CV

A pdf copy is available here. My Google Scholar profile is available here.

JLAW: JUDICIAL LEGITIMACY AROUND THE WORLD

We seek to systematically investigate the public's support for norms that have long buttressed the democratic architecture of majority rule in countries around the world.

This research is funded by the National Science Foundation, SES-1920977, SES-1920915 & SES-2025927.

COVID-19, CRISES, AND SUPPORT FOR THE RULE OF LAW

The undifferentiating effects of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) deliver an exogenous shock to the health and safety of citizens worldwide, providing a unique, but fleeting, opportunity to examine the conditions under which public support for the rule of law might thrive, multiply, or wither on the vine.

This research is funded by the National Science Foundation, SES-2027653, SES-2027664, SES-2027671.

PSA DATASET & ARCHIVE

We debut the Presidential Speeches of the Americas (PSA) dataset and archive, which records the appearances and speeches made by 24 presidents across 18 pure presidential systems of the western hemisphere.

THE COSTS OF COURT CURBING: EVIDENCE FROM THE UNITED STATES (WITH MICHAEL J. NELSON.) THE JOURNAL OF POLITICS. FORTHCOMING.

Winner of the 2021 APSA Law & Courts Section Best Conference Paper Award

​

Canonical models of interbranch relations assume that incumbents undermine well-respected courts at their own peril. Although court curbing proposals are frequent in diverse political and institutional contexts, there have been few efforts to examine the electoral cost of interbranch aggression. Drawing upon vignette and conjoint experiments, we find some evidence that the public will punish incumbents for attacks on courts. However, the size of the effect varies: it is largest among individuals who hold the court in high esteem and can be mitigated by copartisanship with the proposer. Moreover, once information about partisanship and issue positions is available to respondents, the effect of supporting court curbing is smaller than those other considerations. These results have implications for the public's willingness to safeguard the institutional separation of powers via the electoral connection and suggest that politicians may engage in activities that erode democracy without a broad loss of public support.

ACCOUNTABILITY FOR COURT PACKING (WITH MICHAEL J. NELSON.) THE JOURNAL OF LAW & COURTS. FORTHCOMING. 

How does the public respond to court packing attempts? Longstanding accounts of public support for courts suggest voters retaliate against incumbents who seek to manipulate well-respected courts. Yet incumbents might strategically frame their efforts in bureaucratic terms to minimize the public's outcry or use court packing proposals to activate a partisan base of support. Drawing on a series of survey experiments, we demonstrate that strategic politicians can minimize electoral backlash by couching court reform proposals in apolitical language, and institutional legitimacy's shielding effect dissolves in the face of shared partisanship. These results shed new light on how ambitious politicians might avoid electoral consequences for efforts to bend the judiciary to their will.

CONDITIONAL CASH TRANSFER PROGRAMS AND CHILD LABOR (WITH GABRIEL CEPALUNI, TAYLOR KINSLEY CHEWNING & MARCO ANTONIO FAGANELLO.) WORLD DEVELOPMENT, 152:1-15. DOI.

Child labor is a pernicious problem throughout the developing world, but conditional cash transfer programs (CCTs) could reduce the number of working children. We evaluate the effectiveness of CCTs at attenuating child labor based on our analysis of a massive administrative dataset on Brazil’s applicants to social programs between 2001 and 2015. We use Multiples (twins, triplets, etc.) as an instrument for receiving the Bolsa Família stipend. Receiving the stipend does not offset the cost of an exogenous increase in family size, does not reduce child laborers’ participation in the workforce and does not improve educational outcomes for child laborers in households with Multiples births. Instead, contextual and familial factors appear to shape program efficacy in mitigating this troubling practice.

PREJUDICE, STRATEGIC DISCRIMINATION AND THE ELECTORAL CONNECTION: EVIDENCE FROM A PAIR OF FIELD EXPERIMENTS IN BRAZIL.(WITH GABRIEL CEPALUNI, FELICIANO DE SÁ GUIMARÃES AND PAOLO SPADA.) AMERICAN JOURNAL OF POLITICAL SCIENCE, 62(4):781-795. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION.

