Journal Articles
"Parochialism, Social Norms, and Discrimination Against Immigrants," with Donghyun Danny Choi and Nicholas Sambanis, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 116 (33), Summer 2019, pp. 16274-16279.
Ingroup bias and outgroup prejudice are pervasive features of human behavior, motivating various forms of discrimination and conflict. In an era of increased cross-border migration, these tendencies exacerbate intergroup conflict between native populations and immigrant groups, raising the question of how conflict can be overcome. We address this question through a large-scale field intervention conducted in 28 cities across three German states, designed to measure assistance provided to immigrants during everyday social interactions. This randomized trial found that cultural integration signaled through shared social norms mitigates—but does not eliminate—bias against immigrants driven by perceptions of religious differences. Our results suggest that eliminating or suppressing ascriptive (e.g., ethnic) differences is not a necessary path to conflict reduction in multicultural societies; rather, achieving a shared understanding of civic behavior can form the basis of cooperation.
[link to the article]
"Fuzzy Sets on Shaky Ground: Parameter Sensitivity and Confirmation Bias in fsQCA," with Chris Krogslund and Donghyun Danny Choi, Political Analysis 23 (1), Winter 2015, pp. 21-41.
Scholars have increasingly turned to fuzzy set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA) to conduct small- and medium-N studies, arguing that it combines the most desired elements of variable-oriented and case-oriented research. This article demonstrates, however, that fsQCA is an extraordinarily sensitive method whose results are worryingly susceptible to minor parametric and model specification changes. We make two specific claims. First, the causal conditions identified by fsQCA as being sufficient for an outcome to occur are highly contingent upon the values of several key parameters selected by the user. Second, fsQCA results are subject to marked confirmation bias. Given its tendency toward finding complex connections between variables, the method is highly likely to identify as sufficient for an outcome causal combinations containing even randomly generated variables. To support these arguments, we replicate three articles utilizing fsQCA and conduct sensitivity analyses and Monte Carlo simulations to assess the impact of small changes in parameter values and the method's built-in confirmation bias on the overall conclusions about sufficient conditions.
[link to the article]
Ingroup bias and outgroup prejudice are pervasive features of human behavior, motivating various forms of discrimination and conflict. In an era of increased cross-border migration, these tendencies exacerbate intergroup conflict between native populations and immigrant groups, raising the question of how conflict can be overcome. We address this question through a large-scale field intervention conducted in 28 cities across three German states, designed to measure assistance provided to immigrants during everyday social interactions. This randomized trial found that cultural integration signaled through shared social norms mitigates—but does not eliminate—bias against immigrants driven by perceptions of religious differences. Our results suggest that eliminating or suppressing ascriptive (e.g., ethnic) differences is not a necessary path to conflict reduction in multicultural societies; rather, achieving a shared understanding of civic behavior can form the basis of cooperation.
[link to the article]
"Fuzzy Sets on Shaky Ground: Parameter Sensitivity and Confirmation Bias in fsQCA," with Chris Krogslund and Donghyun Danny Choi, Political Analysis 23 (1), Winter 2015, pp. 21-41.
Scholars have increasingly turned to fuzzy set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA) to conduct small- and medium-N studies, arguing that it combines the most desired elements of variable-oriented and case-oriented research. This article demonstrates, however, that fsQCA is an extraordinarily sensitive method whose results are worryingly susceptible to minor parametric and model specification changes. We make two specific claims. First, the causal conditions identified by fsQCA as being sufficient for an outcome to occur are highly contingent upon the values of several key parameters selected by the user. Second, fsQCA results are subject to marked confirmation bias. Given its tendency toward finding complex connections between variables, the method is highly likely to identify as sufficient for an outcome causal combinations containing even randomly generated variables. To support these arguments, we replicate three articles utilizing fsQCA and conduct sensitivity analyses and Monte Carlo simulations to assess the impact of small changes in parameter values and the method's built-in confirmation bias on the overall conclusions about sufficient conditions.
