BOOK
Monitors and Meddlers: How Foreign Actors Influence Local Trust in Elections. 2022. Cambridge University Press. (with Sarah Bush)
This book investigates whether foreign interference helps or harms citizens’ trust in their elections. Trust in elections is a pillar of democracy, yet current research on electoral trust ignores the role foreign actors play in increasing or undermining it. We break new ground by exploring multiple types of foreign influences on elections, including the missions of purportedly-neutral international election observers and the more partisan interventions of Russia and other countries that have recently grabbed headlines. The work delves deep into the psychology of citizens to theorize the conditions under which these interventions promote or undermine trust and democracy. We combine evidence from new and original surveys in three countries: Georgia, Tunisia, and the United States. These countries have all experienced foreign influence around their elections, and the cases will explore how the book’s arguments apply in countries at different levels of democracy.
PEER-REVIEWED PUBLICATIONS
"Ideology at the Water's Edge: Explaining Variation in Public Support for Foreign Aid" Forthcoming. World Development.[paper]
To explain variation in foreign aid levels and attitudes in donor countries, past research emphasizes the importance of values related to the welfare state such as economic ideology. Scholars argue that liberals support redistribution at home in the form of a strong welfare state and redistribution abroad in the form of foreign aid. Yet, the conditions under which values related to domestic politics translate to issues of foreign policy remain undertheorized. I argue that economic ideology interacts with foreign policy orientation -- individuals' placement along the internationalist/isolationist spectrum -- to shape foreign aid attitudes and outcomes. Using original data from surveys fielded in the U.S., UK, and Norway, as well as data on foreign aid spending levels, I show that the relationship between ideology and foreign aid is conditional on foreign policy orientation. The effect is driven by isolationist liberals whose support for redistribution stops at the water's edge.
"Refugees to the Rescue: Motivating Pro-Refugee Public Engagement during the COVID-19 Pandemic" 2021. Journal of Experimental Political Science. (with Claire Adida, Adeline Lo, and Scott Williamson)[paper]
Migrants are often scapegoated during public health crises. Can such crises create opportunities for migrant inclusion instead? Refugee advocates regularly share narratives of refugee contributions to society, and as the COVID-19 pandemic unfolds, many organizations have stepped up their outreach with stories of refugees helping out in the crisis. We have partnered up with one of the country’s leading refugee advocate organizations to test whether solidarity narratives increase public engagement with refugee advocate organizations We combine a Facebook experimental design with an original survey measuring inclusionary attitudes and behavior toward refugees to evaluate the effectiveness of refugee narratives. We test whether migrant narratives framed in the context of COVID-19, targeted to local communities, or labeled as refugees vs. immigrants enhance public engagement with the outreach efforts of refuge organizations Our results help us understand which refugee narratives shape public engagement with efforts to support vulnerable minorities during a public health crisis.
"Increasing Immigrant Inclusion: Family History, Empathy, and Immigration in the United States" 2021. American Political Science Review, 115(2): 686-693. (with Scott Williamson, Claire Adida, Adeline Lo, Melina Platas and Seth Werfel)[paper]
Immigration is a highly polarized issue in the United States, and negative attitudes toward immigrants are common. Yet almost all Americans are descended from people who originated outside the United States. Can this common history overcome the intense polarization that migration policy elicits? In this paper, we draw from recent studies showing that perspective-taking decreases prejudice toward outgroups to investigate whether priming Americans on their own immigration history induces more support for immigrants and immigration. We test this hypothesis with three separate survey experiments conducted over the past two years. Our findings show that priming family history—a light-touch intervention—generates small but consistent inclusionary effects on attitudes toward immigrants and immigration policy. These effects are immediate, and occur even among partisan subgroups and Americans who approve of President Trump. Furthermore, we provide evidence that increased empathy for immigrants constitutes the mechanism driving these effects. Our consistent results contribute to growing experimental literatures on prejudice reduction and migration by suggesting an important role for empathy in shifting attitudes toward immigration.
