Thursday, September 5, 6:30pm – 7:30pm

Participants:
(Presenter) APSA President Mark E. Warren, University of British Columbia

Thursday, September 5, 8:00am – 5:30pm

Friday, September 6, 8:00am – 5:30pm

Saturday, September 7, 8:00am – 5:30pm

Thursday, September 5, 8:00am – 5:30pm

Friday, September 6, 8:00am – 5:30pm

Saturday, September 7, 8:00am – 5:30pm

Thursday, September 5, 8:00am – 5:30pm

Friday, September 6, 8:00am – 5:30pm

Saturday, September 7, 8:00am – 5:30pm

Thursday, September 5, 10:00am – 11:30am
Co-sponsored by Division 1: Political Thought and Philosophy
Author Meets Critics

Participants:
(Chair) Mark Fisher, Georgetown University
(Presenter) Matthew Landauer, University of Chicago
(Presenter) Melissa Lane, Princeton University
(Presenter) Josiah Ober, Stanford University
(Presenter) Matthew Simonton
(Presenter) Naomi T. Campa, The University of Texas at Austin

Session Description:
This author meets critics roundtable brings together a group of scholars working at the intersection of classics and political theory to discuss Naomi T. Campa’s recently published book, “Freedom and Power in Classical Athens” (Oxford University Press, 2024): Mark Fisher (Georgetown), Matthew Landauer (University of Chicago), Melissa Lane (Princeton), Josiah Ober (Stanford), and Matthew Simonton (University of Arizona).

Athenian democracy was distinguished from other ancient constitutions by its emphasis on freedom. In Freedom and Power in Classical Athens, Campa contends that this was understood as being able to do “whatever one wished,” a widely attested phrase. Revisiting and modifying Isaiah Berlin’s distinction between positive and negative freedom, she then argues that this was a form of positive freedom as autonomy. Thus, citizen agency and power constituted the core of democratic ideology and institutions. Rather than create anarchy, as ancient critics claimed, positive freedom underpinned a system that ideally protected both the individual and the collective. Even freedom, however, can be dangerous. The notion of citizen autonomy both empowered and oppressed individuals within a democratic hierarchy. These topics strike at the heart of democracies ancient and modern, from the discursive principles that structure political procedures to the citizen’s navigation between the limitations of law and expression of individual will to the status of noncitizens within a state. The book offers a view of freedom before liberalism, and before republicanism too.

Friday, September 6, 10:00am – 11:30am
Author Meets Critics

Participants:
(Chair) Melissa A. Schwartzberg, New York University
(Presenter) Simone Chambers, University of California, Irvine
(Presenter) Lucia Rubinelli, Yale University
(Presenter) Samuel Moyn, Yale University
(Presenter) Eric Beerbohm, Harvard University
(Presenter) Samuel Ely Bagg, University of South Carolina

Session Description:
Samuel Bagg’s new book, “The Dispersion of Power: A Critical Realist Theory of Democracy” (Oxford, 2024), is a major contribution to democratic theory. The work characterizes resistance to state capture as the primary goal of electoral democracy, against dominant contemporary accounts, which tend to emphasize collective authorization. Specifically, Bagg’s concept of democracy centers on the dispersion of power and the fostering of healthy competition among groups. In his view, democracy aims to resist monopolies, to establish countervailing powers, and to redistribute resources. The book’s recommendations for institutional reforms to promote contestation nicely align with the conference theme, particularly with respect to the renovation and reimagination of democracy.

This author-meets-critics panel brings together leading scholars of democracy from a wide range of perspectives to respond to Bagg’s work: Eric Beerbohm (Professor of Government, Harvard), Simone Chambers (Professor of Political Science, University of California-Irvine), Samuel Moyn (Henry R. Luce Professor of Jurisprudence, Yale Law School), and Lucia Rubinelli (Assistant Professor of Political Science, Yale). Melissa Schwartzberg (Silver Professor of Politics, NYU) serves as chair and moderator.

