Hind Ahmed Zaki – University of Connecticut

Over the past decade, an increasing number of young Egyptian women have been taking off the veil. What prompts this phenomenon, and can we even call this a phenomenon? Mt research aims to answer these two questions by following the everyday lives of a sample of Egyptian women who have elected to take off the veil. Through following their choices to unveil and how it relates to other aspects of their lives, including their level of religiosity, their choices with regards to work and education, both inside and outside their homes and towns, their class position, and their political affiliations (if any), I aim to understand their choices or lack of as they navigate various societal and economic opportunities and challenges. I argue that Egyptian women who are taking off the veil now are remaking the very meaning of religious and social practices as they forge new meanings of respectability, bodily integrity, the right to mobility and access to new social and economic opportunities, and personal agency. Through their daily practices of veiling and unveiling, they challenge both the nationalist narratives of respectability as well as Islamic narratives of piety and forge new ways of being and acting in both the public and private spheres.

John H. Armstrong – Seattle University

City policies for low-carbon transitions are vital to addressing climate change given that urban areas are major sources of greenhouse gas emissions. Yet despite most cities acting on climate change, few have adopted ambitious policies that will reduce emissions significantly. This study examines the development of city climate change programs over time and the main drivers behind their enactment of low-carbon transition policies, some of the most impactful climate actions to date. In ten cities across the United States that have adopted low-carbon transition policies, the study seeks to understand what spurs cities to go from more modest climate actions to mandates for low-carbon transitions. The research entails constructing climate policy timelines, analyzing social, political, and economic variables and their changes over time, and interviewing policy officials. Along with making contributions to sustainability transitions and policymaking fields, understanding the factors that influence the adoption of ambitious climate policies can provide insights and guidance to policymakers and advocates working to advance climate actions.

Olga Avdeyeva – Loyola University Chicago

This research project answers a poignant question: Does natural resource abundance impede women’s political participation and representation? If so, what explains this phenomenon? I propose to leverage census and district-election-level data on Canadian provincial legislative elections to better understand how workforce concentration in extractive industries shapes female candidate entry and victory. I plan to explore supply and demand explanations of women’s empowerment by studying ideological versus demographic factors of extractive industry concentration, analyzing how well they account for this relationship. I expect to uncover and study the harmful effects of the resource curse on women’s candidate entry and victory. The effects are expected to transpire the party lines and be prominent for women’s chances to enter and win electoral competitions on the ballots of different parties.

Emily Baer – University of New Hampshire

This project examines how leaders of reform movements inside the U.S. Congress develop and justify their preferences about institutional structures, and how Congress evolves – or fails to evolve – to meet the needs and interests of new generations of lawmakers. Political science research suggests that members and Senators are likely to draw on a more limited set of influences in the contemporary era than they did in earlier historical periods, including the founding in the eighteenth century and modern legislative development in the early twentieth century. This project will reevaluate this idea by integrating research from multiple disciplines, including political science, history, philosophy, psychology, American political development, adopt multiple methods and data sources, including archival data, interviews, and primary source congressional documents, and examine both contemporary and historical eras. The project itself has two components: First, what sources do leaders of congressional reform in the House and Senate draw upon to support their positions on institutional reform? And second, how does the increasing diversity of member identities, backgrounds, and experiences shape the institutional reforms considered and adopted by the House and Senate?

Regina Bateson – University of Colorado, Boulder
Hannah Chapman – University of Oklahoma
Oliver Kaplan – University of Denver
Rachel Schwartz – University of Oklahoma

Around the world, record numbers of people have fled their homes in search of safety. Displacement due to conflict and human rights abuses is greater now than at any time since World War II. When people seek asylum in the United States, their attorneys often ask researchers to serve as country conditions expert witnesses. Country conditions experts contribute to asylum cases by explaining patterns of persecution, discrimination, violence, and other issues in the asylum seeker’s home country. Given their area studies knowledge, many political scientists are well-qualified to serve in this role — but they may not be aware of the need for expert witnesses in asylum cases, or they may not know how to get started. Our project will train and equip more political scientists to serve as country conditions experts. At APSA 2025, we will offer a short course on expert witnessing in asylum cases, and we plan to develop a network to share information about expert witnessing among political scientists. Additionally, we will survey political scientists to gather data about their participation as expert witnesses in asylum cases. Collectively, our team members have served as country conditions experts in more than 150 asylum cases. We are grateful for this opportunity to help other political scientists join in this important form of public service.

