Interdisciplinary Workshops on Politics and Policy Archive 2024-2025
About the workshops
Interdisciplinary Workshops on Politics and Policy are weekly seminars hosted by the Center for Political Studies. Speakers present current research on a wide range of topics. Abstracts of past workshops are available in the menu to the right.
Past Events
When Hard Work Isn’t Enough: Race, Inequality and the Politics of Achieving the American Dream
Sept. 11, 2024 | Noon to 1:00 PM EST
Zoe Walker, University of Michigan
Abstract
Despite long-standing racial disparities in wealth, housing, and education, many Black Americans still believe in the American Dream. What are the political consequences of believing America provides fair opportunities for economic mobility under conditions of ongoing racial inequality? In this paper, I propose the American Dream narrative undermines Blacks’ awareness of racial barriers in society and, in turn, weakens support for policies to reduce inequality. To test my claims, I introduce a novel measure of Attitudes about the American Dream (AAD) to assess how much an individual believes the American opportunity structure is open to people who work hard. I then combine analyses of qualitative and quantitative data from three original surveys of Black American adults. Across two observational studies, I find the American Dream narrative is associated with increased support for stereotypes about Black Americans as a group, increased opposition to spending on social welfare programs, and diminished support for government intervention to reduce racial disparities. In a third study, I analyze over 1,000 open-ended responses to the AAD measure. Using a structural topic model, I find Blacks who score high on the AAD are significantly less likely to discuss racism when describing the American opportunity structure. I conclude by discussing how this study of Black public opinion provides compelling evidence of the linkage between economic beliefs, explicit racial attitudes and racially conservative policy preferences among disadvantaged groups.
Democracy Dismissed: When Leaders and Citizens Choose Election Violence
Sept. 18, 2024 | Noon to 1:00 PM EST
Megan Turnbull, University of Georgia
Abstract
In democratic settings, election violence is often jointly produced: it relies on elite incentives and abilities to deploy violence, but equally, on the willingness of ordinary actors to participate. Yet many studies of election violence overlook this elite-citizen interaction, effectively black boxing the conditions and processes through which elites mobilize people to fight. This article introduces and advances the concept of the joint production of election violence. A theory of joint production considers the process through which elites and ordinary citizens come together to produce violence, asking how, when, and for whom election-related violence becomes thinkable and feasible. The concept also complicates the assumption that supporters are ready and willing to use violence, and instead, specifies how elites coordinate with ordinary actors, including the narratives and appeals that are used to legitimize violence, as well as the social infrastructure that makes violence feasible. Using Nigeria and the U.S. as illustrative case studies, this article provides an analytic framework that can help facilitate more systematic and comparative analyses of elite-citizen interactions in the context of electoral violence, while also bringing theories of election violence into conversation with studies of democratic erosion and right-wing extremism.
Creative Construction: The Rise and Stall of Infrastructure in Latin America
Sept. 25, 2024 | Noon to 1:00 PM EST
Alisha Holland, Harvard University
Abstract
Infrastructure is at the heart of contemporary development strategies. Yet short time horizons are thought to impede infrastructure provision in democracies. Why do elected politicians invest in infrastructure projects that will not be completed during their time in office? The answer depends on understanding what infrastructure is and does in politics. I argue that the political rewards from infrastructure projects come from the associated contracts. Like many goods and services, infrastructure investments are neither fully privatized, in the sense of transferring ownership to the private sector, nor fully public, in that the state directly builds projects. Governments instead contract out to the private sector. Politicians use their discretion in the contracting process to secure campaign donations, as well as personal rents. They also manipulate contracts—and particularly the use of public-private partnerships (PPPs)— to hide project costs, shift liabilities to future administrations, and move project decisions away from legislatures. Detailed evidence from 1,000 large infrastructure contracts, judicial investigations and leaked financial documents, and qualitative interviews with politicians and bureaucrats in Latin America demonstrate why politicians invest in infrastructure and why projects often fail to produce the economic development and social welfare gains promised.
Religion is a Racial Appeal (and Vice Versa)
Oct. 2, 2024 | Noon to 1:00 PM EST
Shayla Olson, University of Michigan
Abstract
This study explores the interconnected roles of racial attitudes and religious identity in American politics. Building on existing literature on racial priming, I argue that historical and sociological connections between race and religion create a dynamic where, for white Christians in particular, religious identity shapes responses to racial appeals, and racial attitudes influence reactions to religious cues. Through two survey experiments, I examine responses to racial and religious appeals among Black, Latino, and white Christians, as well as white non-Christians. The findings reveal that white Christians’ religious attachments can be activated by racial appeals, and that whites’ racial attitudes can be triggered by religious messaging. This suggests that the boundaries between racial and religious identities are fluid, with each capable of priming the other in political contexts. These findings imply that political elites may strategically use religious language to covertly evoke racial attitudes, thereby influencing political preferences in ways that have been underestimated in previous research. Moreover, racial appeals may have a more profound effect than previously realized, as they may also activate religious group attachments.