"Foreign Meddling and Mass Attitudes Towards International Economic Engagement" 2020. International Organization, 74(3): 584-609. (with Sarah Bush) [paper]
What explains variation in individual preferences for foreign economic engagement? Although a large and growing literature addresses that question, little research examines how partner countries affect public opinion on policies such as trade, foreign aid, and investment. We construct a new theory arguing that political side-taking by outside powers shapes individuals’ support for engaging economically with those countries. We test the theory using original surveys in the United States and Tunisia. In both cases, the potential partner country’s side-taking in the partisan politics of the respondents’ country dramatically shapes support for foreign economic relations. As the rise of new aid donors, investors, and trade partners creates new choices in economic partners, the theory and findings contained in this article are critical to understanding mass preferences about open economic engagement.
"Islam, Gender Segregation, and Political Engagement: Evidence from an experiment in Tunisia" 2020. Political Science Research & Methods, 1-17. (Winner of the APSA Women and Politics Section Best Paper Award 2016, with Sarah Bush) [paper]
Does officeholder gender affect citizens' political engagement? This paper answers that question using evidence from a nationally-representative experiment in Tunisia. It finds that people were significantly more likely to want to contact their representatives when primed to think of women officeholders as compared to a mixed-gender group of officeholders. This pattern did not vary according to the respondent's gender. These findings are surprising in light of the literature, which suggests that people will either be less willing to contact women officeholders in general or that contact will vary by the citizen's gender. Further analyses reveal that the effect is concentrated among supporters of the main Islamist party in Tunisia, who were notably less likely to contact the mixed-gender group. This finding is consistent with the explanation that political Islamists support gender segregation more than secularists and encourages future work examining the implications of the women's political presence in conservative environments.
"Selling International Law Enforcement: Elite Justifications and Public Values" 2020. Research & Politics, 7(3): 1-7. (with Melissa Lee)[paper]
This paper investigates the effectiveness of common elite justifications for marshaling public support for international law enforcement. We study two justifications -- the illegality of a country's actions, and the consequences of those actions for international order -- and argue that their effectiveness depends on two public values: ideology and interpersonal norm enforcement. We test our arguments in the case of international law prohibiting the violent seizure of territory. Using an original survey experiment fielded in the U.S. and Australia, we find that these justifications shape support for enforcement, and that the frames appeal to different segments of the public. These results imply elites can build a broader coalition of support by using multiple justifications. We contribute to the scholarship on international law by showing how the domestic public - - typically considered mechanism for generating compliance within states -- can impede or facilitate third-party enforcement of the law between states.
"Transnational Ties and Support for Foreign Aid." 2020. International Studies Quarterly, 64(1): 133-147. [paper]
Although globalization and international migration have increased personal connections across national borders, we know little about how these connections affect attitudes towards foreign policy. This study examines how transnational ties affect support for foreign aid in donor countries. It argues that transnational ties increase support for foreign aid via two mechanisms: group interests and cosmopolitanism. An original survey experiment embedded in a national survey of 1,000 Latino Americans shows that Latinos vary significantly in the strength of their transnational ties, which is strongly correlated with support for foreign aid. The findings from the experiment, which varies the location of an American foreign aid program, demonstrate that although group interests explain some of this effect, cosmopolitanism is also an important mechanism. Indeed, Latinos with transnational ties equally support aid to Africa and Latin America. A test of the generalizability of the findings to other racial and ethnic groups in the United States and United Kingdom reveal that group interests may be a more powerful mechanism outside of the Latino American community. This study encourages further work on the relationship between transnational ties and foreign policy attitudes and provides insight into the emerging link between international migration and foreign aid.
"Do Electronic Devices in Face-to-Face Interviews Change Survey Behavior? Evidence from a Developing Country." 2019. Research & Politics, 6(2): 1-7. (with Sarah Bush) [paper]
A large literature shows that survey mode and survey technologies significantly affect item non- response and response distributions. Yet as researchers increasingly conduct surveys in the developing world, little attention has been devoted to understanding how new technologies—such as the use of electronic devices in face-to-face interviews—produce bias there. We hypothesize that using electronic devices instead of pen and paper can affect survey behavior via two pathways: a wealth effect and a surveillance effect. To test the hypotheses, we use data from a two-wave panel survey fielded in Tunisia. We investigate whether responses collected in Wave 1 with pen and paper changed when some individuals were interviewed in Wave 2 by interviewers using tablet computers. Consistent with the wealth effect hypothesis, more than half of the lowest income respondents reported a higher income in the second wave when interviewers used tablets. Conversely, we find little evidence that concerns about surveillance changed survey behavior.