Against Bagg’s emphasis on contestation, Eric Beerbohm defends a joint-agentic account of democratic decision-making, which emphasizes acting in concert. Drawing on her own work in democratic theory, Simone Chambers suggests that Bagg discounts too quickly the possibility that people can exercise a dispersed form of sovereignty, and that, like Beerbohm, suggests that democratic control may be a coherent view of joint authorship rather than an uncoordinated action to curb the abuse of power. Sam Moyn, an historian of liberalism, casts a skeptical eye on the ways in which Bagg assimilates liberalism and democracy as means of contesting power. Finally, Lucia Rubinelli, a scholar of constituent power, considers the possibility that Bagg’s critique of popular agency as a defining characteristic of democracy may further undermine the power of the people more generally.

Thursday, September 5, 2:00pm – 3:30pm
Full Paper Panel

Participants:
(Chair) Alison McQueen, Stanford University
(Discussant) Katherine M. Robiadek, Xavier University
(Discussant) Natasha Piano, UCLA

Session Description:
Contemporary democracies confront a range of well-known challenges: mounting political and economic inequality, the decline of effective leadership, the consolidation of oligarchic power, and the usurpation of sovereignty by unelected officials. How might the history of political thought help us respond to these challenges? This is an especially urgent question for scholars of Renaissance and early modern political thought, from which we inherit much of our language of equality, liberty, and popular sovereignty.

Our panel brings together a wide range of political theorists, specializing in both early modern and contemporary democratic theory, to offer novel perspectives on these problems. We utilize various analytical, interpretive, and historical methods to rethink the meaning of foundational democratic concepts. In what sense are democratic citizens “equals”? How do the actions of power-seeking elites threaten to undermine equality – and how might that threat be mitigated? How can we design democratic institutions that prevent elites from dominating the common people? More broadly, what do we mean when we speak of “democratizing” institutions? If “democratization” is an unmitigated good, should we seek to establish political systems in which the people, like an absolute monarch, holds unlimited sovereign power?

While these questions are of obvious significance today, they are by no means new. We identify theoretical resources for grappling with contemporary democratic crises in a wide range of late medieval and early modern texts. Among these, we draw on the writings of late medieval conciliarists; the historical reflections of Niccolò Machiavelli; and the political thought of Jean Bodin, the chief architect of the modern doctrine of sovereignty.

Samuel Bagg and Teresa Bejans’s co-authored paper, “Negative Egalitarianism: History and Theory,” excavates the overlooked concept of “negative egalitarianism.” Bagg and Bejan examine a variety of late medieval and early modern sources, ranging from 14th-century conciliarism to early modern theories of popular resistance, to rethink the meaning of political equality. While traditional egalitarians advocate political equality on the basis of positive human characteristics – such as reason or agency – negative egalitarianism takes the opposite approach, defending political equality on the grounds that no citizen is more deserving of rule than any other.

Yves Winter explores the democratic functions of Florentine penal institutions in “Liberty and Punish: Machiavelli’s Anti-Oligarchic History of Florentine Penal Practices.” Through a close reading of Machiavelli’s Florentine Histories, Winter develops a novel interpretation of Machiavelli’s theory of punishment. He argues that for Machiavelli, well-structured penal institutions play a crucial role in establishing and maintaining popular republics, preventing elite capture, and protecting the liberty of the common people against the ambitions of powerful elites.

John P. McCormick similarly draws on Machiavelli as a resource for democratic theorists, focusing on the themes of popular leadership and democratic backsliding. In “Tyrannical Incompetence in Machiavelli’s Florentine Histories: Bad Men Not Knowing How to Appear Good,” McCormick examples how the actions of ineffective leaders undermine popular republics. McCormick identifies two categories of leaders who undermine popular republics: 1) well-intentioned leaders who govern based on misguided notions of goodness and patriotism, and 2) self-interested elites who advance partisan interests at the expense of shared geopolitical goals.

Eero Arum’s paper, “Absolute Democracy: Rethinking Bodin on Popular Sovereignty,” turns to Bodin’s political thought as a resource for envisioning a non-constitutionalist model of democracy. In contrast to recent constitutionalist interpretations of Bodin, Arum argues that Bodin offers a model of “absolute democracy”: a state in which the popular will is unbound by law or juridical constraints. For Bodin, any “democracy” in which legislative power is permanently vested in magistrates – such as elected representatives and judges – is not a democracy at all, but rather a tyranny “by usurpation” (per usurpationem). Arum suggests that the high absolutist theory of the 16th and 17th centuries offers a valuable resource for envisioning the possibilities – and potential dangers – of democracy without constitutionalism.

