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.
Dominant visions of representative democracy assume parties focus on contrasting issues during campaigns, producing a diverse political supply. However, empirical backing for that claim is scarce. Parties face weak incentives to leave potentially rewarding issues to rivals, and uncertainty about electorate preferences drives strategic monitoring of competitors.
Local law enforcement behavior shifts around elections, with county sheriffs reducing traffic fines revenue during election years. Evidence shows a measurable electoral cycle in traffic enforcement that grows larger when races are competitive.
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.
This paper asks whether and how Chinese nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) site their international development projects in ways that mirror state-led initiatives. Using a unique panel dataset, the authors present the first empirical investigation of location choices by NGOs from an authoritarian state and evaluate whether NGOs follow government-financed projects and political ties when choosing where to operate. The study’s contribution is a descriptive, time-sensitive account of alignment between Chinese government projects and Chinese NGO activity rather than a causal claim beyond the evidence reported.
Longitudinal voter files track partisan registrations and switches across U.S. neighborhoods from 2008 through 2020. These records are used to measure how exposure to partisan neighbors correlates with individual party switching over time.
This study asks whether foreign direct investment (FDI) entering countries after civil conflict helps economic recovery and, through that recovery, reduces the chance of conflict recurring. Using country-level intrastate conflict data spanning 1970–2019, the authors estimate mediation models that link post-conflict FDI to economic reconstruction and then to subsequent conflict risk, and they provide replication files for their analysis.
This article asks whether caretaker governments in parliamentary democracies truly preserve the policy status quo while waiting for new coalition governments to form. Using newly assembled, bill-level data from dozens of cabinets across Western Europe, the author proposes a timeframe-based political definition of the caretaking period and uses descriptive evidence to question the prevailing consensus that caretakers do not engage in policymaking. The piece also flags normative and practical concerns about caretaking rules and their role in coalition bargaining.
This research examines how party campaign contacts affect tactical voting decisions among voters who have tactical incentives in three UK elections. The focus is on whether campaign outreach encourages voters to remain loyal to preferred but nonviable parties or to defect to alternative viable parties.
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.
It is long assumed that citizens support the welfare state because it insures against future income loss, but isolating future-oriented material interest from normative and political predispositions has been difficult. This study tests whether economic uncertainty drives citizens to take up government-funded social insurance, a critical case for material self-interest to be at stake.
This paper presents the first systematic investigation of how epidemic shocks affect civil violence across Africa.
Why do some executives repress the press while others leave it free? This study tests whether two external constraints — courts that can rule against leaders and citizens who can vote them out — shape executives' decisions to attack media. Using a global panel covering executive-branch attacks on the press from 1949–2016, the authors evaluate whether judicial independence and electoral democracy reduce press attacks and whether these constraints substitute for one another.
This article asks whether states’ freedom-of-foreign-movement policies affect human trafficking flows and how spatial context matters. Using cross-national data, the authors test competing claims that open borders either enable traffickers by reducing detection or that restrictive movement increases vulnerability to traffickers. The central contribution is to show that considering a state’s own mobility rules together with neighboring states’ practices is necessary to understand how freedom of movement relates to trafficking.
The shift to a knowledge economy amplified income inequality—especially for top earners—in advanced democracies despite technological gains.