Edwina Chen – University of South Carolina
Carolina Bermejo Goodwin – University of South Carolina
Conor Craig – University of South Carolina
Ryan Dennehy – University of South Carolina

Our symposium aims to enhance the professional development of emerging political science scholars, focusing on graduate students from the Southeastern region. Through this event, students will present their research, engage in workshops on crucial professional skills, and network with peers and established scholars. The symposium will feature panels on various subfields in political science, a keynote speaker, and two hands-on workshops that will provide valuable insights into academic and professional growth. By bringing together students from various institutions, this symposium offers a collaborative and inclusive environment that encourages scholarly exchange and career development.

Youssef Chouhoud – Christopher Newport University
Francesca Parente – Christopher Newport University

This project explores the complex and enduring influence of religion on human rights outcomes across varied global contexts. Despite global declines in religious adherence, religion continues to wield significant influence in shaping political dynamics and societal norms. This impact is particularly evident when it comes to, for example, immigration policy, and can even shape national identity. By convening scholars from multiple disciplines, this initiative will critically examine how religious traditions, institutions, and ideologies interact with human rights frameworks, addressing key issues such as religious nationalism, minority rights, and social justice.

A core component of the project is a public conference where scholars will present overviews on the interplay between religion and human rights. The conference aims to engage the Christopher Newport community in a dialogue about the ways in which religious beliefs and institutions can both advance and impede human rights principles. This undertaking seeks to foster deeper understanding of religion’s role in contemporary human rights issues, while also laying the groundwork for future scholarly contributions to this important intersection.

Danissa Contreras Guzmán – University of Texas, Austin

Why has the Left adopted Religious Conservatism in some Latin American countries, but not in others? While the common wisdom is that secular progressivism and left-wing parties go hand in hand in contemporary politics, some notable Latin American cases challenge this expectation. In recent years, a new type of Left has combined left-wing economic policies with religious-conservative agendas. In this project, I explain the emergence of this unexpected combination of policy packages by focusing on the strategic decisions of political actors and the constraints imposed on them by the political system. First, I claim that the weakening of economic differences between the Left and the Right led to left-wing parties prematurely adopting culturally progressive policies as a main source of differentiation. In turn, this cleavage realignment created a disconnect between the Left and part of their voters, who did not feel represented by this new culturally progressive agenda––thus creating a vacuum that new politicians could exploit. Nonetheless, I argue that the existence of political space for the mobilization of culturally conservative positions is not enough to give rise to the Religious-Conservative Left. Parties that are highly constrained by their organizations and their bonds with culturally progressive groups encounter significant obstacles to modifying their cultural agendas. In contrast, populist leaders have an advantage in applying this strategy, due to their performative style and ideological fluidity. Adopting a multi-method approach, I empirically test this theory by drawing evidence from the cases of Brazil, Ecuador, Mexico, and Peru.

Gonzalo Di Landro – Rice University

I conduct research on the political economy of gender, which consists of the systematic study of how labor market dynamics and family roles create disparities in wages, political representation, and power between women and men. My focus is on understanding how these inequalities influence gender differences in political behavior, particularly in terms of the political parties that men and women tend to support. In my work, I theorize and show that parties play a key role in shaping gender differences in voting behavior in Western Europe through their positions on gender-egalitarian labor market policies, such as expanding childcare services and advocating for equal pay for work of equal value. I am thrilled to have been awarded the Summer Centennial Center Research Grant, which will allow me to expand my research by exploring how social class dynamics intersect with these patterns. With the grant, I will conduct public opinion surveys in the United Kingdom and France to investigate how gender labor equality policies aimed at different social classes impact the political behavior of women and men. In a time when gender divides in public opinion are widening, understanding the role parties play in influencing these dynamics is more important than ever.