Papers:
Negative Egalitarianism: History and Theory
Samuel Ely Bagg, University of South Carolina; Teresa M. Bejan, University of Oxford

This paper makes the case for negative egalitarianism as a distinctive tradition within the history of political thought, as well as a promising path forward in contemporary democratic theory. Contemporary egalitarian arguments generally have a positive character. Whether one begins from basic, distributive, or relational equality, that is, such arguments rely on the intuition that all people possess certain positive characteristics—such as reason or agency—which entitle them to positive goods like freedom, rights, and participation in rule. Their normative logic is thus one of upward equalization: i.e., granting everyone the status and privileges once reserved for certain elite groups. Egalitarian arguments for democracy are a case in point. On such accounts, everyone ought to share equally in political rule—in one sense or another—because everyone is equally deserving of it. But this account faces well-known challenges on multiple fronts. In what sense can everyone have equal simultaneous control over collective decisions? And if equal treatment is tied to the possession of certain characteristics, does that necessarily create certain exclusions? In this paper, we argue that there is a far simpler way to explain the value of democracy. On the negative-egalitarian account we develop, in short, the point is not that everyone deserves to rule, but that nobody does. Whether or not the positive-egalitarian case for democracy can be rescued from the various objections commonly raised against it, ours has the advantage of not facing them in the first place. And while the positive-egalitarian story is more familiar to contemporary ears, we show that negative egalitarianism has a rich history in ancient, medieval, and early modern thought. For example, Greek observers identified sortition, and not majority-voting, as paradigmatic of democratic equality because it distributed offices indifferently, regarding no citizen as more or less fit for/deserving of rule than any other one. This argument from negative equality was subsequently revived in the 14th century by William of Ockham and other conciliarists critical of papal power. We find it also in the early modern theories of popular sovereignty and popular resistance developed by Catholics and Protestants alike. These arguments, we suggest, constitute a neglected but important tradition of democratic theorizing worthy of recovery today.

Liberty and Punish: Machiavelli on Anti-oligarchic Penal Practices
Yves Winter, McGill University

The transformation of practices of punishment was of pivotal importance in the historical shift in Europe from the communal states of the late medieval era to the territorial states of the early modern period. It is therefore no surprise that punishment is a prominent theme in Machiavelli’s work, in his theory of the state, in his theories of popular government, and in his reconstruction of Florentine history. Whereas some commentators attribute to Machiavelli a quasi-utilitarian theory of punishment, I contend that he understands punishment as a mechanism to advance and defend political liberty. This article examines practices of punishment from the perspective of Florentine constitutional history. By tracing the transformations of punishment in Florence from the thirteenth to the fifteenth century, as described in Machiavelli’s Florentine Histories, I show that penal practices correlate with regime transformations of the Florentine republic, from aristocratic to popular and back to oligarchic regimes. Against decontextualized and fragmentary readings of The Prince and the Discourses that might suggest that Machiavelli put forward a theory of punishment purely oriented toward political stability, I argue that Machiavelli understood penal practices as central to the class conflicts of that period as well as of his own historical moment. Most significantly, he associated the transformation of punishment—for example the increasingly dramatic penalties against magnates and the establishment of new penal institutions, such as the Florentine prison at the turn of the thirteenth century—with the enfranchisement of the Florentine popolo and the flourishing of political liberty.

Tyrannical Incompetence in Machiavelli’s “Florentine Histories”
John P. McCormick, University of Chicago

In the Florentine Histories, Machiavelli presents Giano della Bella and Michele di Lando as well-intentioned leaders who fail to imitate the ancient examples of Moses, Romulus, and Brutus; consequently, they fail to become successful founders or reformers of the early Florentine Republic. Machiavelli suggests that naïve or undifferentiated notions of goodness or patriotism prompt Giano and Michele to spurn the common people’s support, to exhibit excessive deference to rapacious elites and, eventually, to exit the city—leaving it much worse off than before (FH III.13, 22). In this paper, I show that Machiavelli’s accounts of more cravenly ambitious Florentine figures, Corso Donati and Walter Brienne, evince defective notions of self-interest that prevent them from acting in ways that could have benefitted Florence’s civic and geo-political welfare—as well as their own political reputations and authority. Machiavelli indicates that Corso and Walter both arouse harmful popular hatred against themselves rather than inspiring salutary popular respect; they neglect to organize widely public, civic-military forces rather than merely sectarian ones; and they both rely too extensively on foreign support for their defectively established authority (FH II.21, FH II.33-34). Machiavelli declares that a “wise legislator” could have imposed a proper constitutional order upon the Florentine Republic (FH III.1). Nevertheless, both Florence’s well-meaning and selfishly motivated leaders, Machiavelli reluctantly shows, consistently facilitate a significant deterioration of liberty in his native city.

