This article tests whether state-level strict voter ID laws reduced registration or turnout in the U.S. using a nationwide panel (2008–2018) and difference-in-differences designs. Across extensive specifications—including voter and state fixed effects—the authors find no measurable negative effect on overall registration or turnout or on subgroups by race, age, gender, or party. They also report increased campaign contact with nonwhite voters and no detectable effect on fraud.
This study asks whether strict voter identification (ID) laws affect voter turnout in the United States and whether effects differ by election type and by when states adopted these laws. Using state-level turnout from 1984–2020 and a synthetic difference-in-differences approach to address time-varying confounders and improve power, the paper compares aggregate and disaggregated effects across presidential versus midterm elections and between early- and late-adopting states. The central contribution is evidence that aggregate effects are close to zero but that heterogeneous, modest impacts appear in some contexts and may help reconcile mixed prior findings.
Since 2010, rapid rises in migration have prompted frequent claims that newcomers cause more crime. This study asks whether sudden, large local inflows of migrants change people’s concern about crime and whether those concerns reflect changes in actual crime rates.
Bold question: Do phones change political attitudes in isolated communities?
This paper addresses two common critiques against ethnic quotas for Other Backward Classes (OBC) in Indian education and hiring.
This article asks whether U.S. leaders time arms transfers to autocratic states for electoral advantage during presidential election years. Using several empirical tests, the author documents an electoral cycle in arms deals with autocracies, connects those deals to increases in defense contract awards in swing U.S. states, and investigates process mechanisms. The analysis examines how timing shifts after regime change, the role of U.S. allies in driving the autocratic arms-deal cycle, and the correspondence between platforms sold in arms deals and platforms that generate swing-state defense contracts. The author frames these findings as evidence that an electoral motivation helps explain patterns of U.S. security cooperation with autocratic partners, while preserving the observational limits of the study.
Doubly robust difference-in-differences models are used to estimate the causal effect of successful coups on national income. Real per capita gross domestic product (GDP) falls by 10%–12% five years after a coup, and the effect has not begun to diminish by that point.
This article asks how police union campaign spending shapes local politics and public safety outcomes by assembling a large new dataset on U.S. mayoral campaign finance and linking endorsements to later departmental outcomes. The authors contribute a broad descriptive account of police-union donations across cities and use a within-city research design that accounts for staggered timing to estimate the association between electing police-union-backed mayors and subsequent police resources and performance.
This paper asks how foreign donors respond when recipient governments pass restrictive laws targeting NGOs: do donors push back by increasing democracy support or back down by cutting it? Using dyadic aid-flow data, an original cross-national data set of NGO laws, and multiple research designs, the authors examine whether and how donors change democracy-promotion funding after such laws are enacted. Their central contribution is empirical evidence on donor behavior in the aftermath of restrictive NGO legislation and its potential incentives for governments considering curbs on civil society.
This study leverages an early twentieth-century Argentine electoral reform that was applied unevenly across districts, producing a rare setting where some districts oscillated between electoral systems across elections. That asymmetric implementation creates a natural experiment for assessing whether more proportional rules affect voter turnout.
When voters cast ballots retrospectively on economic and social issues in the US, partisan politics seems irrelevant. Do objective performance metrics like education or crime actually reflect government accountability? Analyzing state-level data using difference-in-difference and regression discontinuity methods, this research demonstrates that regardless of whether Democrats or Republicans are in power, states tend to show similar outcomes across various policy areas (e.g., economy, health, environment) two to four years downstream from elections. These findings suggest voters may struggle to truly hold political coalitions accountable, as objective performance metrics appear largely beyond their immediate control.
This article asks whether the presence of a country's nationals in major IMF shareholder states affects the terms that the International Monetary Fund offers that country. The authors propose that large diasporas in powerful creditor countries create migration pressures that lead those shareholders to push the IMF toward loan packages that reduce short-term adjustment costs for borrowers. The paper analyzes IMF programs from 1978 to 2014 to evaluate whether borrowers with larger diasporas in major shareholder states receive different disbursement sizes or conditionality.
This research asks whether moving local production abroad (offshoring) affects electoral outcomes for incumbent government parties. Using a difference-in-differences approach and an original Spanish survey, the author studies municipalities where a local plant relocated production abroad and compares electoral outcomes to municipalities without such events. The paper's central contribution is evidence that voters punish incumbent government parties in places that experienced offshoring, with larger vote declines where more jobs were lost and distinct patterns in coalition governments.