DOI.

  Can electoral incentives mitigate racial and class prejudices toward underrepresented groups? We use a pair of large-scale field experiments to investigate the responsiveness of Brazilian legislative candidates to information requests from fictitious voters before and after the 2010 legislative elections. Our panel study design allows us to examine how politicians' electoral incentives and prejudices jointly affect their responsiveness to voters with randomly assigned socioeconomic and partisan characteristics. Distinguishing between prejudiced and strategic discrimination in responsiveness, we find that socioeconomically privileged and competitive candidates are equally responsive to underrepresented voters in advance of the election, yet less responsive once in office.

`GOING PUBLIC’ IN COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE: PRESIDENTS’ PUBLIC APPEALS UNDER PURE PRESIDENTIALISM (WITH ALEXANDRA COCKERHAM AND JOAN V. JOSEPH), 2019. PRESIDENTIAL STUDIES QUARTERLY. DOI.

Though the notion of “going public” has its origins in U.S. presidency, we have little sense of how direct appeals to the public fit into the broader portfolio of presidential powers. We debut a new dataset that includes 24 different presidents from 18 different countries, and show that the frequency of presidents’ public appeals varies with both their partisan support in the legislature, and their status as a newcomer to the political system. In so doing, we situate presidents’ direct public appeals as an under appreciated source of executive influence in the study of comparative presidential systems.

THERE IS NO LEGITIMACY CRISIS: PUBLIC SUPPORT FOR JUDICIAL INSTITUTIONS IN MODERN LATIN AMERICA (WITH MICHAEL J. NELSON), 2018. REVISTA SAAP, 12(2):366-371. DOI

Obdurate conventional wisdom suggests that the public support the U.S. Supreme Court enjoys is unique while widespread pessimism colors extant assessments of high courts' legitimacy throughout the Americas. Using data from
the AmericasBarometer, we show that not only is the U.S. Supreme Court not an anomaly, but the widespread assumption that Latin American courts are lacking in legitimacy is fundamentally wrong.

CHRONICLE OF AN ELECTION FORETOLD: THE 2017 BOLIVIAN JUDICIAL ELECTIONS (WITH MICHAEL J. NELSON), POLÍTICA Y GOBIERNO, 37(2):255-279. 

On December 3, 2017, Bolivian voters went to the polls to vote for their national judges. Bolivia is the only country in modern world history to use direct elections to select its judges, and the adoption and implementation of these elections has been highly contentious. We report on this election and contend that though formally compliant with the Bolivian Constitution, the MAS supermajority used its powers to limit the ability of the public to make its voice heard in an electorally meaningful way. Voters registered their discontent by spoiling more ballots than in any election in Bolivian history. Relying on original survey data as well as municipal level election returns, we demonstrate that candidates’ electoral fates in this election were tied more closely to their position on the ballot than their ascriptive characteristics or professional qualifications, while voters’ choices to cast spoiled votes seemed to be a way for them to voice their dissatisfaction with the broader MAS political project.

BOLIVIA’S DEMOCRACY IN TRANSITION: MORE QUESTIONS THAN ANSWERS IN 2016, 2017. REVISTA DE CIENCIA POLÍTICA, 37(2): 255-279.  DOI

  On February 21, 2016, an absolute majority of Bolivians (51.3%) voted against a constitutional revision that would clear the way for President Morales’ to assume a fourth term in office. Evaluating the municipal level change in pro-MAS vote share over previous elections, I find that the pro-government vote share declined most dramatically in traditional MAS electoral strongholds—in particular those with high concentration of mine workers or indigenous voters. This, along with numerous other challenges to the MAS institutional hegemony, begs larger questions about the future of the MAS as a political coalition, and about Bolivia’s “democracy in transition.”

