BOOKS

• Handbook of Comparative Political Institutions. 2015. Edited with Rubén Ruiz-Rufino. Routledge.

• Political Institutions under Dictatorship. 2008. Cambridge University Press. 

ARTICLES

• Shoring up Power: Electoral Reform and the Consolidation of Authoritarian Rule. 2022. With Abigail Heller and Ora John Reuter. Electoral Studies 78

• Legislatures and Legislative Politics without Democracy. 2020. With Ben Noble and Milan Svolik. Comparative Political Studies 53 (9): 1359-1379.

• Measuring the Consolidation of Power in Non-Democracies. 2020. With Jane Lawrence Sumner. Journal of Politics 82 (4): 1545-1558.

• Committed or Conditional Democrats? Opposition Dynamics in Electoral Autocracies. 2019. With Elvin Ong. American Journal of Political Science 63 (4): 948-963.

• Minority Languages in Dictatorships: A New Measure of Group Recognition. 2016. With Curtis Bell and Amy Liu. Political Science Research and Methods (February): 1-22.

• Elections and Political Regimes. 2015. Government and Opposition 50 (3): 446-468.

• The Timing and Targeting of Repression in Authoritarian Elections. 2013. With Tavishi Bhasin. Electoral Studies 32: 620-631. 

• The Incentives for Pre-electoral Coalitions in Non-Democratic Elections. 2013. With Ora John Reuter. Democratization. 20 (1): 137-159.

• Economic Performance and the Unraveling of Hegemonic Parties. 2011. With Ora John Reuter. British Journal of Political Science. 41 (1): 83-110. 

• Coopting Workers under Dictatorship. 2010. With Wonik Kim. Journal of Politics. 72 (3): 646-658.

• Democracy and Dictatorship Revisited. 2010. With José Antonio Cheibub and Jim Vreeland. Public Choice 143 (1-2): 67-101. 

• Elections under Authoritarianism. 2009. With Ellen Lust-Okar. Annual Review of Political Science 12: 403-422.

• Dictatorial Institutions and their Impact on Economic Growth. 2008.  European Journal of Sociology 49 (1): 3-30.

• Authoritarian Institutions and the Survival of Autocrats. 2007. With Adam Przeworski. Comparative Political Studies. 40 (11): 1279-1301. 

• Cooperation, Cooptation, and Rebellion under Dictatorship. 2006. With Adam Przeworski. Economics and Politics 18 (1): 1-26. 

CHAPTERS IN EDITED VOLUMES

• Electoral Systems in Authoritarian States. 2018. With Abigail Heller. In Handbook of Electoral Systems,  edited by Erik Herron, Robert Pekkanen, and Matthew Shugart. Oxford University Press.

• Authoritarian Institutions. 2015. With Clara Boulianne Lagacé. In Handbook of Comparative Political Institutions, edited by Jennifer Gandhi and Rubén Ruiz-Rufino. Routledge. 278-291.

• Introduction. 2015. With Rubén Ruiz-Rufino. In Handbook of Comparative Political Institutions, edited by Jennifer Gandhi and Rubén Ruiz-Rufino. Routledge. 1-11.

• Studying Institutions. 2015. With Tom Clark. In Handbook of Comparative Political Institutions, edited by Jennifer Gandhi and Rubén Ruiz-Rufino. Routledge. 31-42.

• Authoritarian Elections and Regime Change. 2014. In Comparing Democracies: Elections and Voting in a Changing World (4th edition), edited by Lawrence LeDuc, Richard Niemi, and Pippa Norris. Sage Publications. 173-186.

• The Role of Presidential Power in Authoritarian Elections. 2013. In Constitutions in Authoritarian Regimes, edited by Tom Ginsburg and Alberto Simpser. Cambridge University Press. 199-217.

• Elections and Autocracy (book manuscript)

• Data Manipulation and its Effect on Citizens' Views: Evidence from a Survey Experiment in China. With Handi Li.

  Governments enact a broad array of policies that affect the economy, influencing citizens’ welfare. They also provide information about the state of the economy to citizens. Given that governments manage the economy, but also manage the information what citizens know about the economy, there are obvious incentives for governments to lie through the provision of falsified data. Does manipulated data influence citizens’ evaluations of the economy and government? Does discovery of the government’s misinformation lead citizens to adjust their perceptions? Results from an online survey experiment in China show that citizens are not easily persuaded by manipulated economic statistics, but the discovery of intentional misinformation does lead some citizens to downgrade their assessments of local economic conditions and government.

• Institutions and Democratization in Right-Wing Dictatorships. With Dulce Manzano and Hsu Yumin Wang.

How does the ideology and institutional organization of authoritarian regimes affect processes of democratization? Class-based analyses of democratic transitions focus on how the poor mobilize against the rich to press for democratization under right-wing authoritarian regimes (Boix 2003, Acemoglu and Robinson 2006). While these models do much to further our understanding of democratization, they neither empirically verify the uniqueness of their claims for right-wing regimes nor take into account the role of institutions in dictatorships. In this article, dictatorial institutions are brought to the fore in explaining patterns of regime transitions. Our theory establishes that the effect of these institutions will be conditional on the ideology of the regime. Faced with a high revolutionary threat posed by the poor, right-wing dictatorships endowed with political institutions (political parties and legislature) that enable lower-income sectors to secure redistributive policies are less likely to democratize (and more likely to survive). These institutions serve to maintain redistributive transfers even when the revolutionary threat of the poor diminishes. We provide evidence of these claims using original data on the ideological orientation of all dictatorships during the 1960-2008 period.

• Opposition Unity and Cooptation in Hybrid Regimes. With Grant Buckles.

Over one-third of African executives appoint an opposition leader to their cabinet after a presidential election. The incorporation of elites outside the ruling coalition is designed to improve incumbent prospects for survival in power. But who exactly gets coopted, and who, in turn, gets denied a seat at the table? We argue that parties that can threaten to join an opposition alliance prior to an election stand a higher initial chance of being included in the post-election government. However, if they fail to follow through, they hurt their prospects of receiving a ministry. Incumbents should use valuable resources to coopt parties only if they pose a consistent threat. We support our claims using a unique dataset of nearly 1,500 opposition parties in 96 presidential elections in 27 sub-Saharan African countries. Our results suggest that “divide and conquer” accounts place too much emphasis on parties’ incentives to play “spoiler” in elections.

CO-AUTHORS

(* indicates current or former Emory University student)