[link to the article]
Working Papers
Incentives for Organizational Participation: A Recruitment Experiment in Mexico [Revise & Resubmit at Comparative Political Studies]
with Candelaria Garay and Brian Palmer-Rubin
This paper presents novel experimental evidence on the conditions under which citizens join interest organizations in democracies with weak institutions democracy. We presented 1,400 citizens in two Mexican states with fliers that present a new local interest organization to them, asking whether they would like to receive information about joining the organization. These posters contain one of four randomly selected appeals to encourage recruitment. We find strong evidence in favor of selective material incentives as a recruitment appeal. We further analyze response rates by prior organizational contact, finding evidence for a "particularistic socialization" effect wherein organizational experience is associated with greater response to selective material benefits and less response to purposive incentives. This effect is most pronounced among higher-income respondents, counter existing theories suggesting higher demand for patronage among the poor. Our findings show that under some conditions, rather than generating norms of other regarding, interest organizations can reinforce members’ individualistic tendencies and make them more receptive to patronage appeals.
[paper available upon request]
The Organizational Voter: Support for New Parties in Young Democracies [Revise & Resubmit at the American Journal of Political Science]
How do voters form attachments to new political parties? This article contends that locally organized, participant-based societal organizations—such as neighborhood associations, informal sector unions, and indigenous movements—provide a critical source of mass support. Drawing on social identity and self-categorization theory, I argue that endorsements of new parties by such organizations sway organization members’ vote preferences and socialize them into identifying with the party. A discrete choice experiment, presenting voters in Bolivia with campaign posters, demonstrates that organizational endorsements are highly effective in mobilizing voters, especially when voters face a new party. Endorsements can even counteract policy and ethnic differences between candidates and voters and sway not only organization members’ own vote preferences but also the preferences of people in their larger social network. The findings suggest an important, understudied route to electoral support and partisan identities in new democracies and have important implications for research on political accountability.
[link to the paper]
Feminist Backlash Against Political Islam: Evidence from Social Encounters in the Field
with Donghyun Danny Choi and Nicholas Sambanis
To what extent is discrimination against Muslim immigrants in Western societies driven by perceptions of a cultural threat posed by political Islam? We hypothesize that natives' attitudes toward Muslim immigrants are based partly on the belief that Muslims hold conservative attitudes towards women and their role in society. Such beliefs will shape anti-immigrant bias among native women in particular--an effect that we describe as the "feminist backlash hypothesis." We test this hypothesis in a large-scale field experiment in 25 cities across three German states, during which 3,800 unknowing bystanders were exposed to a brief social encounter with a confederate who revealed her ideas regarding gender roles. The confederate is always female and we vary her religious and ethnic identity. We find significant bias against Muslim confederates, but the bias is eliminated when bystanders are exposed to information suggesting that the Muslim confederate holds progressive attitudes toward women. This effect is observed only among female bystanders. Our results highlight the centrality of ideational stereotypes in structuring opposition to immigration.
[paper available upon request]
Linguistic Assimilation Does Not Reduce Discrimination Against Immigrants: Evidence from a Field Experiment in Germany [under review]
with Donghyun Danny Choi and Nicholas Sambanis
Many western liberal democracies have witnessed increased bias against immigrants and opposition to multiculturalism. Prior research suggests that ethno-linguistic differences between immigrant and native populations are a key cause of that bias due to the perception of cultural threat. Linguistic assimilation has been proposed as the key mechanism to reduce bias and mitigate conflict between natives and immigrants. Using a large-scale field experiment in Germany--a country with a high influx of immigrants and refugees--we show that linguistic assimilation does not reduce bias. We find that Muslim immigrants are no less likely to be discriminated against if they appear to be linguistically assimilated. However, we also find that ethno-linguistic differences do not cause bias among German natives, suggesting that Germany may have already reached a relatively high level of tolerance to multiculturalism.
