Interdisciplinary Workshops on Politics and Policy Archive 2025-2026

Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) Americans occupy a paradoxical position: a highly politicized, highly visible group rendered institutionally invisible by the absence of an official ethnoracial category. From 1977 to 2024, the federal government categorized MENA Americans as “White.” Despite this categorization, research shows that they are neither perceived as White nor identify as such, often preferring to self categorize as “MENA.” Yet many forms—whether issued by governments, universities, or private organizations—rarely include “MENA” as an option. What are the consequences of having one’s identity omitted on political attitudes related to that identity? I argue that denying MENA Americans the ability to self-categorize induces categorization threat, a response well-documented in social psychology but less often connected to politics. Drawing on two survey experiments and in-depth interviews, I show that MENA individuals who cannot self-categorize as “MENA” engage in identity assertion by expressing stronger opinions on MENA-related political issues. This assertion may also generalize to issues tied to broader “People of Color” (POC) identity. Identity categories are not merely bureaucratic formalities; they structure how individuals see themselves and how they respond to politics. By showing that categorization threat shapes political expression among MENA Americans, this article underscores how institutional categories can marginalize groups and affect the validity of the data used to govern them. As identities become increasingly complex and salient, understanding the consequences of category exclusion becomes vital for both empirical research and democratic inclusion.

This paper examines the appeal of populism and clientelism as campaign strategies in autocratizing countries. While populism, which promises to redress people’s grievances against elites, is often studied in advanced democracies, it also flourishes in developing contexts where politics and campaigning relies on clientelism, a mode of politics premised on personal contact and pledges of individual-level largesse. We propose a theoretical framework describing how political leaders can strategically combine elements of clientelist and populist appeals, which results in four subtypes: two “pure” strategies and two “hybrid” ones. We test the relative effectiveness of these strategies in attracting potential voters via a survey experiment in Kyrgyzstan, a decentralized clientelistic system that has recently come under the rule of a heavy-handed populist president, Sadyr Japarov. A vignette experiment randomly assigns respondents to one of five campaign appeals. The results show that broad clientelist promises and expressive rhetoric delivered via social media produce stronger increases in candidate support, compared to in-person particularist appeals. To evaluate policy-specific effects, an endorsement experiment randomly attributes nine actual policies to the president. Endorsement consistently raised support across domains, but effects were largest for broad-based clientelist appeals and weakest for broad populist appeals. The findings demonstrate that populism and clientelism are not substitutes but complementary, with social media amplifying their impact in autocratizing electoral contexts.

Masaaki Higashijima is an Associate Professor of Comparative Politics at the Institute of Social Science, University of Tokyo. His research interests include comparative political economy, autocratic politics, regime change, and Central Asia. His work has appeared in premier political science journals, such as the British Journal of Political Science, Comparative Political Studies, International Studies Quarterly, Journal of Politics, and World Development. He published his first book, The Dictator’s Dilemma at the Ballot Box: Electoral Manipulation, Economic Maneuvering, and Political Order in Autocracies (University of Michigan Press, 2022), which won the Honorable Mention of the ASEEES Ed A Hewett Book Prize. He received his Ph.D. in Political Science at Michigan State University in 2015 and was a visiting scholar at CPS between 2018 and 2020.

This talk examines the records of the recent popes to see how different Francis is from his predecessors  based on the policies they discussed, the people they promote, and the places they went. Using the tools of social science, I find that Francis is indeed iconoclastic, but so, too, have all the popes been since at least Pope Pius XII. The power of the office, the length of their tenures, and the world in which they live require each pope to reinvent the office.

Many survey researchers worry that contemporary surveys can be biased due to non-ignorable nonresponse (NINR), which can persist even after quota sampling, weighting, or other covariate-based adjustments.  NINR bias occurs when the propensity to respond is correlated with the outcome of interest, conditional on covariates. Because panel survey data provides multiple observations for individuals across panel waves, we can identify the correlation between response propensity and the outcome of interest.  To date, however, most panel survey data is assessed as cross-sectional data.  This paper makes three contributions.  First, we present a random effects panel selection model that explicitly accounts for NINR.  Second, we present simulations that demonstrate that the model outperforms conventional methods when NINR is a problem.  Third, we show that our panel selection model outperforms conventional methods when applied to survey data from the 2020 election cycle.