"Who's There? Election Observer Identity and the Local Credibility of Elections." 2018. International Organization, 72(3): 659-692. (with Sarah Bush) [paper]
Prior research has sought to understand the rise of election observers and their consequences for outcomes such as fraud, protest, and violence. These studies are important, but they miss a significant micro-foundational dynamic that observers themselves care about: the effect that election observers have on local attitudes about elections. How does election observer identity affect the local credibility of elections? We argue that the activities of election observers can enhance the local credibility of elections, but only when locals perceive observers as being both capable of detecting fraud and unbiased in that pursuit. Importantly, not all observer groups are seen as capable and unbiased. Experimental evidence from a large-scale, nationally representative experiment in Tunisia supports the argument. A key finding is that observers from the Arab League---an organization not known internationally for quality election observation---enhanced credibility the most as they were the only group perceived locally as both relatively capable and unbiased.
"Preferences for Domestic Action Over International Transfers in Global Climate Policy" 2018. Journal of Experimental Political Science, 5(2): 73-87. (with Mark Buntaine) [paper]
Cost-effective and equitable climate change mitigation requires the transfer of resources from developed to developing countries. In two behavioral experiments, we demonstrate that American subjects act according to a strong home preference, by making private donations and writing letters in support of public spending more often for mitigation programs located at home versus those overseas. We attempt to overcome the preference to act at home by randomly informing some subjects that foreign programs are more cost-effective than domestic programs. Only in the case of private donations is home preference ever mitigated. From a separate experimental treatment, we show that the preference against foreign programs is exacerbated when the co-benefits of mitigation programs are made salient. Importantly, home preference crosses party lines, indicating that it is a deep-seeded, affective preference. These findings highlight significant political obstacles to international cooperation on climate change that relies on transfers.
"The Promise and Limits of Election Observers in Building Election Credibility." 2017. The Journal of Politics, 79(3): 921-935. (with Sarah Bush) [paper]
Scholars and practitioners posit that election observers (EOs) affect local beliefs about the credibility of elections. Though these effects have important implications for democratization, they remain unexamined at the individual level. This paper applies models of Bayesian opinion updating and motivated reasoning to illuminate the conditions under which EOs change beliefs about elections. Experimental evidence from a national survey fielded immediately following the first democratic parliamentary election in Tunisia tests the argument. Two important findings emerge. First, exposure to EOs' positive and negative statements produces a small but significant difference in individuals' perceptions of the election on average. Second, EOs' negative statements cause the election's main losing partisans---who may have had weak prior beliefs that the election was credible and were likely receptive to critical information---to believe the election was significantly less credible. These findings establish a baseline for future work on how third-party monitors shape local perceptions of political processes.
"The Effects of Authoritarian Iconography: An Experimental Test." 2016. Comparative Political Studies, 49(13): 1704-1738. (with Sarah Bush, Aaron Erlich, and Yael Zeira) [paper]
This project builds on the rich literature on authoritarian survival asking whether public images of state leaders promote citizens’ compliance with the government? If so, why do they have that effect and among whom? We argue that authoritarian iconography increases compliance with and support for the state via three causal mechanisms: legitimacy, self-interest, and coercion. We will use a laboratory experiment to evaluate the effect of public images of state leaders on citizens’ political compliance and support. The findings promise to inform our understanding of how and why authoritarian leaders maintain power. The findings appear in Comparative Political Studies for their special issue on research transparency. The special issue accepted manuscripts "results-blind".
"Enfranchising Displaced Voters: Lessons from Bosnia-Herzegovina." 2007. Election Law Journal, 6(4): 354–371. (with Erik S. Herron) [paper]
How can the designers and administrators of election rules balance the need to enfranchise voters with the need to ensure the integrity of the vote? This tension is particularly acute when large numbers of voting-age citizens are displaced from their permanent residences due to war, natural disaster, or other conditions. Our article addresses the challenges of enfranchising refugees and internally-displaced persons (IDPs) by assessing statutory and practical experiences of Bosnia-Herzegovina from 1996–2006. This article adds to the research on displaced voters by exploring the treatment of refugees and IDPs in election laws, the debate surrounding their inclusion, and by assessing the participation of refugees and IDPs in one country across many elections.