[paper available upon request]
Organizational and Partisan Brokerage of Social Benefits: Evidence from Mexico [under review]
with Candelaria Garay and Brian Palmer-Rubin
In recent years, several Latin American countries have expanded large scale non-discretionary social benefits. While these benefits have reduced the political manipulation of low-income citizens, discretionary social programs—whose distribution follows opaque criteria and are often allocated by brokers—continue to exist. Using an original survey in Mexico, we explore how citizens, both beneficiaries and non- beneficiaries, experience and perceive access to discretionary social programs. The literature on clientelism emphasizes the distribution of discretionary benefits by party agents in exchange for electoral support. However, a number of studies have found that access to discretionary social benefits can also operate through community associations or interest organizations. We employ a list experiment to detect whether discretionary social benefits are allocated on the basis of partisan campaign support or organizational participation. Our findings reveal that organizational brokerage is at least as important as the much- studied role of partisan machines for access to these benefits.
[paper available upon request]
Temperature and Outgroup Discrimination
with Donghyun Danny Choi and Nicholas Sambanis
High temperatures have been linked to aggression in humans and recent literature has established a connection between climate change and violent inter-group conflict. Previous studies have emphasized economic mechanisms in explaining the effect of climatic conditions on conflict. Using data from two large-scale field experiments, we show evidence of a direct causal effect of high temperatures on nonviolent inter-group conflict, proxied by discrimination in helping behavior toward an ethno-religious outgroup. In our experiments, as temperatures rise, individuals faced with a choice to provide help to strangers in every-day interactions disciminate more against ethno-religious minorities. In light of expected increases in the frequency of temperature shocks due to global warming, our findings suggest that inter-group conflict of all forms will become more prevalent in the future.
[paper available upon request]
The Paradoxical Effects of Combating Corruption on Institutional Trust and Political Engagement: Evidence from a Natural Experiment [Under Review]
with Nan Zhang
While fighting corruption has become a high priority in many countries around the world, the widespread adoption of anti-corruption measures has yielded few tangible results. This paper ask whether, in failing to promote better governance, efforts to combat corruption may in fact generate negative political consequences. To address this question, we examine a natural experiment involving the sentencing of former Argentine President Menem on corruption charges. Exploiting the coincidence in timing between Menem’s case and fieldwork on a nationally-representative survey, we show that the announcement of Menem’s sentence paradoxically eroded public trust in institutions and produced “resigned citizens” who expressed reduced interest in politics, lower willingness to participate in collective demonstrations, and greater intention to cast spoiled ballots and to abstain from voting. Overall, our findings shed light on an important understudied link between anti-corruption policy and political participation in chronically misgoverned societies.
[link to the paper]
with Candelaria Garay and Brian Palmer-Rubin
This paper presents novel experimental evidence on the conditions under which citizens join interest organizations in democracies with weak institutions democracy. We presented 1,400 citizens in two Mexican states with fliers that present a new local interest organization to them, asking whether they would like to receive information about joining the organization. These posters contain one of four randomly selected appeals to encourage recruitment. We find strong evidence in favor of selective material incentives as a recruitment appeal. We further analyze response rates by prior organizational contact, finding evidence for a "particularistic socialization" effect wherein organizational experience is associated with greater response to selective material benefits and less response to purposive incentives. This effect is most pronounced among higher-income respondents, counter existing theories suggesting higher demand for patronage among the poor. Our findings show that under some conditions, rather than generating norms of other regarding, interest organizations can reinforce members’ individualistic tendencies and make them more receptive to patronage appeals.
[paper available upon request]
The Organizational Voter: Support for New Parties in Young Democracies [Revise & Resubmit at the American Journal of Political Science]
How do voters form attachments to new political parties? This article contends that locally organized, participant-based societal organizations—such as neighborhood associations, informal sector unions, and indigenous movements—provide a critical source of mass support. Drawing on social identity and self-categorization theory, I argue that endorsements of new parties by such organizations sway organization members’ vote preferences and socialize them into identifying with the party. A discrete choice experiment, presenting voters in Bolivia with campaign posters, demonstrates that organizational endorsements are highly effective in mobilizing voters, especially when voters face a new party. Endorsements can even counteract policy and ethnic differences between candidates and voters and sway not only organization members’ own vote preferences but also the preferences of people in their larger social network. The findings suggest an important, understudied route to electoral support and partisan identities in new democracies and have important implications for research on political accountability.
