Gender after genocide: how violence shapes long-term political representation

What are the legacies of violence on women’s political representation? We examine the long-term effects of a watershed conflict of the twentieth century: the Khmer Rouge genocide, during which 50–70% of Cambodia’s working-age men were killed. Using original data on mass killings and economic and political conditions in Cambodian communes, we find that genocide exposure is positively associated with women’s economic advancement and present-day indicators of women’s representation in local-level elected office. We conduct in-depth, ethnographic interviews with genocide survivors to explore the mechanisms by which violence spurred women into elected office. A crucial finding emerges: In areas that suffered the genocide’s worst killings, widows obtained economic autonomy, providing a template for the economic advancement of women in traditional households with surviving men. The shift in norms regarding the sexual division of labor and its transmission through intra-communal and intergenerational pathways allowed women to adopt larger public roles over time

Creating Climate Coalitions: Mass Preferences for Compensating Vulnerability in the World’s Two Largest Democracies

Combating climate change requires large economic adjustments with significant distributional implications. To build coalitions of support, scholars and policymakers propose compensating individuals who will bear decarbonization's costs. What are the determinants of public opinion regarding climate compensation and investment? We theorize that climate policy vulnerability and climate change vulnerability induce support for distinct types of climate policy. Fielding original surveys in the United States and India, we show that people who reside in coal-producing regions prefer compensation for lost jobs. The general public privileges diffuse redistribution mechanisms and investments, discounting compensation to targeted groups. Those who are both physically and economically vulnerable have cross-cutting preferences. Nevertheless, there is considerable support across our samples for policies that compensate different coalitions of climate vulnerable citizens, in line with theories of `just energy' transition and embedded liberalism. We trace the distinctive compensatory preferences of fossil fuel communities to a logic of shared community identities

Creating Climate Coalitions: Mass Preferences for Compensating Vulnerability in the World’s Two Largest Democracies

Combating climate change requires large economic adjustments with significant distributional implications. To build coalitions of support, scholars and policymakers propose compensating individuals who will bear decarbonization's costs. What are the determinants of public opinion regarding climate compensation and investment? We theorize that climate policy vulnerability and climate change vulnerability induce support for distinct types of climate policy. Fielding original surveys in the United States and India, we show that people who reside in coal-producing regions prefer compensation for lost jobs. The general public privileges diffuse redistribution mechanisms and investments, discounting compensation to targeted groups. Those who are both physically and economically vulnerable have cross-cutting preferences. Nevertheless, there is considerable support across our samples for policies that compensate different coalitions of climate vulnerable citizens, in line with theories of `just energy' transition and embedded liberalism. We trace the distinctive compensatory preferences of fossil fuel communities to a logic of shared community identities

Replication Data for: The Majority-Minority Divide in Attitudes toward Internal Migration: Evidence from Mumbai

Rapid urbanization is among the major processes affecting the developing world. The influx of migrants to cities frequently provokes antagonism on the part of long-term residents, manifested in labor-market discrimination, political nativism, and violence. We implemented a novel, face-to-face survey experiment on a representative sample of Mumbai's population to elucidate the causes of anti-migrant hostility. Our findings point to the centrality of material self-interest in the formation of native attitudes. Dominant-group members fail to heed migrants' ethnic attributes, yet for minority-group respondents, considerations of ethnicity and economic threat cross-cut. We introduce a new political mechanism to explain this divergence. Minority communities facing persistent discrimination view in-migration by co-ethnics as a means of enlarging their demographic and electoral base, thereby achieving "safety in numbers." Our paper sheds light on the drivers of preferences over internal migration, while contributing insights to the international immigration literature, and to policy debates over urban expansion

Bridging the gulf: experimental evidence on migration’s impact on tolerance and internationalism

Immigration has been shown to drive ethnocentrism and anti-globalization attitudes in native-born populations. Yet understanding how global integration shapes intercultural relations also necessitates clear evidence on how migration affects the attitudes of migrants. We argue that migration can foster tolerance, cosmopolitan identities, and support for international cooperation among migrants who experience sustained contact with other cultural groups. We evaluate this theory with the first randomized controlled trial resulting in overseas migration, which connected individuals in India with job opportunities in the Persian Gulf region’s hospitality sector. Two years after the program began, individuals in the treatment group were significantly more accepting of ethnic, cultural, and national outgroups. Migration also bolstered support for international cooperation and cultivated cosmopolitan identities. Qualitative and quantitative evidence links these changes to intercultural contact overseas. By focusing on migrants rather than native-born individuals, our study illustrates how cross-border mobility can facilitate rather than undermine global integration

Replication Data for: Economic Crises and Trade Policy Competition

How do crises affect trade policy? We reconcile starkly diverging accounts in the literature by showing that economic adversity generates endogenous incentives not only for protection, but also for liberalization. We first develop formally the mechanisms by which two features of shocks---intensity and duration---influence the resources and political strategies of distressed firms. Our central insight is that policy adjustments to resuscitate afflicted industries typically generate "knock-on" effects on the profitability and political maneuverings of other firms in the economy. We incorporate these countervailing pressures in our analysis of trade policy competition. In the wake of crises, protection initially increases when impacted firms lobby for assistance, but then decreases as industries run low on resources to expend on lobbying and as firms in other industries mobilize to counter-lobby. We test our theoretical predictions using sub-national and cross-national data and present real-world illustrations to highlight the mechanisms driving our results