SUBMITTED
"No Man Left Behind? Hostage Deservingness and the Politics of Hostage Recovery" (with Danielle Gilbert)[email for paper]
Kidnappings of soldiers, journalists, aid workers, and other civilians by armed groups happen every day, yet the politics of hostage recovery remains understudied. We develop an original theory about hostage deservingness that investigates how hostages' personal responsibility for their own capture shapes public opinion and elite decision-making. We also examine the influence of traditional principles associated with hostage recovery and the operational costs of missions. Our multi-method approach includes the use of survey experiments embedded in large national surveys of Americans and 22 interviews with current and former senior hostage recovery personnel. Across our experiments, we find that when capture occurs under circumstances that suggest the hostage bears responsibility, support for recovery decreases, especially when costs are high. We further demonstrate that policymakers are similarly susceptible to notions of deservingness, which affects all parts of the recovery process: internal debate among policymakers, operational decisions, and messaging to the public.
"Zombies Ahead: Explaining the Rise of Low-Quality Election Monitoring" (with Sarah Bush and Christina Cottiero)[email for paper]
The international election monitoring regime has become considerably more complex in the twenty-first century. Although the number of organizations engaged in high-quality election monitoring has plateaued, the number of low-quality monitors---commonly known as zombie monitors---has continued to grow. Low-quality election monitors may threaten democracy because they can validate flawed elections and undermine the legitimacy of the international election monitoring regime. This article argues that international politics have played a crucial role in the diffusion of low-quality election monitors. It hypothesizes that ties with autocratic powers that promote low- quality observers and membership in authoritarian regional organizations significantly increase the likelihood that a country will host low-quality monitors at its elections. To test the hypotheses, the article draws on original data on international election observation since 2000, which identifies the most comprehensive set of groups of election monitoring entities to-date. A statistical analysis of the dataset supports the argument.
"When Hearts Meet Minds: Complementary Effects of Perspective-Getting and Information on Refugee Inclusion" (with Scott Williamson, Claire Adida, Adeline Lo, Melina Platas)[email for paper]
Perspective-getting and correcting misconceptions are common interventions to promote inclusion toward outgroups. However, each strategy has limitations. Information corrections yield ambiguous effects, and empathy-based interventions may reproduce the biases they are meant to alleviate. We develop a theoretical framework that clarifies the strengths and weaknesses of each strategy, and offer a design to identify the conditions under which they are most effective. Us- ing three studies on refugee inclusion with nearly 15,000 Americans over three years, we find that information and perspective-getting affect different outcomes. Perspective-getting affects warmth, policy preferences, and behavior, while information leads to factual updating only. We show that combining both interven- tions produces an additive effect on all outcomes, that neither strategy enhances the other, but that bundling the strategies may prevent backfire effects of in- formation. Our results underscore the promise and limits of information and perspective-getting for promoting inclusion, highlighting the benefits of integrat- ing the two strategies.
"Racial Paternalism and Support for Foreign Aid in the U.S. and Norway: Evidence from the Mauritius Experiment" (with Andy Baker)[email for paper]
Most scholars agree that race affects preferences for domestic redistribution, yet few have studied its effect on attitudes toward international redistribution. We argue that, contra conventional wisdom on domestic redistribution, white citizens in donor countries are more supportive of foreign aid when thinking about foreign black recipients than when thinking about white ones. This apparent benevolence is nonetheless rooted in the paternalistic view that recipients of African descent have less human agency than those of European descent. We also argue that whites in donor countries do not apply these racially paternalistic views to poor foreigners of non-African races and that racial paternalism can be mitigated by efforts to promote aid as a collaborative effort between donors and recipients. Our study provides support for these claims with two survey experiments conducted in the U.S. and Norway. Both avoid problems of confounding by manipulating the purported race of recipients within a single, racially diverse recipient country: Mauritius. U.S. respondents are more generous to foreign blacks for paternalistic reasons, but they are not so toward poor of South Asian or Chinese descent. Moreover, race of recipients matters little in the more generous aid-giving context of Norway, where citizens are socialized to think of development as the embodiment of international solidarity.