 Work by Abby Córdova and Gessica de Freitas

As democracy erodes in many parts of the world, citizen commitment to democratic principles is crucial for reversing and preventing the deepening of illiberal regimes. But, to what extent do citizens adhere to democratic ideals? The answer largely depends on how citizens conceptualize democracy. This paper challenges conventional interpretations of public support for democracy by arguing that existing measures overlook a growing orientation that legitimizes elected leaders bypassing institutional constraints in the name of popular will. We contend that citizens hold a deeply majoritarian—and ultimately illiberal—conception of democracy. Under this view, elected presidents are seen as the sole legitimate embodiment of the people’s will, justifying the erosion of checks and balances, minority rights, and legal safeguards in the name of the common good. To capture this orientation, we introduce a new six-item battery, pre-tested in online surveys and included in the 2025 wave of LAPOP’s AmericasBarometer. We assess the internal validity of our Illiberal Majoritarianism Index and demonstrate its utility for identifying the individual-level correlates and political consequences of illiberal majoritarian views across Latin America. The results lend support to our theoretical insights, demonstrating the utility of the Index to uncover how citizens’ conceptualization and support for “democracy” often mask the endorsement of  practices that erode liberal institutions, highlighting a critical but under-measured vulnerability in the region’s democratic landscape. This project expands our work for a chapter considered for publication in an edited volume on Democratic Backsliding in Central America, edited by Steven Levitsky and Manuel Meléndez-Sánchez.

Dr. Abby Córdova is an associate professor in the Keough School of Global Affairs at the University of Notre Dame, and the director of the Notre Dame Eliminating Violence against Women (E-VAW) Lab, a research and policy lab supported by the Kellogg Institute for International Studies. Her research examines the intersections between gender-based violence, organized crime, and public security policies, as well as their implications for international migration. Her ongoing book project explores how state repression and criminal governance exacerbate violence against women in marginalized neighborhoods, and the consequences for women’s civil and political empowerment in the context of El Salvador. More broadly, as an expert on public opinion, her research examines citizen support for democracy and human rights in highly militarized contexts. Her research has been published in multiple peer-reviewed journals, including World Politics, the Journal of Politics, Comparative Political Studies, Political Behavior, the Journal of Peace Research, the Latin American Research Review, the International Journal of Law, Crime and Justice, and the Journal of Migration and Human Security, among others. She is also the co-author of a Cambridge Elements book that examines how to promote citizen support for undocumented immigrants’ rights, expected to be published in 2026. 

This study investigates how states use the residential locations of incumbent legislators when drawing new district boundaries, focusing on the practice of displacing incumbents from their home districts and pairing them with rival incumbents. Using legislators’ home addresses collected from a national voter registration database, I identify when incumbents are retained within their districts and when they are displaced and paired. Comparing these outcomes to a baseline of computer-generated, incumbent-blind maps shows that enacted plans overwhelmingly avoid displacing incumbents, reflecting a broader norm of incumbent preservation. Only when plans are drawn by independent commissions or court-appointed special masters does this pattern weaken, suggesting that reform efforts may be necessary to challenge the political status quo.

Authors: Rex Weiye Deng, Taishi Muraoka, Margit Tavits

Right-wing violence against immigrants and minorities poses a strategic dilemma for radical right (RR) parties in Europe due to their shared ideological beliefs with attackers and anti-minority electoral appeals. We investigate these parties’ responses to such violence using a comprehensive dataset of Facebook posts from political parties across 16 European countries (2014-2022), coupled with data on incidents of right-wing violence. We outline three potential strategies that RR parties could adopt: withdrawal (reducing visibility), distraction (shifting attention elsewhere), or scapegoating (intensifying anti-minority rhetoric). Our findings support the scapegoating hypothesis—RR parties increase posting frequency, focus more intensely on immigration, and frame minorities more negatively following violent incidents. Notably, this strategy appears effective, as user engagement with RR parties’ minority-related content increases after attacks. These findings deepen our understanding of how RR parties navigate hostile environments to maintain voter support through strategic rhetoric

Racial disparities in wealth lead to unequal access to opportunities in the U.S., yet many Americans are largely unaware of these gaps and vastly underestimate their size. In this study, we investigate how Black/White and Hispanic/White wealth gaps are (mis)understood by Americans and test potential interventions to correct these misperceptions. We specifically examine the conditions under which individuals update their misperceptions about racial wealth inequality and the downstream attitudinal and policy preference consequences of these changes. We test three interventions designed to correct misperceptions about the racial wealth gap across two national survey experiments of American adults: (1) a numeric only condition, (2) a narrative condition, and (3) a historical context condition that discusses historical factors that have contributed to racial wealth gaps (e.g. redlining, the racially exclusionary implementation of the G.I. Bill). We find that being exposed to the historical context intervention increases Americans’ interest in taking actions against racial disparities in wealth and support for equalizing policies. Moreover, we find these shifts are driven primarily by heightened structural attributions for racial disparities in wealth. This study adds to a growing body of work aimed at combatting misinformation about racial wealth inequalities by identifying an effective strategy for increasing public support for wealth-equalizing interventions.