Diana Elhard – Northwestern University

This project examines the connections between international treaty mandates and their implementation with a focus on international climate finance. Climate finance supports mitigation and adaptation efforts, meaning actions to reduce or halt emissions and to respond to existing impacts of climate change, respectively. My project aims to understand three connections in treaty processes: (1) past treaty decisions related to climate finance recipients (2) how actors interpret these decisions; (3) how these interpretations impact additional negotiations and decisions. My case study is the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)’s ad-hoc work program on the New Collective Quantified Goal (NCQG). According to existing international climate treaties those who are particularly vulnerable to climate change should receive climate finance. I ask how negotiators and non-state actors interpret what it means to be particularly vulnerable as they design and implement a new international climate finance goal. I rely on qualitative methods and data collection through participant observation, interviews with NCQG attendees, and systematic discourse analysis. This project engages with scholarship on global environmental governance, political discourses, governing through goal setting, and public international finance.

Hanna Fölsz – Stanford University
Frances Cayton – Cornell University

We field a survey working group and an original collaborative time-sharing survey that enables graduate student research on democratic politics and its challenges in East-Central Europe. Core comparative politics literatures on democracy and autocracy are rooted in East and East Central European cases, ranging from regime transitions, legacies of repression and autocracy, democratic backsliding, and autocratic consolidation. Yet, a 2019 audit of the major comparative politics journals found that Eastern Europe tied with African politics as the most under-published region, earning only 8% of journal space, as compared with 21% for Latin America and the Asia-Pacific region (Song 2019). To facilitate graduate student research on the region, in 2022 we founded the East European Graduate Politics Workshop, a working group of graduate students from over 25 universities across the US and Europe. One challenge that emerged through our workshop is limited funding opportunities for survey research in the region. Via an APSA Centennial Center grant, we will field a survey working group where graduate students develop survey-based research, receive feedback in workshops. Then, their questions are fielded in an original, time-sharing survey and they present their results at an in-person pre-APSA mini-conference. This working group will help the greatest possible number of graduate students develop and implement original survey-based projects and creates and fosters an engaged, collaborative research community of graduate students working on East-Central European politics—a region marginal in many departments but growing in terms of scholarly and non-scholarly interest following episodes of democratic backsliding in Hungary and Poland and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Ashley Fox – University at Albany, SUNY

The Texas Heartbeat Act (SB8) was signed into law on May 19, 2021 and went into effect several months later on September 1, 2021. Given the particularly stealthy way that the law operates through a pseudo bounty system that rewards citizens for turning in abortion providers, abortion in the state of Texas effectively ceased subsequent to the law’s passage. The law also touched off a series of bills and court challenges in other conservative states leading eventually to the complete overturning of Roe v Wade, further restricting access to abortion across the nation.  From a public health standpoint, one of the largest concerns is that restricted abortion access may contribute to an increase in unplanned pregnancies, including teen pregnancy and a worsening of already concerningly high rates of maternal mortality and morbidity. These impacts are likely to fall heaviest on young people who are the most at risk of unplanned pregnancy and who may be most opposed to abortion restrictions.  In this rapidly changing political context towards reproductive rights, we ask what effect these policy changes have had on the policy attitudes, health behaviors and voting intentions of young people (age 18-34) in Texas. Our research aims to answer the following pressing questions: Are abortion restrictions out of step with the public opinion of young people in a conservative state? How are young people adapting their sexual and reproductive behaviors in light of these landmark policy changes? How have abortion restrictions affected young people’s voting intentions in Texas and their overall political mobilization? 