Monitors and Meddlers: How Foreign Actors Influence Local Trust in Elections. 2022. Cambridge University Press. (with Sarah Bush)
This book investigates whether foreign interference helps or harms citizens’ trust in their elections. Trust in elections is a pillar of democracy, yet current research on electoral trust ignores the role foreign actors play in increasing or undermining it. We break new ground by exploring multiple types of foreign influences on elections, including the missions of purportedly-neutral international election observers and the more partisan interventions of Russia and other countries that have recently grabbed headlines. The work delves deep into the psychology of citizens to theorize the conditions under which these interventions promote or undermine trust and democracy. We combine evidence from new and original surveys in three countries: Georgia, Tunisia, and the United States. These countries have all experienced foreign influence around their elections, and the cases will explore how the book’s arguments apply in countries at different levels of democracy.
PEER-REVIEWED PUBLICATIONS
"Ideology at the Water's Edge: Explaining Variation in Public Support for Foreign Aid" Forthcoming. World Development.[paper]
To explain variation in foreign aid levels and attitudes in donor countries, past research emphasizes the importance of values related to the welfare state such as economic ideology. Scholars argue that liberals support redistribution at home in the form of a strong welfare state and redistribution abroad in the form of foreign aid. Yet, the conditions under which values related to domestic politics translate to issues of foreign policy remain undertheorized. I argue that economic ideology interacts with foreign policy orientation -- individuals' placement along the internationalist/isolationist spectrum -- to shape foreign aid attitudes and outcomes. Using original data from surveys fielded in the U.S., UK, and Norway, as well as data on foreign aid spending levels, I show that the relationship between ideology and foreign aid is conditional on foreign policy orientation. The effect is driven by isolationist liberals whose support for redistribution stops at the water's edge.
"Refugees to the Rescue: Motivating Pro-Refugee Public Engagement during the COVID-19 Pandemic" 2021. Journal of Experimental Political Science. (with Claire Adida, Adeline Lo, and Scott Williamson)[paper]
Migrants are often scapegoated during public health crises. Can such crises create opportunities for migrant inclusion instead? Refugee advocates regularly share narratives of refugee contributions to society, and as the COVID-19 pandemic unfolds, many organizations have stepped up their outreach with stories of refugees helping out in the crisis. We have partnered up with one of the country’s leading refugee advocate organizations to test whether solidarity narratives increase public engagement with refugee advocate organizations We combine a Facebook experimental design with an original survey measuring inclusionary attitudes and behavior toward refugees to evaluate the effectiveness of refugee narratives. We test whether migrant narratives framed in the context of COVID-19, targeted to local communities, or labeled as refugees vs. immigrants enhance public engagement with the outreach efforts of refuge organizations Our results help us understand which refugee narratives shape public engagement with efforts to support vulnerable minorities during a public health crisis.
"Increasing Immigrant Inclusion: Family History, Empathy, and Immigration in the United States" 2021. American Political Science Review, 115(2): 686-693. (with Scott Williamson, Claire Adida, Adeline Lo, Melina Platas and Seth Werfel)[paper]
Immigration is a highly polarized issue in the United States, and negative attitudes toward immigrants are common. Yet almost all Americans are descended from people who originated outside the United States. Can this common history overcome the intense polarization that migration policy elicits? In this paper, we draw from recent studies showing that perspective-taking decreases prejudice toward outgroups to investigate whether priming Americans on their own immigration history induces more support for immigrants and immigration. We test this hypothesis with three separate survey experiments conducted over the past two years. Our findings show that priming family history—a light-touch intervention—generates small but consistent inclusionary effects on attitudes toward immigrants and immigration policy. These effects are immediate, and occur even among partisan subgroups and Americans who approve of President Trump. Furthermore, we provide evidence that increased empathy for immigrants constitutes the mechanism driving these effects. Our consistent results contribute to growing experimental literatures on prejudice reduction and migration by suggesting an important role for empathy in shifting attitudes toward immigration.