[link to the paper]
Feminist Backlash Against Political Islam: Evidence from Social Encounters in the Field
with Donghyun Danny Choi and Nicholas Sambanis
To what extent is discrimination against Muslim immigrants in Western societies driven by perceptions of a cultural threat posed by political Islam? We hypothesize that natives' attitudes toward Muslim immigrants are based partly on the belief that Muslims hold conservative attitudes towards women and their role in society. Such beliefs will shape anti-immigrant bias among native women in particular--an effect that we describe as the "feminist backlash hypothesis." We test this hypothesis in a large-scale field experiment in 25 cities across three German states, during which 3,800 unknowing bystanders were exposed to a brief social encounter with a confederate who revealed her ideas regarding gender roles. The confederate is always female and we vary her religious and ethnic identity. We find significant bias against Muslim confederates, but the bias is eliminated when bystanders are exposed to information suggesting that the Muslim confederate holds progressive attitudes toward women. This effect is observed only among female bystanders. Our results highlight the centrality of ideational stereotypes in structuring opposition to immigration.
[paper available upon request]
Linguistic Assimilation Does Not Reduce Discrimination Against Immigrants: Evidence from a Field Experiment in Germany [under review]
with Donghyun Danny Choi and Nicholas Sambanis
Many western liberal democracies have witnessed increased bias against immigrants and opposition to multiculturalism. Prior research suggests that ethno-linguistic differences between immigrant and native populations are a key cause of that bias due to the perception of cultural threat. Linguistic assimilation has been proposed as the key mechanism to reduce bias and mitigate conflict between natives and immigrants. Using a large-scale field experiment in Germany--a country with a high influx of immigrants and refugees--we show that linguistic assimilation does not reduce bias. We find that Muslim immigrants are no less likely to be discriminated against if they appear to be linguistically assimilated. However, we also find that ethno-linguistic differences do not cause bias among German natives, suggesting that Germany may have already reached a relatively high level of tolerance to multiculturalism.
[paper available upon request]
Organizational and Partisan Brokerage of Social Benefits: Evidence from Mexico [under review]
with Candelaria Garay and Brian Palmer-Rubin
In recent years, several Latin American countries have expanded large scale non-discretionary social benefits. While these benefits have reduced the political manipulation of low-income citizens, discretionary social programs—whose distribution follows opaque criteria and are often allocated by brokers—continue to exist. Using an original survey in Mexico, we explore how citizens, both beneficiaries and non- beneficiaries, experience and perceive access to discretionary social programs. The literature on clientelism emphasizes the distribution of discretionary benefits by party agents in exchange for electoral support. However, a number of studies have found that access to discretionary social benefits can also operate through community associations or interest organizations. We employ a list experiment to detect whether discretionary social benefits are allocated on the basis of partisan campaign support or organizational participation. Our findings reveal that organizational brokerage is at least as important as the much- studied role of partisan machines for access to these benefits.
[paper available upon request]
Temperature and Outgroup Discrimination
with Donghyun Danny Choi and Nicholas Sambanis
High temperatures have been linked to aggression in humans and recent literature has established a connection between climate change and violent inter-group conflict. Previous studies have emphasized economic mechanisms in explaining the effect of climatic conditions on conflict. Using data from two large-scale field experiments, we show evidence of a direct causal effect of high temperatures on nonviolent inter-group conflict, proxied by discrimination in helping behavior toward an ethno-religious outgroup. In our experiments, as temperatures rise, individuals faced with a choice to provide help to strangers in every-day interactions disciminate more against ethno-religious minorities. In light of expected increases in the frequency of temperature shocks due to global warming, our findings suggest that inter-group conflict of all forms will become more prevalent in the future.
[paper available upon request]
The Paradoxical Effects of Combating Corruption on Institutional Trust and Political Engagement: Evidence from a Natural Experiment [Under Review]
with Nan Zhang
While fighting corruption has become a high priority in many countries around the world, the widespread adoption of anti-corruption measures has yielded few tangible results. This paper ask whether, in failing to promote better governance, efforts to combat corruption may in fact generate negative political consequences. To address this question, we examine a natural experiment involving the sentencing of former Argentine President Menem on corruption charges. Exploiting the coincidence in timing between Menem’s case and fieldwork on a nationally-representative survey, we show that the announcement of Menem’s sentence paradoxically eroded public trust in institutions and produced “resigned citizens” who expressed reduced interest in politics, lower willingness to participate in collective demonstrations, and greater intention to cast spoiled ballots and to abstain from voting. Overall, our findings shed light on an important understudied link between anti-corruption policy and political participation in chronically misgoverned societies.
