On 14 January 2017, President Donald J. Trump described the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) as obsolete. During the first six months of his administration, President Trump discussed not honoring Article 5 commitments for NATO members who had not met the financial responsibilities outlined in the 2014 Wales Summit. His...
Economic growth in contexts of state weakness presents a puzzle. If the state’s provision of property rights is necessary for financial investment and related pro-growth behaviors, then why do we observe private investment and commercial transactions in settings where state institutions are far from reliable property guarantors? This study addresses...
The policies of secular governments in constitutionally secular countries are at times marked by the influence of religious politics. Religious politics is specifically defined here as a politics of extending the norms of religion into the public sphere through religious legislation. Thus, some governments lend the state’s coercive capacity to...
Does the Russian Federation in the Putin-Medvedev era follow a grand strategy, and if so, what does it look like, and how can we discern the making of Russian grand strategy? However, Russian grand strategy is neither formally codified nor readily accessible, and it remains opaque at best. In this...
This dissertation examines how one pervasive state institution¬—schools—shapes the political behavior of young people along the lines of race and ethnicity. I make four primary claims. First, I show that the content of traditional civic education courses privileges the political experiences of white political actors. Second, I argue that this...
This dissertation argues that the convergence of industrialized wage-labor, increased economic precariousness, close and partisan elections, and weak ballot laws dramatically increased the incidence of economic voter intimidation between 1873 and 1896. When this form of coercion primarily affected African American voters, as it did in the 1860s, politicians did...
Research shows the increasing tendency of political considerations to influence decisions outside the context of politics. This work documents examples of partisan affiliation influencing judgments and behaviors – and often resulting in favoritism or discrimination – in ostensibly nonpolitical contexts such as the workplace, academia, and dating, among others. To...
My dissertation identifies the causes of inequality traps - i.e., high and persistent levels of economic inequality - in Latin America and explains how and why some countries manage to escape such traps and embark on paths of diminishing inequality. I argue that the Redistributive State Power shapes the main...
The U.S. population is rapidly changing with recent projections showing that soon whites will no longer be the majority. This information, when shown to white Americans, can generate a sense of threat. Across the three studies of this dissertation, I frame this group threat (i.e., a change in the demographic...
This study aims to explain variations in student movement successes and failures during regime transitions. Examining the 1998–99 Indonesian student movement that helped ending the Suharto regime, this study argues that the degree of state repression influences the degree of coordination and assistance from opposition groups and actors to students,...