Politicians often have discretion over what policy information to reveal to the public. This paper develops a formal model comparing electoral accountability under mandatory and discretionary disclosure. I identify a fundamental trade-off between detection − where voters directly observe wrongdoing − and inference − where voters penalize the suspicious absence of information. Mandates facilitate detection but eliminate the strategic signal embedded in discretionary disclosure. Mandates weaken the connection between silence and possible wrongdoing, effectively exonerating the incumbent in voters’ inferences. The model demonstrates that when the baseline probability of information transmission is high, the inference-based mechanism constrains rent-seeking more effectively than the detection-based mechanism. Consequently, disclosure mandates can paradoxically weaken electoral discipline: by making silence less informative, they undermine voters’ ability to draw inferences from silence, even while increasing the overall probability that voters observe policy outcomes.
Unprecedented migration flows demand effective strategies for integrating migrants into the public systems of their host countries. The rapid digitalization of services creates new opportunities for inclusion, but limited internet access, digital literacy challenges, and weak social networks remain significant barriers. In collaboration with Innovations for Poverty Action and using administrative data from Colombia's National Planning Department, this study designs and implements a randomized controlled trial to reduce these barriers among Venezuelan migrants in Colombia. This study tests whether providing unlimited mobile data for a month and information about public benefits, delivered individually or within moderated WhatsApp groups, improves access to social services and other integration outcomes. This study finds that information provision, particularly via WhatsApp groups, significantly increased verified enrollment in Portal Ciudadano, the country's social services platform. Networked participants also demonstrated greater interest in government services and a stronger ability to complete digitally demanding tasks, which are increasingly important in today's digital environment. By contrast, this study finds no effects on outcomes such as employment, and even observes some negative effects on well-being. This study advances our understanding of migrant integration, highlighting WhatsApp's potential to activate networks and assist migrants in navigating host societies, while also revealing the ongoing challenges in achieving broader integration outcomes.
The author examines the dual roles of experts-on one hand, as scholars responsible to a community of their expert peers, and on the other hand, as interested advisors to policymakers-using evidence from a large corpus of 19th-century medical research on cholera. Experts with links to Britain's overseas trade sector were more likely than experts without such connections to advance theories arguing against the theory of contagious disease spread (which had costly implications for British commerce). This difference is driven by the early part of the century, when a scientific consensus around how cholera spreads had not yet solidified. The author argues that conflicted experts are more likely to act on their bias in low-information environments, when revealing new information can have a larger impact on policy. As a consensus forms, the value of hiding unfavorable information decreases, and even conflicted experts will reveal what they know to gain scientific credit.
Modern political systems exist not in a vacuum but in a world of continuous technological, social and economic change. This change means policies designed for today's world will fit only imperfectly tomorrow, a phenomenon they refer to as policy decay. In principle, policymakers could legislate to remove decay and restore the status quo. In practice, however, the need for "something to be done" creates opportunities for the majority party to leverage their proposal power and for the minority party to obstruct to gain an electoral advantage. We consider a classic agenda-setter model and show how the combination of decay and political competition alters the underlying logic of policymaking. Policy changes frequently in this setting, even when moderate, contrary to the notion of legislative gridlock. Yet legislation to remove decay is not always struck, leaving all policymakers worse off. Moreover, the agreements that are struck are often to the benefit of the minority party, reversing the classic logic of agenda-setting power.
A "false flag operation" is when one actor covertly carries out an attack in hopes that an adversary will take the blame for it. For instance, the Soviet Union began the 1939 Winter War against Finland by shelling a town on their own side of the border so that domestic and international opinion would blame Finland for starting the war. Why carry out such an attack? Under what conditions would it be rational? I develop a game-theoretic model to address these questions. An actor could carry out a false flag attack in equilibrium if it does not find it too costly, their adversary wants to do that kind of attack and the third party is willing to punish the adversary because they are more likely to be the guilty party. I discuss the 1999 apartment bombings in Russia as a potential case of successful false flag attacks by Vladimir Putin that convinced the Russian public to support a renewed war against Chechnya.