[link to the paper]
Manuscripts in Progress
Building a Party Top-Down and Bottom Up: The Case of MORENA in Mexico
Organizing the Vote: Interest Organizations and Party-Voter Linkages in Mexico
with Candelaria Garay and Brian Palmer-Rubin
Representation and Party Building: Evidence from a Party Candidate Lottery in Mexico
Organizing the Vote: Interest Organizations and Party-Voter Linkages in Mexico
with Candelaria Garay and Brian Palmer-Rubin
Representation and Party Building: Evidence from a Party Candidate Lottery in Mexico
Selected Work in Progress
Beyond Ethnicity? The Political Construction of Ethnic Identities in Bolivia
Class Revisited: Exploring the Persistence of Class Cleavages in Latin America
From Sugar to Representation: The Rise of Programmatic Politics in Clientelist Systems
Gender, Religion, and Political Engagement: Evidence from a Petition Experiment
with Donghyun Danny Choi and Nicholas Sambanis
Representation and Public Goods: Evidence from a Natural Experiment in Mexico
Returns to Office: Evidence from a Party Candidate Lottery in Mexico
Rupture of Representation? Political Elite Survival After Party System Collapse
with Mariana Giusti-Rodriguez
Women’s Political Participation in Hybrid Regimes (Metaketa V)
with Susan Hyde, Edmund Malesky, Alexander Coppock, Lauren Young, Claire Adida, Leonardo Arriola, Ali Cheema, Asiyati Chiweza, Amanda Clayton, Boniface Dulani, Damir Esenaliev, Anselm Hager, Lukas Hensel, Quynh Hguyen, Elnura Kazakbbaeva, Sarah Khan, Katrina Kosec, Asad Liaqat, Aila Matanock, Cecilia Mo, Shandana Khan Mohmand, Eitan Paul, Amanda Robinson, Paul Schuler, Markus Taussig, and Mai Truong.
Class Revisited: Exploring the Persistence of Class Cleavages in Latin America
From Sugar to Representation: The Rise of Programmatic Politics in Clientelist Systems
Gender, Religion, and Political Engagement: Evidence from a Petition Experiment
with Donghyun Danny Choi and Nicholas Sambanis
Representation and Public Goods: Evidence from a Natural Experiment in Mexico
Returns to Office: Evidence from a Party Candidate Lottery in Mexico
Rupture of Representation? Political Elite Survival After Party System Collapse
with Mariana Giusti-Rodriguez
Women’s Political Participation in Hybrid Regimes (Metaketa V)
with Susan Hyde, Edmund Malesky, Alexander Coppock, Lauren Young, Claire Adida, Leonardo Arriola, Ali Cheema, Asiyati Chiweza, Amanda Clayton, Boniface Dulani, Damir Esenaliev, Anselm Hager, Lukas Hensel, Quynh Hguyen, Elnura Kazakbbaeva, Sarah Khan, Katrina Kosec, Asad Liaqat, Aila Matanock, Cecilia Mo, Shandana Khan Mohmand, Eitan Paul, Amanda Robinson, Paul Schuler, Markus Taussig, and Mai Truong.
Other Publications
"Morales: Continuity and Change," Berkeley Review of Latin American Studies, Spring 2015, pp. 77-79.
"Inequality - A Challenge for Prosperity," Berkeley Review of Latin American Studies, Fall 2012, pp. 7-9.
"Venezuelan Oil Diplomacy and Voting in the U.N. General Assembly," Journal of International Service (20), 2011, pp. 85-107.
"Inequality - A Challenge for Prosperity," Berkeley Review of Latin American Studies, Fall 2012, pp. 7-9.
"Venezuelan Oil Diplomacy and Voting in the U.N. General Assembly," Journal of International Service (20), 2011, pp. 85-107.