"Foreign Meddling and Mass Attitudes Towards International Economic Engagement" 2020. International Organization, 74(3): 584-609. (with Sarah Bush) [paper]
What explains variation in individual preferences for foreign economic engagement? Although a large and growing literature addresses that question, little research examines how partner countries affect public opinion on policies such as trade, foreign aid, and investment. We construct a new theory arguing that political side-taking by outside powers shapes individuals’ support for engaging economically with those countries. We test the theory using original surveys in the United States and Tunisia. In both cases, the potential partner country’s side-taking in the partisan politics of the respondents’ country dramatically shapes support for foreign economic relations. As the rise of new aid donors, investors, and trade partners creates new choices in economic partners, the theory and findings contained in this article are critical to understanding mass preferences about open economic engagement.
"Islam, Gender Segregation, and Political Engagement: Evidence from an experiment in Tunisia" 2020. Political Science Research & Methods, 1-17. (Winner of the APSA Women and Politics Section Best Paper Award 2016, with Sarah Bush) [paper]
Does officeholder gender affect citizens' political engagement? This paper answers that question using evidence from a nationally-representative experiment in Tunisia. It finds that people were significantly more likely to want to contact their representatives when primed to think of women officeholders as compared to a mixed-gender group of officeholders. This pattern did not vary according to the respondent's gender. These findings are surprising in light of the literature, which suggests that people will either be less willing to contact women officeholders in general or that contact will vary by the citizen's gender. Further analyses reveal that the effect is concentrated among supporters of the main Islamist party in Tunisia, who were notably less likely to contact the mixed-gender group. This finding is consistent with the explanation that political Islamists support gender segregation more than secularists and encourages future work examining the implications of the women's political presence in conservative environments.
"Selling International Law Enforcement: Elite Justifications and Public Values" 2020. Research & Politics, 7(3): 1-7. (with Melissa Lee)[paper]
This paper investigates the effectiveness of common elite justifications for marshaling public support for international law enforcement. We study two justifications -- the illegality of a country's actions, and the consequences of those actions for international order -- and argue that their effectiveness depends on two public values: ideology and interpersonal norm enforcement. We test our arguments in the case of international law prohibiting the violent seizure of territory. Using an original survey experiment fielded in the U.S. and Australia, we find that these justifications shape support for enforcement, and that the frames appeal to different segments of the public. These results imply elites can build a broader coalition of support by using multiple justifications. We contribute to the scholarship on international law by showing how the domestic public - - typically considered mechanism for generating compliance within states -- can impede or facilitate third-party enforcement of the law between states.
"Transnational Ties and Support for Foreign Aid." 2020. International Studies Quarterly, 64(1): 133-147. [paper]
Although globalization and international migration have increased personal connections across national borders, we know little about how these connections affect attitudes towards foreign policy. This study examines how transnational ties affect support for foreign aid in donor countries. It argues that transnational ties increase support for foreign aid via two mechanisms: group interests and cosmopolitanism. An original survey experiment embedded in a national survey of 1,000 Latino Americans shows that Latinos vary significantly in the strength of their transnational ties, which is strongly correlated with support for foreign aid. The findings from the experiment, which varies the location of an American foreign aid program, demonstrate that although group interests explain some of this effect, cosmopolitanism is also an important mechanism. Indeed, Latinos with transnational ties equally support aid to Africa and Latin America. A test of the generalizability of the findings to other racial and ethnic groups in the United States and United Kingdom reveal that group interests may be a more powerful mechanism outside of the Latino American community. This study encourages further work on the relationship between transnational ties and foreign policy attitudes and provides insight into the emerging link between international migration and foreign aid.
"Do Electronic Devices in Face-to-Face Interviews Change Survey Behavior? Evidence from a Developing Country." 2019. Research & Politics, 6(2): 1-7. (with Sarah Bush) [paper]
A large literature shows that survey mode and survey technologies significantly affect item non- response and response distributions. Yet as researchers increasingly conduct surveys in the developing world, little attention has been devoted to understanding how new technologies—such as the use of electronic devices in face-to-face interviews—produce bias there. We hypothesize that using electronic devices instead of pen and paper can affect survey behavior via two pathways: a wealth effect and a surveillance effect. To test the hypotheses, we use data from a two-wave panel survey fielded in Tunisia. We investigate whether responses collected in Wave 1 with pen and paper changed when some individuals were interviewed in Wave 2 by interviewers using tablet computers. Consistent with the wealth effect hypothesis, more than half of the lowest income respondents reported a higher income in the second wave when interviewers used tablets. Conversely, we find little evidence that concerns about surveillance changed survey behavior.
