Dissertation Title  Explaining Party System Territorialization: The Geography of Economic Inequality, Institutions and Party Strategy   

Why do some countries develop party systems dominated by regional parties? I argue that the geographic distribution of income influences candidates’ incentives to form regional (instead of national) political alliances. I use a large-N analysis and a case study of Germany to show that an uneven distribution of income across regions generates territorial conflicts over redistribution that increase the likelihood of party system territorialization. Furthermore I argue that certain institutions can mitigate or exacerbate the effect of these territorial economic conflicts on the party system. In sum, I show that current institutional accounts have missed the important modifying effect of the geographic distribution of preferences.

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Dissertation Title   Do the Buses Run on Time?  Local Government and Public Goods Provision in Jordan   

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Dissertation Title  What the Theories of Political Participation Can Teach Us About the Blogosphere and Vice Versa  

My dissertation taps one of the richest sources of political data in all history---the political blogosphere---to better understand political participation and communication. Blending techniques from social and computer science, I study blogging as an act of political participation. I test existing theories of participation in the context of the blogosphere, and break new theoretical ground by studying attention, hyperlinking, and tone of discourse in the political blogosphere.

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Dissertation Title    The Strategic Use of the Media by Autocracies 

How do autocracies use the media?  It's commonly assumed that autocratic leaders strategically use the media to control public opinion to bolster support for the regime.  Yet, we have little systematic research on the decision facing leaders to censor, filter, or permit the flow of different types of information.  I build a theory of how autocrats use the media and test it with an agent-based model of opinion change, content analysis of China's coverage of the 2010-11 Arab Spring protests, and longitudinal statistical analysis of coverage of international events in the People's Daily (Renmin Ribao) in China since 1948.

Dissertation Title   Mobilizing Aggression in Mass Politics   

Aggression is central to human behavior but largely absent from political behavior research. In two national experiments and two local studies, I show how aggressive personality shapes public opinion and action, and how leaders magnify politicized aggression with violent rhetoric. Aggression dynamics influence political participation, leader evaluation, state violence attitudes, and support for political violence. Throughout, I explore implications for personality, gender, and emotions in politics, and the tension between traditional engagement and political violence.

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Dissertation Title   Coups and Authoritarian Elections     

It is widely argued that autocrats are compelled to establish multiparty elections by domestic and international actors. When and why do autocrats voluntarily hold elections? Based on a simple game-theoretic model, I propose an alternative explanation for autocratic elections: when autocrats face a greater risk of coup, they are more likely to hold multiparty elections. I find supporting evidence, even when neither an opposition party nor anti-regime activity exist, or when foreign aid dependence is very low.  

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Dissertation Title   Political Parties, Institutions, and Trade Policy in Democracies    

Why do some industries receive higher levels of trade protection than others even without actively engaging in lobbying? How do elected representatives determine particular sectors to protect across the electorate? Contrary to conventional explanations that focus exclusively on interest group influence, this study argues that industry location and electoral incentives of government parties exert a significant influence on cross-sectoral variations in protection. My analysis of U.S. trade policy shows that sectors concentrated in electorally pivotal regions are more likely to get protected than others, and that government partisanship influences the likelihood of sectors in safe constituencies receiving protection.

Dissertation Title   Agencies and Appropriations     

Congress frequently attempts to influence policy through squeezing agency budgets. However, agencies are slow to respond to a budget cut, and usually are just as slow to adjust upwards with a rise in appropriations. In my dissertation, I argue that agencies largely appear indifferent to money because agencies build slack into current policy that explicitly includes their expectations about future rounds of funding.

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Dissertation Title  Redefining the Nation: Center-Right Party Outrach Toward Ethnic Minorities in Europe.  

Scholars and political observers do not expect European center-right parties to appeal to ethnic minority voters given their reputations of defending “us” from “them”, and the presence of far-right competitors. Yet a novel data-set of party appeals shows that there is substantial variation in these parties’ strategies. I find that the number of ethnic minority citizens is the strongest determinant of center-right strategy, and influences when these parties use integration policies to “redefine the nation.”  

