Interdisciplinary Workshops on Politics and Policy

To what extent does disability shape political behavior? Roughly one fifth of Americans live with some form of functional disability. Existing literature emphasizes disability as a social and administrative category with far-reaching implications for the distribution of legal rights and socioeconomic resources. Yet, very little attention has been given to people with disabilities (PWD) as political agents. In particular, existing literature has not considered whether and how disability might shape political identity, or whether disability might serve as a basis for political cohesion. This paper addresses this gap. In two original national surveys of American adults with disabilities (N=1,730), Thorp develops and validates a novel measure of subjective identification with disability – the Disability ID scale. He examines the individual-level factors motivating Disability ID, and the implications of Disability ID for a range of political attitudes. Disability ID is strongest among PWD with more visible, long-standing, and functionally limiting conditions, among African-Americans, and among those with greater exposure to social and political institutions for PWD (e.g. SSDI, workplace accommodations). Further, Disability ID is positively associated with support for a range of social and redistributive policies – including those not explicitly targeted at disabled Americans. Thorp replicates these findings using nationally representative data from a team module of the 2022-23 Cooperative Election Study (CES),

Donghyun Danny Choi (Brown), with co-authors Benjamin Laughlin (NYU Abu Dhabi) and Anna Schultz (Independent Researcher), examines how the expansion of mobile internet infrastructure affects national identity in sub-Saharan Africa. In diverse societies where elections are contested along ethno-communal lines, they argue that access to mobile internet undermines national identity because it facilitates voter exposure to the polarizing tendencies of internet-based social media and communication platforms. Applying a difference-in-differences design on mobile coverage maps and geocoded survey data of more than 50,000 African citizens, they show that access to mobile internet reduces identification with the nation by up to 5–7 percentage points. To establish support for our electoral mechanism, the authors exploit as-if random variation in the timing of individuals’ survey interviews relative to presidential elections, during which they argue divisive and polarizing forces are at their peak. Their analysis shows that electoral proximity intensifies the negative effect of mobile internet. These findings highlight how technological innovations can inhibit the process of state-building in diverse societies. The paper on which this talk is based can be downloaded here.

Scholars and practitioners seek development solutions through the engineering and strengthening of state institutions. Yet, the state is not the only or often even the primary arena shaping how citizens, service providers, and state officials engage in actions that constitute politics and development. These individuals are members of religious orders, ethnic communities, and other groups that make claims about them, creating incentives that shape their actions. Recognizing how individuals experience these claims and view the choices before them is essential to understanding political processes and development outcomes. Taking an institutional approach, Professor Ellen Lust explains in her book how the salience of arenas of authority associated with various communities and the nature of social institutions within them affect politics and development. The book establishes a framework of politics and development that allows for knowledge accumulation, guides future research, and can facilitate effective programming. This title is also available as OpenAccess on Cambridge Core.

Whether military experience shapes political behavior is a central puzzle in the study of foreign policy decision-making. Existing theories link military experience with either hawkish or dovish foreign policy preferences. By contrast, we advance a framework that conceptualizes veterans as experts in military affairs. Rather than determining an individual’s political positions about the use of force ex ante, we expect that domain-specific knowledge and social status as an expert will cause veterans to be more resistant to changing their views in response to casualties. We test our argument by computationally analyzing 36,456 Congressional speeches referencing the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (2001-2014). We measure casualty sensitivity by examining whether casualties in constituent communities cause members of Congress to speak more negatively about the conflicts. There is strong evidence of casualty sensitivity among non-veterans but none among veterans. Contrary to the conventional wisdom, there is no evidence that veterans were more hawkish or dovish than non-veterans in terms of their overall tone.

When do the wealthy support redistribution? Gustavo Flores-Macias, a postdoc at the University of Michignan’s Weiser Center for Emerging Democracies, presents a paper written with Mariano Sánchez-Talanquer. It  develops novel theoretical expectations on the relationship between crime, inequality, and support for redistribution among top economic elites. Highlighting the role of social affinity with crime victims, we argue that with high inequality, the preferences of elites are influenced by crime incidents targeting their own ranks, while those of average citizens remain unaffected. Their empirical evidence stems from a survey experiment conducted among the general population and top business elites in Mexico, an elusive group whose preferences remain understudied despite their political influence. We find that crime committed against relatable individuals heightens economic elites’ support for redistribution, with increased endorsement of government intervention to address societal issues as the likely mechanism. Additionally, they uncover a substantial 27% lower level of support for redistributive policies among economic elites compared to ordinary citizens. The study advances an important research agenda on elite attitudes and provides insight into the impact of crime on preferences toward redistribution.

Scholars argue that oversight allows Congress to control the executive agents it empowers to implement law. Yet the tools of oversight are rather limited and debate continues as to how much political control oversight provides. How well can members of Congress motivate action within the bureaucracy? To measure the efficacy of oversight, Seth Hill and Pamela Ban have created a new data set on a bureaucratic deficiency that Congress has sought to reduce since the early 2000s: improperly-made payments to contractors and clients. They estimate the effect of congressional hearings, one of the most important tools of congressional oversight, on subsequent improper payments. They find that hearings on the issue do lead to a decline in improper payments for agencies whose employees are called to testify. But the magnitude of the effect is small relative to the base rate, suggesting strong limits on the effectiveness of congressional oversight. They find similarly small or no effects of correspondence, appropriation committee reports, statutes, and executive action. These findings strongly imply that America’s elected officials struggle to effectively manage implementation of government policy.

An exploration of the findings of joint Palestinian-Israeli survey research experiments, the Palestinian-Israeli Pulse, conducted by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research and Tel Aviv University between 2016-2022 indicate that despite the continued decline in the past decade in the willingness to compromise among the Palestinian and Israeli Jewish publics and the increased militancy in both societies, attitudes on peace and the two-state solution can, under the right conditions, be reversed leading to significant reversal of hardline attitudes. The findings of seven such experiments lead to one main policy conclusion: while public opinion among Palestinians and Israeli Jews is clearly not a force for peace, it is, nonetheless, not an impediment to peace. However, as the hardening of attitudes becomes deeper over time, findings of the more recent experiments show that changing attitudes is becoming much more challenging indicating that the conflict is becoming more resilient.