Women’s political participation remains persistently lower than men’s worldwide. This study evaluates whether a group-based training intervention can enhance women’s engagement in local governance. In a randomized controlled trial across 300 communities in southwest Nigeria, we recruited 3,900 politically unaffiliated women into newly formed women’s action committees (WACs). Control WACs received basic civic education, while treatment WACs received additional training aimed at strengthening women’s collective efficacy. Leveraging baseline and endline surveys, as well as behavioral data from a community grants competition, we find that the intervention significantly increased both the level and quality of women’s political participation. It also improved women’s perceptions of community leaders’ responsiveness. These findings underscore the potential of addressing both psychological and structural barriers to advance women’s political engagement.

One important but often overlooked task of bureaucrats is producing state data. When central governments depend on information from local governments to allocate resources, strategic interactions between local politicians and bureaucrats shape data fed to the central government. This study examines such agency problems in Colombia and Brazil, by studying the social registries used to determine eligibility for means-tested transfers. Using original survey data from Colombian bureaucrats, matched employer-employee records from Brazil, and social registry microdata from both countries, I analyze how mayors’ selection and oversight of bureaucrats affect data quality. Findings show that mayors more closely monitor bureaucrats they appoint rather than retain. Appointed bureaucrats, who more frequently share policy goals of the politician, exert more effort and report more poor households, expanding program eligibility. However, mayors must trade off this loyalty with the loss of expertise when replacing these administrators. While the distortions in registry data are modest, they meaningfully shape the distribution of anti-poverty transfers.

Critics of social media argue it amplifies outrage and corrodes political discourse. But mounting experimental evidence in which researchers limit individuals’ access to their social media accounts show minimal effects. I theorize that social media affects politics both through one’s own exposure, as well as “spill-ins” from one’s offline network—members of whom may be active online. It follows that deactivating social media for entire households should yield larger effects than deactivating individuals. In this presentation, I will report results from an ongoing field experiment in Indonesia (N=1,500) comprising three conditions: control, individual deactivation, and household deactivation of all major social media platforms for four weeks using app-level blocks and compliance checks.

Anger runs deep in the lives of many Black Americans because of racial discrimination. What political coping strategies are effective in reducing their anger about racial discrimination? We argue that political confrontation and distancing are powerful strategies in improving Black Americans’ emotional well-being.  By reducing their anger, we also theorize there will be less motivation for future political engagement. We test these arguments using two survey experiments conducted through YouGov with nationally representative samples of Black Americans. We find that confrontation and distancing are effective in reducing anger about racial discrimination, though distancing leads to a greater reduction in anger, and the race of the representative does not condition these relationships. Furthermore, we find that this reduction in anger decreases the likelihood of future political participation. 

While much of discourse about divisions within the nation focuses on politics, the ACP examines the drivers that exist under the familiar red/blue maps that define Election Nights. For the past three years, the Project has used large-scale surveys of the country in its 15 different community types (everything from Big Cities to Aging Farmlands) to explore the driving concerns and attitudes in the communities. How do people in the ACP’s types feel about their individual futures, the future of their communities and the future of the nation as a whole? The differences among 15 community types, which are built off the nation’s 3,141 counties, create a finer, more nuanced understanding of the different mindsets and realities that exist within the United States. The presentation will walk through the findings of the ACP surveys and conclude with a discussion of what the data tell us about where the country is moving and what points of commonality may still exist. The talk is presented by Dante Chinni from the American Communities Project (ACP) at Michigan State University.

Islands of Exception examines the colonial foundations and legal design of offshore finance, arguing that offshore financial centers or tax havens are not peripheral distortions but central legal formations of global capitalism. Centering the Caribbean and Puerto Rico, the book manuscript examines how colonial legality, geopolitical subordination, and racialized governance have produced spaces of exception organized through a logic of inclusive exclusion. That is, jurisdictions that are formally embedded within legal and constitutional orders, yet selectively excluded from such legal regimes in ways that normalize secrecy, regulatory arbitrage, tax avoidance/evasion, and other forms of lack of democratic accountability. 