Ideology, Idiosyncrasy, and Instability in the American Electorate
Oct. 16, 2024 | Noon to 1:00 PM EST *Room 6050
David Broockman, University of California, Berkeley
Abstract
(David Broockman and Benjamin Lauderdale): Scholars have debated to what extent Americans’ views on issues are stable, moderate, and ideological. These questions are crucial for understanding polarization and representation, such as to what extent swing voters hold centrist views on issues or are instead cross-pressured across issues; and to what extent the public supports extreme policies. We illustrate why these questions are linked and the need to address them simultaneously. To address these questions, we present a statistical model which estimates the share of individuals’ expressed views which can be explained by ideology, idiosyncrasy, and instability. In pilot data, we find that these explain roughly similar shares of the variation in Americans’ expressed views, but that these shares vary meaningfully across people. We find that ideology is tightly linked to political knowledge, while idiosyncrasy – not instability – is most linked with expressing extreme views. Finally, we find that few voters who prior work characterizes as moderate have centrist views across most issues, but that they are rather largely cross-pressured, agreeing with each party—and sometimes being more extreme than either party—on different issues.
Prospective Threats and Retrospective Views
Oct. 23, 2024 | Noon to 1:00 PM EST
Alexander Sahn, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Abstract
Public participation in local policy making is dominated by a small group of residents who are unrepresentative of the larger population. Why do politicians grease this squeaky wheel? One possibility is that commenters who remember policy decisions that went against their preferences may vote against incumbent politicians and mobilize others to do so as well. This work investigates this possibility by recontacting commenters at public meetings. Currently in the field, this abstract will be updated when results are available.
Unseen Politics: Hidden Impact of Entertainment Media in America
Oct. 30, 2024 | Noon to 1:00 PM EST
Eunji Kim (Columbia University)
Abstract
The Patriarchy in the Parties: Voter bias vs. party support of women in elections in Indonesia.
Nov. 6, 2024 | Noon to 1:00 PM EST
Jóhanna Birnir, University of Maryland
Abstract
Do voter patriarchal and religious preferences differentially condition support for female and male candidates in elections characterized by kinship and money politics? This paper juxtaposes theories of party support, as influenced by gender quota, and voter patriarchal and religious preferences, in the context of gendered resource inequity, to examine the effect on the election of women. Using new data on nearly 10K candidates running for the Indonesian legislative election in 2024, our analysis shows that while voter penalties and resource inequities are undoubtedly important, parties can effectively counteract these with strong list placement of female candidates. Our results also highlight the importance for women’s representation, of the interaction between party system fragmentation and list position as conditioned by candidate quotas, and the pivotal influences on representation of seemingly minor adjustments to quota calculations.
Good Citizenship and Native-Immigrant Conflict: Experimental Evidence from Europe
Nov. 13, 2024 | Noon to 1:00 PM EST
Nicholas Sambanis, Yale University
Abstract
Value conflict is at the heart of opposition to multiculturalism in Europe. Yet previous studies have not established which type of value conflict generates more anti-immigrant bias. We present a simple, cost-effective, and easily scalable experimental design to test how anti-immigrant bias responds to perceptions of value conflict generated by violations of welfare state norms and gender equity norms. Both types of norms are central to public debates about immigration in Europe. We collect new data from three European countries on natives’ beliefs regarding immigrants as likely violators of these norms, and we measure the salience of these norms in native society. We find that natives do not always sanction immigrants more for norm violations and their reactions to norm adherence or violations are consistent with a logic of “updating” for high salience norms in countries where norm adherence is itself a norm.
Patrolling the Polls: The Effect of Partisan Observers on Election Outcomes
Nov. 20, 2024 | Noon to 1:00 PM EST
Mollie Cohen, Purdue University
Abstract
Partisan poll watchers observe as votes are cast and tallied, theoretically safeguarding the integrity of election results. Yet, voters often suspect that poll watchers manipulate elections. To what degree, and under what circumstances, does the presence of partisan poll watchers improve parties’ electoral performance? I use the as-if random assignment of voters to ballot boxes in Peruvian elections, and the resulting as-if random assignment of poll watchers to ballot boxes, to answer these questions. The presence of a party’s poll watcher improves its electoral performance by between 1.8 and 5.9 percentage points, depending on model specification. However, partisan poll watchers have no effect on invalid votes or turnout. Watchers’ effect on election results is larger where elections are expected to be more competitive. These results suggest that, even where poll watchers do not engage in blatant fraud, their presence influences outcomes.