"Who's There? Election Observer Identity and the Local Credibility of Elections." 2018. International Organization, 72(3): 659-692. (with Sarah Bush) [paper]
Prior research has sought to understand the rise of election observers and their consequences for outcomes such as fraud, protest, and violence. These studies are important, but they miss a significant micro-foundational dynamic that observers themselves care about: the effect that election observers have on local attitudes about elections. How does election observer identity affect the local credibility of elections? We argue that the activities of election observers can enhance the local credibility of elections, but only when locals perceive observers as being both capable of detecting fraud and unbiased in that pursuit. Importantly, not all observer groups are seen as capable and unbiased. Experimental evidence from a large-scale, nationally representative experiment in Tunisia supports the argument. A key finding is that observers from the Arab League---an organization not known internationally for quality election observation---enhanced credibility the most as they were the only group perceived locally as both relatively capable and unbiased.
"Preferences for Domestic Action Over International Transfers in Global Climate Policy" 2018. Journal of Experimental Political Science, 5(2): 73-87. (with Mark Buntaine) [paper]
Cost-effective and equitable climate change mitigation requires the transfer of resources from developed to developing countries. In two behavioral experiments, we demonstrate that American subjects act according to a strong home preference, by making private donations and writing letters in support of public spending more often for mitigation programs located at home versus those overseas. We attempt to overcome the preference to act at home by randomly informing some subjects that foreign programs are more cost-effective than domestic programs. Only in the case of private donations is home preference ever mitigated. From a separate experimental treatment, we show that the preference against foreign programs is exacerbated when the co-benefits of mitigation programs are made salient. Importantly, home preference crosses party lines, indicating that it is a deep-seeded, affective preference. These findings highlight significant political obstacles to international cooperation on climate change that relies on transfers.
"The Promise and Limits of Election Observers in Building Election Credibility." 2017. The Journal of Politics, 79(3): 921-935. (with Sarah Bush) [paper]
Scholars and practitioners posit that election observers (EOs) affect local beliefs about the credibility of elections. Though these effects have important implications for democratization, they remain unexamined at the individual level. This paper applies models of Bayesian opinion updating and motivated reasoning to illuminate the conditions under which EOs change beliefs about elections. Experimental evidence from a national survey fielded immediately following the first democratic parliamentary election in Tunisia tests the argument. Two important findings emerge. First, exposure to EOs' positive and negative statements produces a small but significant difference in individuals' perceptions of the election on average. Second, EOs' negative statements cause the election's main losing partisans---who may have had weak prior beliefs that the election was credible and were likely receptive to critical information---to believe the election was significantly less credible. These findings establish a baseline for future work on how third-party monitors shape local perceptions of political processes.
"The Effects of Authoritarian Iconography: An Experimental Test." 2016. Comparative Political Studies, 49(13): 1704-1738. (with Sarah Bush, Aaron Erlich, and Yael Zeira) [paper]
This project builds on the rich literature on authoritarian survival asking whether public images of state leaders promote citizens’ compliance with the government? If so, why do they have that effect and among whom? We argue that authoritarian iconography increases compliance with and support for the state via three causal mechanisms: legitimacy, self-interest, and coercion. We will use a laboratory experiment to evaluate the effect of public images of state leaders on citizens’ political compliance and support. The findings promise to inform our understanding of how and why authoritarian leaders maintain power. The findings appear in Comparative Political Studies for their special issue on research transparency. The special issue accepted manuscripts "results-blind".
"Enfranchising Displaced Voters: Lessons from Bosnia-Herzegovina." 2007. Election Law Journal, 6(4): 354–371. (with Erik S. Herron) [paper]
How can the designers and administrators of election rules balance the need to enfranchise voters with the need to ensure the integrity of the vote? This tension is particularly acute when large numbers of voting-age citizens are displaced from their permanent residences due to war, natural disaster, or other conditions. Our article addresses the challenges of enfranchising refugees and internally-displaced persons (IDPs) by assessing statutory and practical experiences of Bosnia-Herzegovina from 1996–2006. This article adds to the research on displaced voters by exploring the treatment of refugees and IDPs in election laws, the debate surrounding their inclusion, and by assessing the participation of refugees and IDPs in one country across many elections.