Laura García Montoya – University of Toronto
Young-Im Lee – California State University, Sacrament
Jennifer Cyr – Universidad Torcuato di Tella
Nicholas Weller – University of California, Riverside
Daniel Solomon – U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum

Political scientists are increasingly interested in mixed-methods research, as it has proven useful for advancing our understanding of complex political processes, including democratization, state-building, and other perennial “big questions” in the field. Our annual workshop is one of the few opportunities for graduate and junior scholars to receive focused feedback on mixed-methods research, providing learning opportunities that are often unavailable at training institutes primarily focused on quantitative or qualitative research. Over the last nine years, the organizers have made intentional efforts to increase the gender and racial/ethnic diversity of the participants, and we have seen our efforts paid off. So far, the workshop has featured 130 presentations by 156 presenters. We have identified five monographs, 21 peer-reviewed journal articles, one book chapter, and five working papers/papers under review/dissertation chapters stemming from SWMMR presentations. A recent survey of past presenters shows that the presentations and focused feedback from SWMMR have significantly helped participants publish their work. The Centennial Center Research Grant will allow us to continue the workshop and our contribution to further diversify voices in academia.

Roman Hlatky – University of North Texas

Since the escalation of Russian aggression in Ukraine, over four million Ukrainian refugees have received international protection in the European Union. Many of these refugees have resettled in Central Europe, with Poland and the Czech Republic ranking first and second, respectively, in the number of Ukrainian refugees accepted per capita. Initially, responses were largely positive. Yet, this positivity was short-lived. Fueled by the rhetoric of nationalist politicians, public opinion towards the War started to turn. Soon, refugees also became a target, often portrayed as an economic burden on their host societies. This project aims to understand effective pathways for reducing this emerging intolerance.

Individuals are more positive towards migrants when they feel that their state can effectively manage migration inflows – i.e., who enters the country and under what conditions. However, a sole focus on entry overlooks another critical component of migration management: integration. When individuals feel that their state has the capacity to effectively integrate newcomers – whether by providing short-term resources to fulfil immediate needs or by ensuring long-term opportunities to effectively participate in society – they may feel less threatened. To test, this project will field a survey experiment in the Czech Republic. By randomly assigning individuals to read about the effective integration of Ukrainian refugees, and by comparing the attitudes of these individuals to the attitudes of individuals who did not receive this information, the experiment will determine whether effective integration can strengthen tolerance. More broadly, this project helps us understand the roots of intolerance in societies with little experience in dealing with newcomers.

Yuhan Hu – University of Oxford

Protests play a pivotal role in shaping political outcomes, and how states respond to them often determines their success or failure. In today’s digital world, visual media has become a powerful tool that governments can use to influence public opinion about these movements. My research explores how visual content was used to shape perceptions of the 2019 Hong Kong social movement, comparing media portrayals from China and major Western democratic countries. By analyzing over 1 million video frames using advanced machine learning techniques, I discovered that Chinese state media more often depict protests as lacking broad public support. A forthcoming survey experiment will evaluate how effective these visual strategies are in influencing viewers’ attitudes. This research helps illuminate how regimes use digital media to manage dissent and maintain control in the modern age.

Nicole Huffman – Stony Brook University

People have long wondered about how people hold politicians accountable. This conversation has mainly focused on whether citizens are capable of the demands of democratic citizenship. Instead of focusing on ability to hold politicians accountable, I focus on a different aspect that may be hampering democratic accountability. I argue the electoral circumstances people find themselves in does not lead many people to believe they have any influence over politicians’ policy stances. Because of this, they do not have desire to gather information about their representatives and challengers nor hold politicians accountable for the policy positions they hold. I suggest that because people overwhelmingly do not feel like they have an influence in politics, citizens’ behavior does not resemble good democratic citizens. Importantly, this lack of policy accountability does not stem from citizen incapability but due to a resignation of what people see as a lack of power in the current system. I conduct an experiment in this study where I randomize who has politicians responsive to their policy stances. I will then compare how much people want to read policy information about the candidates and how much their approval of the candidates is based on policy agreement. Overall, my study will demonstrate some lack of policy accountability and information is because of perceptions that political institutions are not responsive to them, not because of citizen incapability.