Absolute Democracy: Rethinking Bodin on Popular Sovereignty
Eero Arum, UC Berkeley

Critics of “constitutional democracy” often argue that the ideals of popular sovereignty and constitutionalism are inherently opposed. But contemporary political theorists have yet to formulate a robust non-constitutionalist model of democracy. In this paper, I suggest that we can identify such a model in an unlikely source: the political thought of the 16th-century jurist Jean Bodin. In contrast to recent scholarship, I argue that Bodin’s theory of popular sovereignty commits him not to an early model of modern constitutional democracy, but rather to the striking possibility of “absolute democracy.” “Absolutism” is often understood as an exclusively monarchical political doctrine. But in the high absolutist theory of the 16th and 17th centuries, the notion that sovereign authority is “absolute” (absolutus) – and thus unbound by law (legibus solutus) – was not restricted to monarchies; it also applied to aristocracies and democracies. Bodin, the central figure of this tradition, argues that all political sovereigns – whether monarchical, aristocratic, or democratic – must hold “absolute power,” an authority unconstrained by either law or constitutional norms. For Bodin, a democracy is therefore a regime in which the people, like an absolute monarch, retain an exclusive and unlimited right to legislate, annul existing laws or institutions, and override judicial verdicts through a simple majority vote. After reconstructing Bodin’s model of “absolute democracy,” I reassess his relationship to modern constitutional democracy. I conclude that Bodin would regard most – if not all – existing liberal states as essentially undemocratic. For Bodin, any “democracy” in which legislative power belongs to a small group of representatives – such as senators, courts, or judges – is not a democracy at all, but rather a tyranny per usurpationem, a regime in which sovereignty has been “usurped” from its rightful owner. I suggest that Bodin’s conception of democracy is incompatible with the institutional arrangements of many contemporary liberal democracies – including the separation of powers, the independence of the judiciary, and the protection of minority rights through constitutional provisions. Rather than promoting Bodinian “absolute democracy” as a model for contemporary democratic theory or practice, I propose that Bodin’s political thought can help contemporary theorists envision the possibilities – and potential dangers – of democracy without constitutionalism.

Friday, September 6, 2:00pm – 3:30pm
Co-sponsored by the Democratic Innovations Related Group
Full Paper Panel

Participants:
(Chair) Jane Mansbridge, Harvard Kennedy School
(Discussant) Christopher F. Karpowitz, Brigham Young University
(Discussant) Stephanie Burkhalter, Humboldt State University

Session Description:
As the applications of deliberative minipublics proliferate, citizens are consulted with new technologies, and they are being asked to take on new roles. These innovations, some employing AI to varying extents within the deliberative process itself, are opening new vistas for the application of deliberation to public problem solving. What innovations work well (or not) and why? What problems are they encountering? This panel draws on projects from various countries with different technologies and different expectations about what members of the public need to do. Can deliberative minipublics, whether citizens assemblies, Deliberative Polls, or other designs, be made more frequent and practical by using new technology? Can they become so frequent that we could achieve a more deliberative society? Or do they constrain or truncate the deliberative process?

