American Journal of Political Science最新文献

We examine how the timing of local elections affects the success of minority candidates, who remain woefully underrepresented in public office. We build on research showing that concurrent elections narrow racial gaps in voter turnout and leverage changes in the timing of local elections in California. Our analysis shows that filling local offices in November of even years increases minority officeholding, at least for some groups. The results demonstrate how, when, and for whom election timing matters. Latinos gain most, potentially at the expense of White and, to a lesser degree, Black representation. An investigation of potential mechanisms suggests that these effects depend on group population size and the magnitude of the turnout changes. An increase in the number of co-ethnic candidates running also appears to contribute to the representational benefits of on-cycle elections. Finally, the effects are most pronounced during presidential elections, when turnout improvements are largest.

This article advances a novel argument about the policy output of international organizations (IOs) by highlighting the role of individual staffers. We approach them as purposive actors carrying heterogeneous ideological biases that materially shape their policy choices on the job. Pursuing this argument with an empirical focus on the International Monetary Fund (IMF), we collected individual-level information on the careers of 835 IMF “mission chiefs”—staffers with primary responsibility for a particular member state—and matched them to newly coded data on more than 15,000 IMF-mandated policy conditions over the 1980–2016 period. Leveraging the appointment of the same mission chief to different countries throughout their career, we find that individual staffers influence the number, scope, and content of IMF conditions according to their personal ideological biases. These results contribute to our understanding of the microfoundations behind IO output and have implications for the accountability and legitimacy of IOs.

States often fortify their borders against militant threats. How do these efforts shape civilian welfare and perceptions in borderland communities? I conceptualize border fortification as a legibility-building endeavor. By bolstering state reach in areas of weak historical penetration, fortification enhances the government's capacity for monitoring, administration, and control. Yet, expanding state authority also disrupts traditional cross-border markets. A trade-off between security and corruption emerges in consequence. I provide evidence for this theory in a difference-in-differences framework, combining administrative records on violence and representative data from a NATO-commissioned survey fielded across Afghanistan. Fortification facilitates government information-collection, improving security provision and fostering civilian reliance on state forces. Enhanced state capacity is countervailed by negative economic impacts. By disturbing the informal borderland economy, fortification fuels criminalization and local opposition. Civilians rely on illicit economic entrepreneurs to sustain traditional market access. Higher smuggling rents fuel official corruption and bribe-taking. The findings point to a key dilemma inherent in border fortification strategies.

School board candidates supported by local teachers' unions overwhelmingly win, and we examine the causes and consequences of the “teachers' union premium” in these elections. First, we show that union endorsement information increases voter support. Although the magnitude of this effect varies across ideological and partisan subgroups, an endorsement rarely hurts a candidate's prospects with the electorate. Second, we benchmark the size of the endorsement premium to other well-known determinants of vote choice in local elections. Perhaps surprisingly, we show the effect can be as large as the impact of shared partisanship, and substantially larger than the boost from endorsements provided by other stakeholders. Finally, examining real-world endorsement decisions, we find that union support for incumbents hinges on self-interested pecuniary considerations and is unaffected by performance in improving student academic outcomes. The divergence between what endorsements mean and how voters interpret them has troubling normative democratic implications.

We introduce a typology of election administration harms and apply it to empirically study the consequences of ballot design. Our typology distinguishes between individual, electoral, and systemic harms. Together, it clarifies why ballot design can be a particular vulnerability in election administration. Using both ballot-level and precinct-level data, we revisit Florida's 2018 United States Senate race, in which Broward County's ballot design flouted federal guidelines and, according to critics, was pivotal to the outcome. We estimate that Broward's ballot design induced roughly 25,000 voters to undervote in a race determined by about 10,000 votes and that these excess undervotes were concentrated among low-information voters. Broward's ballot did not, however, affect the outcome of the election. Nonetheless, flawed ballot designs are still concerning in an age of voter distrust. Given the risk that flawed ballots can cause systemic harm, we offer a roadmap for procedural reforms to improve ballot design.

Opposition coalitions under electoral authoritarianism have been associated with greater likelihood of opposition victory and democratization. I argue, however, that coalitions also entail significant downside risks with implications for longer term prospects for democracy. Where coalitions produce strong electoral outcomes but fail to force turnovers, regimes are left with both the incentive and capacity to repress and reconsolidate power. I show cross-nationally that opposition coalitions are associated with stronger opposition performance overall, but that when oppositions fail to take power, exceptionally strong performance is associated with greater autocratization in the subsequent years, including increased repression and poorer electoral quality in future contests. Probing the case of Cambodia, I demonstrate how the very features that make opposition coalitions a useful tool in strengthening performance also invite new threats from regimes. I argue that this makes coalition formation a particularly risky proposition.

Governments routinely wage civil conflicts in ways that disrupt civilians' lives and livelihoods, creating harmful externalities like internal displacement. Both fighting and displacement hinder economic activity, jeopardizing popular support for governments and reducing the future gains of governance. How do states fight when using force induces migration and thus risks popular discontent? I model a conflict where government efforts to control territory spur displacement, creating economic disruption that can spark tension between displaced civilians and government supporters. The risk of losing popular support leads the government to modify its tactics. While the government could mitigate the disruptive consequences of displacement by fighting less, I find another, more troubling, strategy. Governments may engage in preemptive violence to prevent migration. Moreover, economic downturns exacerbate migration incentives and, I find, can also increase violence against civilians. Governments anticipating displacement fight more intense conflicts today to see relatively less migration in the future.

What does it take to abolish structural domination? If domination is structural, then it can only be eliminated by the transformation or abolition of structures. For this to happen, agents advantaged by existing structures will often have to be brought under a form of power that lays beyond their control. Defeating domination therefore seems to require the embrace of dominating power. I call this dilemma the double bind of emancipation. To illustrate, I turn to debates regarding land confiscation during the Reconstruction era in the United States (1865–1877). Confiscation was intended to destroy the material bases of planter power and guarantee formerly enslaved people economic independence. But it would also entail subjecting planters to uncontrolled power. To address the double bind, I argue emancipation must be guided by a social theory of domination. Emancipation from structural domination requires identifying and eliminating the conditions that reproduce domination over time.

How domestic constituents respond to signals of weakness in foreign wars remains an important question in international relations. This paper studies the impact of battlefield casualties and media coverage on public demand for war termination. To identify the effect of troop fatalities, we leverage the timing of survey collection across respondents from nine members of the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan. Quasi-experimental evidence demonstrates that battlefield casualties increase the news coverage of Afghanistan and the public demand for withdrawal. Evidence from a survey experiment replicates the main results. To shed light on the media mechanism, we leverage a news pressure design and find that major sporting matches occurring around the time of battlefield casualties drive down subsequent coverage, and significantly weaken the effect of casualties on support for war termination. These results highlight the role that media play in shaping public support for foreign military interventions.

In many democracies, unemployed and low-income citizens are less willing to vote. Can social policies weaken the link between income and turnout? We study policy feedback leveraging a unique experiment in Finland, which randomly assigned a sizable group of unemployed to receiving an unconditional basic income (BI) for 2 years (2017–19). Combining individual-level registry and survey data, we show that the intervention has large positive effects on voter turnout. Unconditional BI increases turnout in municipal elections by about 3 percentage points (p.p.), on average, an effect that is concentrated among marginal voters (+ 6–8 p.p.) and persists in national elections after the end of the experiment. Exploring possible mechanisms, our analysis highlights the role of the interpretive effects that follow from unconditionality in the bureaucratic process, including higher levels of political trust and efficacy. We discuss implications for theories of voter turnout and policy feedback, and the design of BI policies.