Diana Kapiszewski – Georgetown University
Lahra Smith – Georgetown University

In a globalized world, the complex problems facing citizens and policy-makers continue to multiply. For political science to engage in fundamentally new thinking and theorizing, disciplinary discussions, institutions, and publications need to include the voices of a diverse community of scholars with varied experiences, expertise, and perspectives. The discipline’s halting progress toward achieving this goal places its continued vibrance and relevance at risk. The Political Science Predoctoral Summer Institute (PS-PSI, see https://government.georgetown.edu/ps-psi/# and Mitra, Kapiszewski, Kleinpaste, and Smith 2024) contributes to addressing this challenge. Since 2022, approximately 20 rising juniors and seniors who attend college / university in Washington, DC, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, and West Virginia – many of whom are under-represented minorities and/or first-generation students – have participated in the Institute each year. The PS-PSI aims to diversify and strengthen the pool of students recruited and admitted to graduate programs in political science. The Institute has four overarching practical objectives: (1) to offer accessible and engaging overviews of the subfields and methods of political science; (2) to encourage participants to engage in research and envision themselves as researchers; (3) to demystify the processes of applying to graduate programs and equip participants to do so; and (4) to elucidate the career paths open to graduates of doctoral programs in political science. In addition to generous support from APSA, the PS-PSI has been supported by funding from several units of Georgetown University, as well as the National Science Foundation.

Aleena Khan – University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

My research explores how Americans perceive “anti-Americanism” within their own country, particularly in a time when partisan identity has become deeply connected to national identity. In the 2020 presidential election, for instance, both candidates presented very different ideas of what it means to be American, with Biden promoting a more inclusive vision and Trump emphasizing a traditional and implicitly Christian, native-born vision. Each side accused the other of being a threat to the country’s “true” identity, labeling their opponents as anti-American. While much research on anti-Americanism focuses on how the U.S. is viewed abroad, I turn inward to examine these perceptions within the U.S. itself. I ask: Who or what do Americans consider “anti-American”? I use survey data to understand whether people from opposing political parties are more likely to label each other as anti-American, and what factors—social, psychological, and political—drive these perceptions. Ultimately, my research aims to shed light on how partisan and national identities intersect and what these perceptions mean for unity and democracy in the U.S.

Minju Kim – Syracuse University

In foreign affairs agencies, bureaucrats implement trade and immigration policies. In international organizations, bureaucrats write reports and implement programs that promote international trade and investment. My research focuses on these bureaucrats in both domestic and international institutions, addressing the question, “When and how do bureaucrats, as individuals, shape outcomes in U.S. foreign policy and international cooperation?” My first book project, The Careerist Bureaucrats: Job Security and Bureaucratic Responsiveness in U.S. Foreign Affairs, examines how the job security of bureaucrats, embedded in their employment contracts, influences their responsiveness to the president. Throughout the book, I demonstrate that bureaucrats with low job security can amplify partisan foreign policy implementation. While decreasing job security of bureaucrats may increase bureaucrats’ responsiveness to the president, it also undermines the government’s ability to provide a consistent buffer against backlash from open trade and border policies. My other article-length projects have been published in journals such as World Politics and International Studies Quarterly.

Mayuko Maeda – George Washington University

Why do some democracies maintain voting restrictions against citizens with certain cognitive disabilities, while other democracies have begun to lift such restrictions? I argue that democratic countries are most likely to expand suffrage when two conditions are met: 1) when there are domestic activist groups with high levels of organizational, symbolic, and political resources to advocate for extending voting rights to people with cognitive disabilities, and 2) when the national constitution unconditionally establishes the principle of universal suffrage. To assess this argument, I first analyze an original dataset of suffrage laws from 91 countries to understand the current global trends in voting rights and restrictions. I then examine the specific cases of Canada (which expanded suffrage in 1993), Japan (which expanded suffrage in 2013), and the United States (where some states retain voting restrictions to this day). Through these methods, I aim to address an important question involving a key democratic practice and a frequently overlooked population at the cross-national level.