Papers:
Good Deliberation Regardless of Mode? An Experimental Comparison
Kimmo Gronlund, Abo Akademi University; Kaisa Herne, University of Turku; James S. Fishkin, Stanford University; Marina Lindell, Åbo Akademi University; Alice Siu, Stanford University

Does the mode of deliberation – face-to-face with human moderators, online with human moderators and online with an automated moderation – influence opinion formation and learning in a deliberative mini-public? We study a Citizens’ parliament which was organized according to the Deliberative poll® model. Participants (n=671) were recruited through a stratified random sample of the Finnish population (n=30,000). They were randomly allocated into one of the three treatment conditions. In the Face-to-face condition, participants discussed face-to-face with human moderators. In Online human moderator, participants discussed in an online meeting (via Zoom) with human moderators. In Online automated moderator, participants discussed in an online platform with automated moderation. All discussions took place in small groups of around ten people. The topics were based on four citizens’ initiatives, two of which were about drug use policies and two about fuel pricing and taxation. Apart from the meeting mode, the procedures were held constant. Participants received briefing materials and rules of discussion prior deliberations, and during deliberations they could pose questions to experts. Each participant completed four surveys, of which three were administered before deliberations (t1-t3) and one after (t4). Surveys included items on opinions on the discussed topics, democracy preferences, political trust and efficacy, affective polarization and political knowledge. We hypothesize that: Participants’ opinions de-polarize and on average become more progressive (H1); Opinion changes are not different in the three modes of deliberation (H2); Participants’ issue knowledge increases during deliberation (H3); Knowledge changes are not different in the three modes of deliberation (H4).

Toward Citizen-Legislators: Evidence from Two French Citizens’ Assemblies
Helene E. Landemore, Yale University

In this paper, we draw on the ground-breaking French Citizens’ Convention for Climate (CCC) to provide an empirically based assessment of the feasibility of placing citizens in the position of legislators. The French Climate Convention tasked 150 randomly selected citizens with the task of generating readily implementable policy and law proposals with the assistance of a legal committee, making it a scenario comparable to that of a citizens’ legislature. The French case study suggests that under the right conditions and with the proper institutional and expert support large groups of ordinary citizens are capable of performing the function of legislators, opening novel horizons for political reform.

America in One Room: Democratic Reform — Using New Technology for Deliberation
James S. Fishkin, Stanford University; Larry Diamond, Stanford University; Alice Siu, Stanford University; Valentin Bolotnyy, Hoover Institution; Joshua Yoshio Lerner, NORC at the University of Chicago; Norman Bradburn, University of Chicago

America in One Room: Democratic Reform was a national experiment in deliberation by a sample of 600 deliberators and a comparable control group selected by NORC at the University of Chicago. It focused on 76 proposals for reform gathered from across the political spectrum and vetted by a non-partisan advisory committee. The project employed an AI assisted moderator for the sixty small groups who engaged in video-based discussion for a long weekend. The moderator platform replaced human moderators in the Deliberative Poll model and received superb evaluations from the participants. There were striking changes of opinion on electoral reforms such as Ranked Choice Voting and on all the essential mechanics of voter registration, the counting of votes and non-partisan administration of elections. On the issues of extreme partisan polarization in this era when election results are contested there were large de-polarizing movements by both Republicans and Democrats on the ways democracy could be protected and strengthened for universal inclusion and bi-partisan confidence in election results. This paper attempts to explain these large changes of opinion and shows how the automated moderator can be used with large, representative samples to overcome our seemingly intractable divisions.

Integrating AI and Gamification into Online Public Consultation
John Gastil, Pennsylvania State University

The problems facing democracy require structural reforms in how governments interact with their constituents. This paper argues for the development of a suite of online tools and interfaces for changing consultation and public advocacy with local governments, based on successful piecemeal developments in local, state, and small national governments across the globe. Enhancements from AI and special features drawing on the principles of game design should make these online processes more effective at recruiting public participants, deliberating, and influencing policymaking.

Transnational Climate Deliberation: Improving Deliberativeness and Engagement
Jane Suiter, Dublin City University

Climate change policies are a prime example of “complex” political issues where transnational approaches are crucially important and potentially influential because they involve government and advocacy group elites. However, this also means they preclude public scrutiny, which is problematic from a democratic legitimacy perspective. Instead, policy responses to chronic crises such as climate change should not only be informed by expert knowledge but seek public support to have legitimacy. Omitting citizen perspectives leaves climate action initiatives vulnerable to populist backlash. One way to achieve citizen engagement is representative transnational deliberative platforms. This paper utilizes data from a transnational online deliberative platform, EUComMeet, featuring automated moderation and automated translation in multiple languages implemented in 5 EU countries in 2023. Relying on pre and post-surveys and focus group interviews, this paper asks whether interpersonal deliberation at different levels (locally), nationally and transnationally can improve deliberativeness and citizen engagement on crucial climate action goals.