Why do states often refrain from enforcing the law against powerful criminal organizations (OCGs)? Although typically attributed to corruption, I argue that forbearance can be optimal even for an honest state seeking to minimize violence. I develop a formal model where OCG strength is uncertain, and costly conflict builds reputations for strength that deters challengers. In this environment, enforcement has opposing effects: it weakens OCGs but can also undermine reputational deterrence, inadvertently creating power vacuums and escalating violence. The analysis reveals a fundamental trade-off - mediated by reputation-induced selection into conflict - between the extensive (likelihood) and intensive (intensity) margins of conflict. States rationally choose between a Pax Monopolista (targeting weak groups to leverage strong groups' reputations) and the Rule of Law (indiscriminate enforcement), depending on state capacity and the interim reputation that the strongest OCG acquires in equilibrium. Weak state capacity favors a Pax Monopolista. Crucially, selectively targeting the strongest group is never the optimal strategy for minimizing short-term violence.
American legislators are generally thought to be ideologues who take consistently partisan positions, but recent research suggests they are also pliant targets of persuasion campaigns by special interests, lobbyists, fellow legislators and even academics. This paper explores this seeming discrepancy. First, we revisit the credibility of findings of legislative persuasion to determine whether legislators' positions can be changed and, if so, whether such changes are robust and long-lasting. Second, we examine whether persuasion works against or alongside ideology. Finally, we interview legislators to hear their experiences as targets of persuasion. We conclude that legislative persuasion can be long-lasting and found on bills other than those targeted by advocates. Persuasion can increase ideological position-taking and polarization by allowing legislators to better sort into positions consistent with their broader ideology. Finally, persuasion works through different mechanisms, including learning about policy expertise or electoral considerations, that vary in relevance across legislators. Our findings suggest legislative persuasion may play a key role in how parties, interest groups and constituents drive polarization.
While attempts to change Americans' partisanship via persuasive treatments largely fail, partisanship can and does change over time. In this paper, the authors first confirm, via survey and field experiments, that typical campaign messaging in the United States does not budge partisanship. The authors then present experiments in which participants encounter extraordinary hypothetical scenarios (e.g. one party causes economic collapse) before reporting what their partisanship would be under such circumstances. Twelve percent of partisans imagine switching parties in the pro-out-party hypothetical conditions, compared with 5% in the control hypotheticals in which the status quo persists, for a seven-percentage point (SE 1.5 points) difference. These hypothetical shifts are on par with the largest changes in American macropartisanship ever recorded. While the act of ruminating on hypothetical scenarios is not followed by changes in partisanship measured post-treatment, the evidence suggests that extraordinary world events may be able to shift partisan affiliation.
The authors evaluate a novel accountability-based approach to civic education, which enables young people to hold local authorities to account for the quality of public services. They theorize that engaging young people in making demands of local authorities empowers them as active citizens while enhancing their interest in politics. In Bangladesh, young people who volunteered to participate in the study were randomly assigned to join a program that informed them of their rights to education and healthcare and enabled them to make demands of their service providers. Relative to a comparison group that only received information, participation in holding service providers accountable enhanced their self-efficacy and political efficacy, increased knowledge of politics and the extent to which they discussed politics and followed the news. These effects were similar across three separate cohorts of participants, underscoring their robustness. The findings show how active citizens can be fostered even in non-democratic, low-resource settings.
Politicians want to maintain public support - especially in the context of democratic backsliding. One widely used instrument is the Strongman Narrative (SN): a narrative claiming that a strong leader can improve economic performance. Modeling beliefs about causal processes using directed acyclic graphs (DAGs), the authors study the conditions under which the SN shapes citizens' support decisions. The authors find a form of "authoritarian legacy:" past support for authoritarian leaders increases the citizen's incentives to support the leader today. Moreover, believing in the SN increases moderates' support for the leader. The authors show that the SN is the most desirable narrative for the leader among all three-variable DAGs featuring support, leader strength and economic performance: it ensures the leader enjoys citizens' support under the broadest set of conditions. The authors extend the model to investigate the consequences of citizens caring about democratic backsliding and find that, unless citizens' costs of backsliding are sufficiently high, the SN remains the narrative that is the most desirable for the leader.