Elliot Mamet – Princeton University

The U.S. Congress features an unusual position: the non-voting delegate, a legislator whose job is to represent their constituents with a voice, but not a vote. Dating to the earliest Congresses, the delegates are formally second-class legislators, representing non-states (like the territories and Washington, D.C.) in Congress. I apply for funding to conduct archival research on how effectively non-voting delegates have represented their constituents without a vote. The award will be used to travel to Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands, two U.S. territories located in the Pacific, to view archival collections of the papers of former congressional delegates. This archival research is part of a broader project on the past and future of the non-voting members of Congress and their connection to ideas of democracy, race, and U.S. empire.

Anna Mikkelborg – Colorado State University

Past research has usually found that voters prefer politicians who look like them. However, recent studies suggest a shift has recently occurred: white Democrats now tend to prefer politicians of color, whereas white Republicans now lean towards white representatives. This project investigates a potential reason why: the meaning white voters ascribe to the presence of Black legislators in the halls of power. Existing research tells us that Black voters feel better about the government as a whole when Black representatives are present; does Black representation also influence some white voters’ perceptions of government legitimacy? This project undertakes two studies to answer this question. The first study measures white Americans’ perceptions of Black representation and their feelings about government as a whole to test whether the two are connected for white Democrats and/or white Republicans. The second study provides information about Black representation to white participants to investigate whether changing perceptions of Black representation causes changes in assessments of government legitimacy. As American government becomes more representative of the nation’s diversity, the findings will have important implications for citizens’ relationship with the state.

Preeti Nambiar – Vanderbilt University

The frequency of natural disasters has increased ten-fold since the 1960s, making it imperative to understand how disasters affect countries. Political science studies of disasters are mostly limited to analyzing politicians and voters, either immediately after a disaster or in the next election. I approach the study of disasters from a different perspective to ask: How do citizen-state relations and government performance evolve after a disaster? My study has two main areas of focus – one, long term changes in citizen behavior and second, changes in elite (politicians and bureaucrats) behavior and response to citizens, and how these behavioral changes affect government performance.

I test my theory in India, one of the countries with the highest disaster frequency in the world and a middle-income country. I am using a multi-method approach to assess the proposed theory- quantitative analysis of government data, village-level survey, elite interviews and observation studies in disaster-hit rural regions of India. The Summer Centennial Grant supports part of my dissertation fieldwork plan to assess evolution of state-level elite behavior in disaster-hit regions in India.

My project broadens disaster studies by expanding the time scale of impact being studied, the range of actors assessed and influencing factors considered. My project contributes to policy design beyond disaster emergency related laws, by the systematic study of disasters and their role in shaping communities and local governments over the long term.

Trent Ollerenshaw – Duke University

For the last five years, the United Methodist Church (UMC) has found itself fractured by debates over LGBT inclusion. In anticipation of policy changes to allow LGBT people to serve in the UMC clergy and administer same-sex marriages, approximately one in four UMC congregations has formally disaffiliated since 2019. This project explores how UMC pastors have navigated this disaffiliation crisis and responded to pushes for LGBT inclusion. Analyzing a dataset of 750 North Carolina UMC congregations linking a year of transcribed Sunday services, pastor surveys, and congregational demographic information, this project explores key questions at the intersection of religion and LGBT politics. How often do UMC pastors discuss topics of sexual and gender diversity in Sunday services? Do pastors take positions on issues of LGBT inclusion, such as same-sex marriage? What pastor and congregational factors predict discussing LGBT issues, and the stances taken by pastors during those discussions? This project will offer critical insight into how religious leaders and organizations navigate ongoing pushes for LGBT inclusion in religious spaces.