JUDICIAL SELECTION AND THE DEMOCRATIZATION OF JUSTICE: LESSONS FROM THE BOLIVIAN JUDICIAL ELECTIONS, (WITH MICHAEL J. NELSON), 2015. JOURNAL OF LAW AND COURTS, 3(1):115-148.  DOI

  In 2011, Bolivia became the first modern country to directly elect national judges. Reformers heralded the adoption of judicial elections as a “democratization of justice,” by which institutional independence would be assured, public confidence in the judiciary might be expanded, and various maladies of the judicial system would find resolution. We evaluate the elections in light of these objectives. We show candidates were advantaged when voters shared their partisan and demographic traits, resulting in unprecedented diversity on the national courts. Also, public confidence in the judiciary increased among government supporters but declined overall. We offer preliminary reflections for would-be reformers.

IGNORANCE OR OPPOSITION? BLANK AND NULL VOTING IN LOW-INFORMATION, HIGHLY POLITICIZED ENVIRONMENTS (WITH MICHAEL J. NELSON), 2014. POLITICAL RESEARCH QUARTERLY, 67(3):547-561. DOI

In democracies around the world, voters often make the effort to go to the polls but then---by leaving their ballot blank or by spoiling it---effectively throw their vote away. Typically construed as anomalous or errant, we argue that blank and spoiled ballots are empirically differentiable and politically informative, gauging both political ignorance and opposition. We consider self-reported vote choice from a nationally representative survey following the 2011 Bolivian elections, in which 60% of votes cast were blank or deliberately spoiled. We estimate a multinomial logit to differentiate between these two phenomena, finding that both blank and null voting in this election were driven by political concerns, though null voting was more common among politically sophisticated individuals.

THE POLITICAL ORIGINS OF JUDICIAL ELECTIONS: EVIDENCE FROM THE UNITED STATES AND BOLIVIA, (WITH MICHAEL J. NELSON), 2013. JUDICATURE, 96(4):1-13. WEB APPENDIX.  DOI

Judicial elections have been described as a “uniquely American” institution: by 1860, 21 of the 30 American states elected their judges and today the vast majority of judges in the United States must stand for election. With the adoption of its new constitution in 2009, Bolivia became the first country in the modern world to use judicial elections to select judges to courts with national jurisdiction. In this article, we compare the political circumstances under which judicial elections were adopted in the the United States and in Bolivia. In spite of vast differences in terms of time, institutional arrangements, political history and geographic location, we identify four similarities between the political circumstances and normative debates surrounding their adoption. Our comparative research design provides a contrast by which the general applicability of causal explanations advanced by U.S. scholars might be assessed in cases outside of the context in which they were developed. We argue that not only are judicial elections no longer a “uniquely American” institution, but the political circumstances that explain the adoption of judicial elections are also not unique.

ADJUDICATORY OVERSIGHT AND JUDICIAL DECISION MAKING IN EXECUTIVE BRANCH AGENCIES (WITH CHRISTINA L. BOYD), 2013. AMERICAN POLITICS RESEARCH, 41(4):569-598 DOI

Adjudications are an important, but understudied, means through which administrative agencies create policies that have a lasting impact. We argue that executive branch agency heads utilize their oversight of agency adjudications to
advance agency goals. Relying on an original dataset of adjudications appealed to the U.S. Department of Agriculture's agency head's adjudication delegee, our empirical results indicate a substantial increase in the probability that the agency
head will reverse an administrative law judge (ALJ) when he receives the appeal of an anti-agency ALJ decision. However, the agency's adjudication oversight is conditional on political constraints, including partisanship differences between an agency and the litigated law and whether the case is being heard during a time of presidential transition. These results have clear implications for the use and effectiveness of agency adjudications as a political tool.

THE STRATEGIC USE OF LEGISLATIVE VOTING PROCEDURES (WITH BRIAN F. CRISP), 2012. LEGISLATIVE STUDIES QUARTERLY 37(1): 67-97. DOI

Legislative votes can be taken by roll call -- noting the position of each individual member -- or by some form of indication (sitting or standing, shouting yea or nay, etc.) -- noting only an aggregate outcome. Cameral rules define one method of voting as the standard operating procedure and how to invoke any alternative voting methods. We develop a series of hypotheses related to position-taking to explain why, when procedures would typically lead to a vote taken by indication, legislators choose to vote by roll call -- a means that makes it much easier for actors outside the chamber to observe the positions taken by individual legislators and partisan blocs. With data from Argentina and Mexico, we test these hypotheses regarding the strategic choice of vote procedures and their relationship to observed party unity.

