Journal Articles

"Parochialism, Social Norms, and Discrimination Against Immigrants," with Donghyun Danny Choi and Nicholas Sambanis, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, forthcoming. 

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.

"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.  [article]

"Venezuelan Oil Diplomacy and Voting in the U.N. General Assembly," Journal of International Service (20), Spring 2011, pp. 85-107

Venezuela enjoys one of the world’s largest oil reserves and uses these resources as an important instrument of its foreign policy. Analyzing the voting behavior of all countries in the Western hemisphere in the United Nations General Assembly from 1994 to 2008, this paper examines whether Venezuelan oil diplomacy towards other countries has increased those countries’ support of Venezuela in the United Nations General Assembly. Correlations between significant increases in voting behavior similarity with Venezuela and the exercise of an oil initiative indicate that Venezuelan oil diplomacy has an impact on other countries’ voting behavior in a few cases. However, the lack of such correlations in most cases leads to the conclusion that Venezuelan oil diplomacy is a highly inefficient instrument to gain influence over other countries in the United Nations General Assembly. Although Venezuelan oil diplomacy might have an influence on some countries, it is unable to dominate most countries’ foreign policy behavior.  [article]

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. 

Working Papers

Building a Party Top-Down and Bottom Up: The Case of MORENA in Mexico​

  

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.

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.

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.

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.

Manuscripts in Progress

  Institutional Capacity for Compliance: Domestic Compliance with the Inter-American Court of Human Rights

  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

  Temperature and Ingroup Bias
        with Donghyun Danny Choi and Nicholas Sambanis​

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

    Identity, Language, and Discrimination: Evidence from a Field Experiment
        with Donghyun Danny Choi and Nicholas Sambanis

    Measuring Feminist Opposition to Political Islam: Evidence from Social Encounters in the Field
        with Donghyun Danny Choi and Nicholas Sambanis

    Religion, Social Norms, and Discrimination Against Immigrants: A Field Experiment in Germany
        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

    Toward a New Conceptual Framework: Patters of Party System Change in Latin America, Europe, and Africa
        with Ruth Berins Collier