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Dissertation Title   Propaganda and its Consequences for Crisis Diplomacy

Generations of research on the relationship between mass public opinion and foreign policy have ignored opinion’s role in the one moment it actually matters most: before a war begins, when a government still hopes to extract policy concessions without fighting.  Using a survey experiment, I find that propaganda—adapted from documented attempts by the American government to influence public attitudes toward war—can in fact break the usual relationship between party identification and evaluations of foreign policy performance.

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Dissertation Title   Public Broadcasting, Public Subsidies and Political Knowledge   

The levels of government funding for public broadcasters is a flashpoint in policy debates in both the United States and other democracies. Past research has suggested that public broadcasting has a positive effect on levels of political knowledge and participation. However, my research demonstrates that it is specifically the government subsidies of public broadcasters that drive increases in knowledge and voter turnout, not merely the existence of a public broadcaster.

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Dissertation Title Making Democracy Safe: Institutional Causes and Consequences of Election Coercion and Violence    

Ethnic grievances, war, and weak institutions cannot explain why many democracies--old and new--experience election violence long after founding elections.  Incentives to cultivate a personal vote and uncertainty--produced when reformist oppositions become newly viable or electoral reforms increase the risks of nonviolent cheating--make violence attractive as elections approach.  Analysis of original data on violent elections worldwide since 1945, electoral crime penalties, mapped micro-level incidents of coercion during recent elections in six countries, and fieldwork in Algeria, Pakistan, and Newark support these propositions.

I also find that pre- versus post-election timing and official versus civilian targeting vary across electoral systems.  This violence, particularly the most severe, is an important endogenous source of further democratic reform or regime change.

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Dissertation Title   Trading Off the Pang of Economic Reform for Lower Growth: Issue-Salience Double-Crossing   

Dissertation Topic   What Accounts for the Success of Islamist Parties in the Arab World? 

My dissertation examines the differences in the relative success of Islamist parties across multiple countries and years. Using evidence from the Arab Barometer and extensive fieldwork, I demonstrate that Islamist parties are more likely to succeed in contexts where economic issues are less salient and are less successful when economic issues dominate the political arena. I argue that these parties fail when economic issues are central because (1) Islamist parties tend to have non-credible economic platforms, due to inherited ideological positions, and (2) ordinary citizens do not associate the parties with economic issues. 

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Dissertation Topic  Racialized Campaigning in a "Post-Racial" America 

Do racial attitudes still affect the electoral prospects of African American candidates in majority white jurisdictions? Given the results of the 2008 presidential election, as well as the noteworthy electoral victories of other black candidates (e.g. Deval Patrick, J.C. Watts, Carol Moseley Braun), it is obvious that many whites will vote for a black candidate. However, I argue that before we rush to declare the existence of a post-racial America, we must first examine the type of racial appeals made by black candidates that appear necessary for them to win substantial white support. Using experiments and case studies, I develop and test a theory of racial signaling. My theory of racial signaling states that black candidates can be successful in majority white jurisdictions when they engage in behavior that “signals,” that there are not beholden to black voters.  This behavior may entail counter-stereotypical racial appeals or publicly distancing themselves from other African Americans.

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Dissertation Title  The Origins and Decline of Dominant Party Systems  

Dominant party systems are puzzling because they combine regular, contested elections with an absence of ruling party turnover.  I use a new cross-national dataset of incumbent duration to examine what causes these long periods of one-party rule.  I find that most dominant party systems occur at the beginning of new regimes and gradually break down into more competitive systems over time, and that this decline occurs faster under presidentialism than parliamentarism.

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Dissertation Title    The Effect of the Internet on Public Opinion in Non-Democratic Regimes: Ordered probit with Endogenous Regressors  

Although anecdotal evidence that new Information Communication Technologies (ICTs) can strengthen the opposition in authoritarian regimes has been growing rapidly, large-N studies have not yet produced convincing empirical evidence that ICTs have had any visible impact on political behavior. This paper fills in this void by applying a new methodology to estimate the causal effect of the Internet on public opinion in Russia and shows that in 2008 access to the Internet reduced popular support for the presidential party by 10 percent.