THE COSTS OF COURT CURBING: PRELIMINARY
EVIDENCE FROM THE LATIN AMERICAN PUBLIC OPINION PROJECT

Winner of the 2022 Neal Tate Award for Best Judicial Politics Conference Paper Award presented at the SPSA

​

Many canonical models of interbranch relations assume that incumbents undermine well respected courts at their own peril. Yet, even in diverse political and institutional contexts, these proposals are frequent. Drawing upon an experiment  fielded in eight Latin American countries as part of the 2021 round of the AmericasBarometer, we  find that although the public disapproves of executive interference with high courts, only infrequently are incumbents

punished at the ballot box for doing so. The results call into question the public's ability to safeguard the institutional separation of powers at the ballot box, which implies that incumbents might erode democracy without bearing meaningful costs in terms of loss of public support.

INSTITUTIONS AS FIRE ALARMS: EXPERIMENTAL EVIDENCE ON PUBLIC POLICING OF THE RULE OF LAW (WITH JAY N. KREHBIEL AND MICHAEL J. NELSON.) UNDER REVIEW.

To effectively constrain the state, citizens must recognize executive overreach and coordi- nate around an appropriate response. We consider whether the separation of powers can inform the public about executive overreach and shape citizens’ responses to it. Drawing on a survey fielded on a nationally representative sample of Germans, we find that citizens withhold support from executives who contravene the orders of a co-equal branch of government, though transgressing a court has greater cost than ignoring a legislature and this cost increases with citizens’ support for the rule of law. We find that approval from neither courts nor legislatures boost support for an illegal executive action; their approval instead mutes the public’s response. These findings are consequential for our understanding of the institutional separation of powers in environments where the rule of law is under threat and underscore the importance of both institutional and cultural guardrails in preventing democratic backsliding or authoritarian consolidation.

UNMASKING SUPPORT FOR DEMOCRATIC NORMS: PUNISHMENT AND PARTISANSHIP IN COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE (WITH JAY KREHBIEL, MICHAEL J. NELSON AND SANGYEON KIM.) UNDER REVIEW.

A growing body of research theorizes that partisanship can undermine democracy as citizens prioritize their political interests over abstract norms and values that are vital for democratic survival. We argue that crises might ameliorate intense partisanship by giving citizens clarity of the immediate threat posed to democratic stability. Focusing on the
willingness of individuals to punish elites who violate the law, we draw on an experiment embedded in representative surveys of Germany, the United States, Hungary, and Poland to examine citizens’ sense of appropriate punishment for elites’ violation of a municipal mask-wearing ordinance. We find evidence of partisan bias in citizens’ willingness to support punishment in all four countries. But, in the two consolidated democracies, we find that concern about the Covid-19 crisis ameliorates partisan biases in punishment preferences: citizens who are most concerned about the crisis also model the most consistency in their willingness to hold copartisans into account.

ARE COURTS SPECIAL? (WITH MICHAEL J. NELSON.) UNDER REVIEW.

U.S. courts have long thought to be held in special regard by American public, and public support is theorized to protect institutions from interbranch aggression. However, empirical evidence on this point is scant. We derive hypotheses based on the ``courts are special" theory to evaluate if (1) the public is uniquely punitive toward incumbents who seek to reform courts and (2) any unique cost to court reform dissipates in the face of shared partisanship with the proposer. Drawing on a survey experiment fielded on a diverse national U.S. sample, we demonstrate outpartisan incumbents pay a higher price for attacks on the judiciary than the executive branch; copartisan or nonpartisan incumbents face similar consequences regardless of institution. The results have implications for  maintaining the integrity of political institutions---particularly those that might play an important role in resisting democratic decline---in a point in history when attacks on the authority of political institutions are commonplace.