Chloe Ricks – University of Pennsylvania

This research questions how religious socialization influences how individual Black Americans apply their personal religious beliefs to develop and/or support their policy preferences. As the Black Church is notably the oldest and most influential institution governing the social and political lives of Black Americans, this research combines insights from Political Science, Religious Studies, and African American Studies to put Black Church culture at the forefront of Black American political behavior. Using a novel Gospel Survey, this research assesses the additional effects of Black Church culture on the political decision-making of even Black Americans who no longer attend church. Whether through active church attendance or other means, I argue that Black Americans who have been socialized by moral and political frames provided by the Black Church overwhelmingly identify policies put forth by Democrats as more in line with Christian values than policies from Republicans. Additionally, Black Americans who attend Black churches and/or listen to gospel music maintain strong Christian identities alongside strong racial identities. This dissertation research thus highlights the heterogeneous pathways that Black Americans with ideological beliefs ranging from liberal to conservative may be staunch Democrats as an expression of Christian beliefs, not despite them.

Amanda Robinson – Ohio State University
Daniel Posner – University of California, Los Angeles

The Working Group in African Political Economy (WGAPE) was founded in 2002 as a network of researchers focusing on the political economy of African development. For more than two decades, the group has convened several times a year, both in large national-scale plenary meetings and in smaller regional workshops. WGAPE meetings feature discussions of in-progress research by faculty and graduate students, with an emphasis on deep discussion rather than presentation. This format provides unparalleled opportunities for critical, constructive feedback, and has become a model replicated by communities of scholars studying other regions. WGAPE has expanded its network in recent years to include many more African scholars and, more recently, has partnered with three African universities with the ultimate aim of becoming an Africa-based institution. Towards that end, we seek funding to support the participation of four scholars from these universities in the 2025 WGAPE national meeting, which will be held at Ohio State University in April.

Kesley Townsend – Stanford University

Many voters are highly attached to their various social identities, including their race, gender, religion, or class. Because of this attachment, political elites are motivated to engage in identitybased political rhetoric. Common examples of such rhetoric include emphasizing a shared identity or making policy promises to particular groups. However, politicians can also weaponize identity-related concerns, positioning groups against one another or villainizing a minority outgroup. “Identity threat appeals” do just this by compelling listeners to consider a valued identity and then drawing attention to an outgroup who purportedly threatens the power or value of that identity. Recent work in political science indicates that these identity threat appeals can effectively get voters to change their policy positions and voting behavior. Despite this evidence, scholars currently possess no understanding of how frequently political elites use identity threat appeals and whether this frequency varies across time and context. Using machine learning methods, this project will identify and classify identity threat appeals in communication from political elites to voters. This identification will allow scholars to understand the pervasiveness of identity threat appeals and answer questions such as: does one party use identity threat appeals more than the other, has the use of identity threat appeals increased over time, and what groups do political elites consistently position as threatening outgroups? Answering these and related questions will expand our understanding of the role of identity in the political process and provide novel evidence of how and when political elites strategically make identity concerns salient to voters.

Emily Van Duyn – University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

LRepublicans and Democrats are likely to share the same neighborhood, race, religion, and political beliefs as their friends and family. Yet as so many of us witnessed, “cross-cutting” relationships – those in which romantic partners hold different political beliefs – stressed and often broke apart marriages and families. This project examines what happens when people hold different political views in intimate relationships and how these relationships may help us learn how to keep democracy intact despite intensifying political differences. This research project will offer insight into cross-cutting relationships in the United States, conducting and analyzing in-depth interviews around the 2024 presidential election with individuals in current cross-cutting relationships and individuals who have previously ended a relationship due to political difference(s). As partisan identities become increasingly aligned with social identities and as political facts become points of contention, I show how partisans in cross-cutting relationships experience a difference not only in policy preferences, but a difference in norms, values, and even realities. In turn, I consider the lessons cross-cutting relationships hold for how (and how not) to alleviate political polarization in the U.S. 