The unanimity rule is considered inferior at aggregating information in committee decision-making to the simple majority rule (Feddersen and Pesendorfer, 1998), which exhibits less institutional bias toward one outcome over another. In this paper, we argue that institutional bias can, paradoxically, lead to better decision-making when it causes committee members to adapt their attention in a way that counteracts the potential errors caused by the bias itself. Specifically, this paper develops a committee-voting model where members can flexibly allocate their attention before a collective decision between two options. As a result of the flexibility in attention allocation, we show that the unanimity rule can outperform simple majority rule in ensuring correct committee decisions. This occurs because, as the voting rule shifts to favor one outcome over another, it directs committee members' attention toward the aspects of possible errors more likely caused by the institutional bias. Under certain conditions, the adjustment of attention can mitigate the downside of the more biased rule, thereby resulting in a better collective choice. The analysis suggests that committee members' attention, as a limited resource, can be properly mobilized to compensate for the limitations of the institution and achieve the collective goal.
One frequently overlooked aspect of the U.S.-style electoral college system is that it discourages election fraud.In a presidential election based on the popular vote, competing political parties are motivated to manipulate votes in areas where they hold the most significant influence, such as states where they control local executive offices, legislatures, and the judiciary.However, with the electoral college system in place, the incentives for fraud shift to swing states where the local government is politically divided, and fraud is therefore more difficult and costly.Our theoretical model elucidates why the electoral college system provides more effective protection against election fraud compared to the popular vote system.While polarization makes fraud more likely, it does not affect the superiority of the electoral college system.
How did firms adjust their corporate political activity (CPA) in response to the January 6th Capitol Insurrection? Through a longitudinal study of campaign contributions from Fortune 500 companies' political action committees to members of Congress, I estimate the size and duration of corporate penalties toward legislators who objected to the 2020 election results. Using a Difference-in-Differences design, I find a sharp but declining penalty against election deniers in the 2022 and 2024 election cycles. While firms that pledged to cut off their contributions did so to the greatest degree, I find evidence of this behavior across most large corporations. I suggest that corporate social responsibility and concerns over public reputation shape corporate responsiveness to political shocks like January 6th, and show that more visible corporations were more likely to keep their distance from election deniers. These findings emphasize the important trade-off between access-seeking behavior and public reputation in the corporate response to political controversies, and in CPA more generally.
A rich body of theory in political economy suggests that civilian support is central to the success of counterinsurgent campaigns. Civilian collaboration can significantly improve military operations, enhance soldier efficiency, and avoid disruption of costly security infrastructure. Yet there have been few direct tests of the claim that harm to civilians, and who harms them, influences when and with whom noncombatants collaborate. We provide such a test, drawing on newly declassified military records and large-scale survey data. We demonstrate that civilians responded to harm suffered in insurgent-initiated attacks by providing intelligence to security forces in Afghanistan. Moreover, we show that these tips improved the success of subsequent counterinsurgent operations. These results clarify the conditions under which civilian casualties can shape the course of internal wars, with implications for future research on political violence.
What motivates politicians to amplify conspiracy theories? What constrains them from doing so? This article introduces a new theoretical framework, the strategic calculus of conspiracy theory promotion. Conspiracy theories, we argue, enable politicians to mobilize supporters but expose proponents to potential backlash. Using original data on conspiracy theory promotion by members of Congress on social media, we consider whether members use conspiracy theories to secure votes and campaign contributions. Difference-in-differences analyses reveal that members are more likely to promote conspiracy theories prior to a contested primary election and less likely to promote them afterwards. Additionally, we find that members raise more money from individual donors following conspiracy theory promotion. Our theory and findings highlight the need for more research focused on how political incentives shape the spread of conspiracy theories and misinformation.
