizing foreign policy preferences.
The Causes and Consequences of Refugee Flows: A Contemporary Reanalysis (with Andrew Shaver, Benjamin Krick, Judy Blancaflor, Xavier Liu, Ghassan Samara, Sarah Yein Ku, Joshua Angelo, Martha Carreon, Trishia Lim, Rachel Raps, Alyssa Velasquez, Sofia De Melo, Zhanyi Zuo). 2024. American Political Science Review.
The world faces a forced displacement crisis. Tens of millions of individuals have been forced across international boundaries worldwide. Therefore, the causes and consequences of refugee flows are the subjects of significant social science inquiry. Unfortunately, the historical lack of reliable data on actual refugee flows, country-specific data reporting timelines, and more general pre-2000 data quality issues have significantly limited empirical inferences on these topics. We replicate 28 articles on these topics using data newly released after a multiyear collaboration with the United Nations on annual dyadic flows. We observe major inconsistencies between the newly released flow numbers and the stock-based flow estimates upon which decades of research are based; we also find widespread inappropriate treatment of missing historical values. When we replicate the existing literature using the newly introduced flow data, correcting the treatment of missing historical values, and temporally extending/restricting the study periods, we produce significantly different results.
Monitoring via the Courts: Judicial Oversight and Police Violence in India (with Courtenay R. Conrad). 2020. International Studies Quarterly 64(3):699-709.
Can the creation of court-mandated accountability institutions improve human rights? In this article, we investigate the extent to which court-ordered accountability institutions decrease government repression in the form of police violence. We argue that the creation of regional bodies to which citizens report allegations of police abuse provides “fire-alarm” oversight (McCubbins and Schwartz 1984) by which police officers can be monitored for abuses of power. To test the implications of our theory, we take advantage of variance in the implementation of Prakash Singh and Others v. Union of India and Others, a 2006 judgment by the Supreme Court of India requiring states and districts to establish local Police Complaints Authorities (PCAs). Using a difference-in-difference design, we show the implementation of state PCAs to be associated with statistically and substantively significant decreases in human rights violations by Indian police officers.