Thursday, September 5, 4:00pm – 5:30pm
Featured Paper Panel: 30-minute Paper Presentations

Participants:
(Chair) Eleanor Florence Woodhouse, University College London
(Discussant) Christian R. Grose, University of Southern California
(Discussant) David Lazer, Northeastern University
(Discussant) Ben Taylor Jones, Pennsylvania State University
(Discussant) Jud Mathews, Pennsylvania State University

Session Description:
The papers on this panel explore the integration of democratic principles into public administration and governance. Each study, while distinct in its focus and methodology, contributes to a theme of central theme of how democratic values are embedded, perceived, and operationalized in various facets of public life.

Papers:
The Democratic Character of Public Encounters: Theory and Evidence (UK & Italy)
Anthony Michael Bertelli, Pennsylvania State University; Silvia Cannas, Bocconi

We present a novel approach for examining the democratic content of public encounters, or direct focused interactions between unelected public and private agents. While public encounters have inspired robust literatures (e.g., Bartels 2013), we contend that existing work has not congealed around questions of democracy. First, we build an analytic framework that relates the experience of public encounter to the belief systems of the individuals it involves. Second, building on recent normative arguments about democratically responsible public administration (Bertelli 2021; Bertelli and Schwartz 2023) we show how certain public encounters have important democratic content and the potential to reshape the belief systems of those involved. Third, to provide an initial test of these normative expectations in two ways. A pair of survey experiments examine how knowledge and explanations of administrative procedures influence respondents’ perceptions of the importance of normative principles and perceptions of responsible action in general population samples from the UK and Italy. Adapting a recent methodological innovation in the political knowledge literature (Kraft 2023), a mixed methods study explores if and to what extent exposure to democracy-preserving encounters influences respondents’ understandings of the administrative process and its underlying normative principles in a general population sample from the UK.

Public Administration, Democracy and Individual Belief Systems
Anthony Michael Bertelli, Pennsylvania State University; Silvia Cannas, Bocconi; Marika Danielle Csapo, Institut Barcelona d’Estudis Internacionals

Understanding what conditions are conducive to promoting democratic values on a broad social scale is normatively important so long as the quality of democratic institutions rests on a coherent set of socially reinforced norms. How does individuals’ understanding of governing institutions influence their valuations of principles of “good” public administration (i.e., impartiality, accountability, transparency, integrity, efficiency, and legality)? Are these principles integrated into a coherent belief system? Does a college education increase the centrality of these principles in a political belief system? We examine these questions using original survey data from Italy and the United Kingdom that employs novel questions about administrative principles while leveraging well-established items of identifying political and moral beliefs (cf. Inglehart, et al. 2020; Fitzgerald, et al. 2023; Graham, et al. 2011; Schwartz 2012). To evaluate whether political and institutional knowledge may be a mechanism through which education may influence belief system structure, we build a metric of “institutional understanding” modeled on the open-ended question approach of Kraft (2023). To examine the structure of belief systems, we use a network analysis approach that has become common for studying the centrality of specific values within broader belief systems (e.g., Dalege, et al. 2016; Brandt 2022). This study will further our understanding of the way in which citizens of democracies internalize norms that inform their behavioral expectations for the elements of their governments that are not elected but which make important decisions about policy implementation.

Multilayer Networks of Normative Principles in Statutory Law
Anthony Michael Bertelli, Pennsylvania State University; Silvia Cannas, Bocconi; Marika Danielle Csapo, Institut Barcelona d’Estudis Internacionals; Zsuzsanna Blanka Magyar, Pompeu Fabra University

The legal basis of public administration provides it with fundamental normative principles that guide its practice. These principles, such as impartiality or transparency, are the primary formal way of connecting the normative values of a state to the practice of its public administration. How do administrative principles shape the legal structure of public administration? We develop a novel method for quantitatively measuring the importance of principles such as impartiality or transparency to national laws. We apply this method to the full corpus of Italian law, more than 73,000 laws adopted under the present constitution since 1948. We begin with qualitative methods that identify definitions and articulations of principles in statutes. We then use these references (and citations to them) to construct networks for each principle. Like a social network, statutes are written by politicians for public administrators and lawyers and have reasons to emphasize (or de-emphasize) connections between principles and other statutes. We argue that more connected laws become institutionalized and are harder to change. We analyze these network dynamics through information about the types and topics of laws and the political context in which they are created, such as the electoral and party systems, government ideology, and the identity and characteristics of signing ministers. Our claim is that normative principles in statutory law constitute a dynamic scale-free multi-level network in which the networks of individual principles are interconnected (Kinsley et al. 2020). We estimate the probabilities of tie formation with ERGM models to understand under how political context influences the networks of principles.