Do elected or appointed local officials produce better outcomes for their constituents? Elections should improve representation by providing a direct link to voters. However, some argue that citizens have too little information to select good leaders and hold them accountable, especially at the local level. In order to assess these conflicting claims, I examine the performance of local election officials, an office that has come under immense strain to deliver democratic elections and for which selection method is a live policy debate. Using an original collection of election administration structures in 1,116 counties across 13 states and 62 years, I leverage changes in selection method to credibly measure differences in election outcomes produced by elected and appointed local election officials. I find that appointed officials out-perform their elected counterparts, increasing voter turnout by 1 to 2 percentage points and raising registration rates as well. Appointed officials appear to boost election administration resources, more actively communicate with voters, and reduce voter wait times. I present evidence that the quality of selection and sanctioning are higher for appointed officials, leading to better educated and more closely monitored agents. My findings speak to the challenges in designing local institutions that advance democratic ideals.
Ranked choice voting (RCV) is an increasingly popular electoral institution that has been posited by reformers and media outlets to produce transformative effects on electoral outcomes and available that evaluates these claims. I test the effects of RCV on municipal fiscal outcomes and the ideological composition of city councils. I also estimate RCV's effects on these outcomes relative to public opinion in other words, whether RCV narrows the gap between outcomes and mass policy preferences. This article finds no empirical support for the proposition that RCV changed fiscal outcomes or the ideological composition of city councils both on absolute terms and relative to mass opinion. Furthermore, the roll-call based ideal points of legislators serving before and after RCV did not change, and the relationship between city district opinion and city legislator ideology is unchanged post-adoption. Taken as a whole, this article does not find evidence that RCV has produced the types of transformative political effects that reformers have postulated.
How can autocratic leaders influence voters and entrench their rule? citizens to participate in local community work every last Saturday of the month. Following the work, a centrally appointed government leader usually delivers a speech. I exploit cross-sectional variation in exposure to the meetings induced by exogenous rainfall fluctuations. I find that places with many rainy last-of-the-month Saturdays are significantly less likely to vote for the leading party. In terms of mechanisms, additional suggestive evidence points to the meetings likely being used to create an atmosphere of state control and supervision such that people feel more inclined to vote for the ruling party. These findings are also supported by anecdotal evidence and I rule out alternative explanations.
Lawmakers vary considerably in how effectively they advance their priorities through Congress. However, the actual proposal-writing strategies undergirding these differences have remained largely unexplored, due to measurement and methodological difficulties. These obstacles have included prohibitively small sample sizes, costly data requirements, and strong theoretical assumptions. In this paper, we address these obstacles and analyze the proposal strategies of effective lawmakers directly, using original measures of the spatial locations of congressional bill proposals and associated status quos generated by jointly scaling cosponsorship, roll-call, and interest group position-taking data for 1,007 bills from the 110th through 114th Congresses. Because interest groups take positions on bills before they receive votes, our measures cover many bills that die in committee, permitting comparisons between successful and unsuccessful bills. We demonstrate that legislative advancement favors moderate proposals over partisan ones, and that effective lawmakers are those who make proposals closer to the median even at the expense of their preferred policy.
The Supreme Court's 2013 decision in Shelby County v. Holder dramatically changed the Voting Rights Act, ending the "preclearance" process that had required federal approval before places with a history of discrimination changed their voting procedures. Dissenting justices and voting-rights advocates feared the decision could allow changes to election administration that would suppress minority voter participation. This paper evaluates the decision's impact on election practices and on voting. Shelby yielded decisive changes in some practices that had been constrained by preclearance (voter identification laws), though evidence on potential indirect changes to election administration is mixed. These bounded changes to election practices do not appear to have translated into a degradation of minority voter participation or power over the period studied. Using administrative data and a difference-in-differences design comparing places affected and unaffected by the court's decision, we find minimal changes in Black-white voting gaps in the post-Shelby period; further analyses indicate that voter participation was generally stable or potentially increasing in previously covered places.