SUBMITTED
"No Man Left Behind? Hostage Deservingness and the Politics of Hostage Recovery" (with Danielle Gilbert)[email for paper]
Kidnappings of soldiers, journalists, aid workers, and other civilians by armed groups happen every day, yet the politics of hostage recovery remains understudied. We develop an original theory about hostage deservingness that investigates how hostages' personal responsibility for their own capture shapes public opinion and elite decision-making. We also examine the influence of traditional principles associated with hostage recovery and the operational costs of missions. Our multi-method approach includes the use of survey experiments embedded in large national surveys of Americans and 22 interviews with current and former senior hostage recovery personnel. Across our experiments, we find that when capture occurs under circumstances that suggest the hostage bears responsibility, support for recovery decreases, especially when costs are high. We further demonstrate that policymakers are similarly susceptible to notions of deservingness, which affects all parts of the recovery process: internal debate among policymakers, operational decisions, and messaging to the public.
"Zombies Ahead: Explaining the Rise of Low-Quality Election Monitoring" (with Sarah Bush and Christina Cottiero)[email for paper]
The international election monitoring regime has become considerably more complex in the twenty-first century. Although the number of organizations engaged in high-quality election monitoring has plateaued, the number of low-quality monitors---commonly known as zombie monitors---has continued to grow. Low-quality election monitors may threaten democracy because they can validate flawed elections and undermine the legitimacy of the international election monitoring regime. This article argues that international politics have played a crucial role in the diffusion of low-quality election monitors. It hypothesizes that ties with autocratic powers that promote low- quality observers and membership in authoritarian regional organizations significantly increase the likelihood that a country will host low-quality monitors at its elections. To test the hypotheses, the article draws on original data on international election observation since 2000, which identifies the most comprehensive set of groups of election monitoring entities to-date. A statistical analysis of the dataset supports the argument.
"When Hearts Meet Minds: Complementary Effects of Perspective-Getting and Information on Refugee Inclusion" (with Scott Williamson, Claire Adida, Adeline Lo, Melina Platas)[email for paper]
Perspective-getting and correcting misconceptions are common interventions to promote inclusion toward outgroups. However, each strategy has limitations. Information corrections yield ambiguous effects, and empathy-based interventions may reproduce the biases they are meant to alleviate. We develop a theoretical framework that clarifies the strengths and weaknesses of each strategy, and offer a design to identify the conditions under which they are most effective. Us- ing three studies on refugee inclusion with nearly 15,000 Americans over three years, we find that information and perspective-getting affect different outcomes. Perspective-getting affects warmth, policy preferences, and behavior, while information leads to factual updating only. We show that combining both interven- tions produces an additive effect on all outcomes, that neither strategy enhances the other, but that bundling the strategies may prevent backfire effects of in- formation. Our results underscore the promise and limits of information and perspective-getting for promoting inclusion, highlighting the benefits of integrat- ing the two strategies.
"Racial Paternalism and Support for Foreign Aid in the U.S. and Norway: Evidence from the Mauritius Experiment" (with Andy Baker)[email for paper]
Most scholars agree that race affects preferences for domestic redistribution, yet few have studied its effect on attitudes toward international redistribution. We argue that, contra conventional wisdom on domestic redistribution, white citizens in donor countries are more supportive of foreign aid when thinking about foreign black recipients than when thinking about white ones. This apparent benevolence is nonetheless rooted in the paternalistic view that recipients of African descent have less human agency than those of European descent. We also argue that whites in donor countries do not apply these racially paternalistic views to poor foreigners of non-African races and that racial paternalism can be mitigated by efforts to promote aid as a collaborative effort between donors and recipients. Our study provides support for these claims with two survey experiments conducted in the U.S. and Norway. Both avoid problems of confounding by manipulating the purported race of recipients within a single, racially diverse recipient country: Mauritius. U.S. respondents are more generous to foreign blacks for paternalistic reasons, but they are not so toward poor of South Asian or Chinese descent. Moreover, race of recipients matters little in the more generous aid-giving context of Norway, where citizens are socialized to think of development as the embodiment of international solidarity.
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Twitter: @laurenrprather
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Email: LPrather@ucsd.edu
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