Methodologically, the book manuscript combines historical legal analysis and sociolegal inquiry, drawing on archival research, policy analysis, and engagement with civil society actors across the Caribbean. Theoretically, it bridges Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL) and Law and Political Economy (LPE) to develop two key concepts, the colonial state of exception and the corporate citizen, which together illuminate how colonial legal arrangements simultaneously constrain colonial populations while enabling the hyper-inclusion of corporations and financial elites. 

Chapters 4 and 5, which will be the focus of this talk, examine contemporary transformations of the offshore world, including the incorporation of crypto-assets and blockchain technologies into existing secrecy regimes, as well as global tax governance initiatives such as the OECD’s Pillar Two and the proposed UN Tax Convention. These regulatory responses, the book manuscript argues, often reproduce colonial legal hierarchies and asymmetries under the language of global reforms.

Ultimately, Islands of Exception calls for an abolitionist approach to offshore finance and foregrounds Caribbean-based grassroots struggles that demand transparency, tax justice, and sovereignty.

Using individual-level medical data and death records, we find that conservative Americans experienced worsening health and higher death rates than liberals during the 2010s. We identify two mechanisms that drive this change. First, demographic reshuffling of the political coalitions during the 2010s brought less healthy voters into the conservative coalition. However, recent ideological differences in mortality rates cannot be fully explained by demographics, public policies or COVID-19 deaths alone. Using public opinion data, we propose a second mechanism for these growing health divides: people on the political right today are less likely to seek healthcare, trust or follow their doctor’s advice, or believe their medications are efficacious, even on health matters unrelated to COVID-19. Together, these findings suggest that right-leaning Americans are increasingly vulnerable to a number of health problems—and resistant to the medical advice that could mitigate them.

What determines the efficacy of diaspora activism? How do diaspora activists navigate domestic and international pressures, and what is their impact on domestic politics? Using the case of the Palestinian diasporas in the US and Chile, this project examines how these communities engage in activism locally and transnationally, and their effect on democratic politics in their home countries. The US and Chile are home to the largest Palestinian populations outside the Middle East, and they are an impactful diaspora community in each country, in varying ways. Preliminary analysis in this paper is based on a study of the pro-Palestine activist network in the US, as well as on fieldwork with activists and community leaders in Chile involved in three main organizations: the Comunidad Palestina en Chile, Coordinadora Por Palestina, and the Centro de Información Palestina (CIP). The first organization is a long-standing institution in Palestinian-Chilean politics, whereas the latter two formed in the aftermath of the October 7th Hamas attacks. Findings suggest that in Chile, activist organizations which take an intersectional approach are better able to mobilize and impact broader society and insulate themselves from pressures from their origin countries. On the other hand, activism that takes a single-issue approach and only engages in formal institutionalized politics becomes more constrained by the politics of the origin country. This paper sets out the theoretical argument of this project and proposes a research design for further cross-national examination of these dynamics. 

Studies of political selection in low and middle-income democracies often highlight how state institutions channel resources with discretion. However, an emphasis on discretion has overshadowed how these institutions are broadly dismissive toward citizens who approach them. We argue that the frequent indignities and disrespect citizens experience from state institutions has consequences for political selection. Where research on distributive politics emphasizes shared ethnicity and partisanship, a focus on institutional derisiveness reveals a strikingly understudied dimension of politician assessment. Drawing on extensive fieldwork and surveys of voters and politicians in India’s small towns, we document the importance of a candidate’s comportment: their reputation for treating constituents with respect and humility, while treating officials with the opposite qualities—brazenness and impatience. We find comportment is a desired end in itself, not just a signal of willingness to provide material benefits. This study demonstrates the importance of social affect in driving electoral politics in India and elsewhere in the Global South.

It is tempting to blame partisan polarization on people who vote in primary elections, yet scholars find little evidence that primary voters are extremists. We resolve these contradictions by hypothesizing that primary voters weigh issues more heavily than do non-primary voters. This makes polarization a result of differing voter criteria rather than their positions alone. We test this hypothesis with data from the American National Election Studies, which identify primary and non-primary voters and measures their preferences on a set of policies. In general elections and when evaluating presidential performance, primary voters tend to attach greater weight to issues such as abortion, government policies towards Blacks, and health insurance than do non-primary voters. This heavier weight that primary voters put on issues grows over time and is more pronounced among Republicans, in line with trends in party polarization.