Friday, September 6, 4:00pm – 5:30pm
Co-sponsored by Division 16: International Political Economy
Full Paper Panel

Participants:
(Chair) Sarah M. Brooks, Ohio State University
(Discussant) James Hodgdon Bisbee, Vanderbilt University
(Discussant) Katja B. Kleinberg, SUNY, Binghamton University

Session Description:
Gender remains one of the most predictive and consistent predictors in studies of trade politics. However, its role remains under-theorized and under-explored. This panel aims to narrow this gap by bringing together scholars who approach the study of globalization through the lens of gender.

To help explain the gender gap in trade attitudes and voting behavior, the following two papers focus on the role of family networks. Cho and Flaherty argue that individuals’ support for protectionist candidates and policies depends not only on their labor market exposure but also on that of their close kin, especially their spouses. Beesley and Bastiaens explore the impact of consumer and producer considerations on trade attitudes, with a specific focus on how these dynamics differ among individuals with and without children. The next two papers explore voter responses to gendered policies. In the global policy arena, Girard and Lawlor explore the demand for and impact of descriptive representation in IOs by distinguishing between “masculine” policy domains (e.g., international trade) and “feminine” policy domains (e.g., public health). Looking more at domestic policy, Betz, Fortunato, and O’Brien study how exposure to gender-biased trade policy can reduce support for the governing institutions that produce trade policy outcomes. Turning to the policymaking process, Choi investigates the growth of gender-related provisions in preferential trade agreements and examines the influence of key stakeholders in the negotiation process.

Papers:
Kinship Trade Politics: Family Ties and Labor Market Exposure to Globalization
Soohyun Cho, Princeton University; Thomas Michael Flaherty, University of California, San Diego

While previous studies of protectionist attitudes and voting emphasize an individual’s own labor market exposure, less attention has been paid to indirect exposure through one’s kin network. We use US Census micro-data to document significant heterogeneity in trade exposure between individuals in the same family. We then develop a theory where individuals’ demand for protectionist policies and candidates depends on the labor market exposure of their close kin, especially their spouse, in addition to their own exposure. This kinship exposure arises from well-known risk-sharing behaviors between family members, and from family members’ selection into industries, occupations, and regions that face differential competition from global markets. The political effects of trade are magnified when voters share the same exposure as their kin. More commonly, however, the political effects are moderated when family members face countervailing exposure. To test this theory, we use the U.S. General Social Survey data (1998-2002) that identify the labor market characteristics of respondents’ spouses and parents, which we then combine with an exogenous trade shock to these characteristics from NAFTA. We hypothesize that increased Mexican trade competition through one’s kinship network increases the demand for protectionist policies and anti-trade populist candidates. We also evaluate to what extent kinship exposure explains the well-known gender gap in the demand for protectionism.

Protectionism and Parenthood: The Impact of Children on Globalization Attitudes
Ida Bastiaens, Fordham University; Celeste Beesley, Brigham Young University

It is well established that individuals’ economic interests as consumers and producers influence their attitudes towards trade (sometimes in conflicting ways). Economic interests in both those roles are considerably altered by having children. Households with children may have distinct concerns around consumption (in terms of volume of consumption, budget, product safety, environmental impact). Parents also engage in large amounts of unpaid production, which can alter their engagement in paid production. Numerous studies show that parental status influences labor market choices (i.e., job location, hours, attachment) and income for both men and women (albeit in different ways). Using original survey experiments in a 2023 survey of 2,000 Americans as well as existing survey data, we explore how considerations of consumer and producer concerns (for example, worries about price and quality of imports, job insecurity, economic vulnerability) impact individuals’ trade policy preferences as well as examining differences between those with and without children. We find that parents’ willingness to purchase imports is more sensitive to quality considerations, but that price considerations may be even more important than quality when forming parents’ trade preferences. On the production side, both parents and non-parents are less likely to support free trade when it is associated with lower wages or job loss. However, when trade is associated with higher wages and more jobs, support for trade increases among parents, but not non-parents. We further find that the impact of parenthood is conditional on gender, income, and education.