Asha Venugopalan – Stony Brook University

Women now constitute about 28% of the US Congress, but the progress representation has not been uniform across the parties. Historically, Republican women politicians have constituted less than one-third of Congresswomen and only 10% of Congressional Republicans. Also, Democratic women are 12-13 percentage points more likely to win primaries than Republican women; suggesting that this ‘partisan gender gap’ may stem from primary election dynamics. While party identity shapes electoral support in general elections, other identities – such as gender or race – often play a greater role in primary elections. Primaries serve to identify the candidate who is the ‘best’ or most credible representative of partisan interests. I argue that Republican women face a distinct disadvantage in primaries due to their lack of ‘fit’ with the Republican leadership and being viewed as insufficiently conservative and weak on ‘masculine’ issues. This project introduces the concept of partisan credibility to explain how this lack of ‘fit’ or non-prototypicality impacts candidate evaluation and voting behaviour. I hypothesize that Republican women’s lack of ‘fit’ diminishes their partisan credibility and support in elections. This project studies whether Democratic and Republican voters view male and female political leaders differently and whether Republican voters prefer male candidates. Previous experiments suggested that Republican women did face a partisan credibility disadvantage in primaries, especially against male candidates. This study extends the research to test the effect of partisan animosity and issue priorities on evaluations of female candidates.

Emily Wager – Rice University

Following events after the U.S. 2020 general election, in which the accuracy of the election’s results was questioned by top political leaders, scholars and election practitioners have placed renewed focus on what strategies can increase the public’s trust in the integrity of elections. I theorize that practices that enhance public transparency could help build election confidence. Specifically, I explore if vote monitoring, a common get-out-the-vote tactic that informs voters that the elections in which they participated in is public records, strengthens their belief that votes are counted. Moreover, I examine whether encouraging voters to look up their own vote history using their official election website further promotes confidence. I test these questions through survey and field experiments.

S. Laurel Weldon – Simon Fraser University
Valeria Sinclair Chapman – Purdue University
Kaitlin Kelly-Thompson – Simon Fraser University

How do groups riven by inequality and difference maintain the solidarity necessary for coordinated political action? This question becomes ever more pressing as movements face internal challenges of intergroup conflict and external challenges related to backlash, changing economic conditions, and other environmental factors. The proposed project seeks to bring political scientists and sociologists together to address this question in a one-day workshop organized by the Diversity and Inclusion in Social Movements Research Collaborative. The members of this group comprise political scientists and sociologists at a range of career stages, from early career researchers to established scholars who are leaders in their various disciplines and subfields. The workshop will feature a panel of presentations on the state of the literature as well as responses and feedback from leading researchers. The project will produce a book as well as several public-facing presentations offering a variety of possible pathways to solidarity, for example, offering case studies of actual solutions activists have devised to address challenges of diversity, equity, and inclusion in social movements.

Felix Wiebrecht – University of Liverpool

Who are the elites in authoritarian regimes, how stable is the elite composition in nondemocracies, and what consequences follow from changes on the elite level? Despite the importance of these questions, we lack systematic data on elite circles in authoritarian regimes that can provide us with answers to these questions. My project will first collect extensive novel data on parliamentary elites in authoritarian regimes across the globe from 1946. Secondly, it will show that the composition of authoritarian parliaments and especially the extent to which members of parliament are retained or reshuffled has important ramifications for regimes. Remaining in parliament together may be an important way for elites to build trust and improve their ability to work together. This mechanism will have consequences for when and why authoritarian leaders are removed from power. In addition, high parliamentary replacement rates are said to produce adverse outcomes since delegates then tend to be short-sighted and focus on enriching themselves rather than supporting their constituencies. With new data, these hypotheses can be tested globally and add important explanations as to why some autocracies are more developed than others.