FROM COOPERATION TO CONSENSUS: PUBLIC INTOLERANCE FOR GOVERNMENT NON-COMPLIANCE (WITH AYLIN AYDIN-CAKIR AND SUSANNE SCHORPP.) WORKING PAPER.

Central to our understanding of judicial power is the problem of compliance, a negotiation which is ultimately enforced by the threat of public backlash.  Yet why would the public---whose interests are likely closer aligned with the incumbents---nevertheless defend a high court against executive non-compliance? Moreover, how does the public come to value independent judicial review as an intrinsic good? We build on prominent theoretical models of the establishment and maintenance of independent courts, and derive expectations regarding citizens' (in)tolerance of incumbent non-compliance. Turning then to the question of value formation, we theorize several possible mechanisms that may foster a broad public consensus regarding incumbent respect for the court. Our empirical analysis underscores the centrality of elite behavior: where elites are more respectful of judicial institutions, citizens' intolerance of non-compliance is only weakly correlated with support for incumbents.

CAN CONDITIONAL CASH TRANSFERS INTERRUPT THE CYCLE OF INTERGENERATIONAL POVERTY? LESSONS FROM A LARGE ADMINISTRATIVE DATA SET WITH GABRIEL CEPALUNI), WORKING PAPER.

We consider the full records of Brazil's Cadastro Único, a massive administrative dataset designed to identify possible beneficiaries for conditional cash transfer programs. We compare educational attainment of applicants and beneficiaries of Brazil's Bolsa Família program, and find that the adult children of beneficiaries outperform their parents in terms of educational outcomes, relative to their peers of non-beneficiary families. Next, we compare beneficiary children 16-17 years old who are Bolsa Família beneficiaries with their siblings who were above the age of 18 at the time of enrollment. We find that Bolsa Família has a larger impact on `treated' under-aged children than on their `untreated' siblings in terms of predicting parental outperformance.

COURTS IN CONTEXT

Co-Conveners Amanda Driscoll and Michael J. Nelson

Our next event will be the CWC: Courts, Public Support and Institutional Legitimacy, organized for the

Southern Political Science Association Annual Meeting, St. Petersburg, FL January 2023. Details are found below. 

COURTS IN CONTEXT

CWC: Southern Political Science Association Annual Meeting, San Juan Puerto Rico, January 10, 2020

Participant List: 

Lee Walker, Kirk Randazzo, Alyx Mark, Michael Zilis, Logan Strother, Ben Johnson, Lee Epstein, James L. Gibson, Rachael Hinkle, Michael J. Nelson, Amanda Driscoll, Miles T. Armaly, Sveinung Arneson, Vanessa Baird, Christine Bird,  Bethany Blackstone, Christina L. Boyd, Adam E. Enders, Meghan Leonard, Pedro Magalhães, Reggie Sheehan, Jon Kare Skiple, Morgan Hazelton, Ian Ostrander, 

Ethan D. Boldt, Anna Gunderson

​

PUBLIC SUPPORT FOR DEMOCRATIC INSTITUTIONS

CWC: Midwest Political Science Association Annual Meeting, Chicago, IL, April 5, 2019

Participant List: 

James L. Gibson, Brandon L. Bartels, Sara C. Benesh, Sky Ammann, Wendy L. Martinek, Amanda Driscoll, Michael J. Nelson. Yoshikuni Ono, Michael Zilis, Susanne Schorpp, William Mishler, Nuno Garoupa, Pedro Coutinho Magalhães, Ryan Carlin, Mariana Castrellón Pérez, Varun Gauri, Isabel Cristina Jaramillo Sierra, Jeffrey K. Staton, Jay N. Krehbiel, Dino Christenson, Andrew Reeves, Jon Rogowski, Gretchen Helmke, Matthew Graham, Milan Svolik, Marialena Dias, Christian Davenport

​

Florida State University

Department of Political Science

531 Bellamy Building

Tallahassee, FL

32306

Email: adriscoll@fsu.edu

Fax: (850) 664-1378