Descriptive Representation and Trust in International Organizations
Tyler Girard, Purdue University; Andrea Lawlor, McMaster University

What does descriptive representation mean in the context of international organizations (IOs)? And how does descriptive representation affect citizens’ trust in IOs? While past work has investigated the impact of procedural and substantive dimensions on the popular legitimacy of IOs, as well as the role of elite communications, we have limited knowledge of the demands for and effect of descriptive representation in IOs. Theoretically, we build on comparative scholarship on descriptive representation and institutional trust to identify when and how descriptive representation matters for IOs. Using original national surveys in Canada and Denmark, we first explore what characteristics citizens find important with respect to descriptive representation at both domestic and global levels. Second, we argue that individuals may have greater trust in IOs that are descriptively representative when such representation is normalized domestically or when the IO governs a stereotypically “feminine” policy domain (e.g., public health) rather than a “masculine” policy domain (e.g., international trade). We test our argument using a pre-registered factorial experiment that varies the IO policy domain, the gender of IO representatives, and the race of IO representatives. This project advances the study of gender and race in global governance and our understanding of IO legitimacy.

Does Exposure to Gender-Biased Policy Erode Support for Governing Authority?
Timm Betz, Washington University in St. Louis; David Fortunato, University of California, San Diego; Diana Z. O’Brien, Rice University

We argue that exposure to discriminatory policy can reduce support for the governing institutions that produce those policy outcomes. Focusing on gender, we construct a pre-registered, experimental test of this argument using hypothetical trade policy outcomes as the stimulus, randomly exposing experimental subjects to import tax rates on women’s and men’s clothing that are gender equal, biased toward women, biased toward men, or no policy at all. We administer the instrument to voting age populations in Canada and Germany and assess the impact of the treatment on subjects’ preferences for policy influence between the government responsible for trade policy—the central government of Canada and the EU—and an alternate level of government—Canada’s provincial governments and the central government of Germany, respectively. Preliminary results suggest exposure to gender-biased policy, particularly if biased against the subject’s gender, results in a shift of preferred policy influence away from the responsible government.

Sitting at the Table and Negotiating Gender Equality in Trade Agreements
Ha-Eun Choi, Michigan State University

The integration of gender perspectives into the design of Preferential Trade Agreements (PTAs) has gained increasing prominence in recent years. In this paper, I ask why and how gender-related provisions (GP) are incorporated into trade policies, focusing on how key stakeholders play a role in the negotiation process. While previous research on incorporating social standards in trade agreements emphasizes the role of power dynamics and domestic preferences as primary factors, I argue that the inclusion of GPs can be better understood as a trade linkage with normative and political objectives, which are predominantly shaped by the normative preferences of political leadership rather than the economic preferences of domestic societal actors. Governments that demonstrate a strong commitment to pro-gender norms take a leading role in addressing gender equality concerns during trade negotiations, potentially influencing the gender equality practices of their partner countries through PTAs. Using a mixed-methods approach involving statistical analysis of observational data and in-depth interviews, I find overall support for the theoretical expectation. This paper contributes to our understanding of how social provisions are designed in the trade negotiation process.

Saturday, September 7, 10:00am – 11:30am
Roundtable

Participants:
(Chair) Michael Latner, California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo
(Presenter) Joseph Anthony, SUNY Cortland
(Presenter) Andrea Benjamin, University of Oklahoma
(Presenter) Ivy A.M. Cargile, California State University, Bakersfield

Session Description:
The Center for Science and Democracy at the Union of Concerned Scientists works to promote independent science, a responsive, transparent democracy, and evidence-based decision-making on issues impacting vulnerable communities. We have assembled an Election Science Task Force of more than 20 experts, including sitting and former Secretaries of State, local election administrators, data scientists, election law scholars, and political organizers, working to create a more accountable and fair electoral process. Our roundtable will report on efforts to improve election data transparency and integrity leading up to the 2024 election. Our goal is to inform policy and research, in building and sustaining a healthy and equitable democracy.