Do Protestant Missionaries Undermine Political Authority? Evidence From Peru

The relation between religious organizations and political authority is notoriously tense. Max Weber argued that this is because both compete over the same resource: human commitment. This article revisits Weber’s hypothesis. Specifically, we explore two psychological mechanisms through which Protestant missionaries affect political authority: obedience and persuadability. Exploiting exogenous variation in missionary activity in Peru, we demonstrate that missionaries make converts more obedient, which we attribute to a theological and a social mechanism. Yet, we also find that missionaries make converts less susceptible to persuasion by political authorities because they shift attention from secular topics to questions of theological importance, and endorse a skeptical stance toward the government. Exploiting variation in treatment intensity, we argue that the degree to which political authority is affected depends on a given mission’s theological strictness. We arrive at these findings by combining experimental outcomes and process-tracing evidence using Bayesian integration

The Determinants of Religious Radicalization: Evidence from Kenya

A variety of theories attempt to explain why some individuals radicalize along religious lines. Few studies, however, have jointly put these diverse hypotheses under empirical scrutiny. Focusing on Muslim–Christian tensions in Kenya, we distill salient micro-, meso-, and macro-level hypotheses that try to account for the recent spike in religious radicalization. We use an empirical strategy that compares survey evidence from Christian and Muslim respondents with differing degrees of religious radicalization. We find no evidence that radicalization is predicted by macro-level political or economic grievances. Rather, radicalization is strongly associated with individual-level psychological trauma, including historically troubled social relations, and process-oriented factors, particularly religious identification and exposure to radical networks. The findings point to a model of radicalization as an individual-level process that is largely unaffected by macro-level influences. As such, radicalization is better understood in a relational, idea-driven framework as opposed to a macro-level structural approach

Essays on Inequality and Social Cohesion

This dissertation comprises three essays that explore determinants of inequality and social cohesion. The first essay explores the role of inheritance customs in spurring social equality. Using historical data on inheritance customs in Germany, I document that municipalities that historically fairly shared wealth among siblings see higher levels of social equality today. I point to two mechanisms that help explain the correlation: increased wealth equality and stronger pro-egalitarian preferences. Interestingly, I also find that equitably inheriting communities are associated with higher incomes and greater income inequality. I interpret this finding to mean that equitable inheritance levels the playing field by rewarding talent not hereditary status. The second essay analyzes how Protestant missions affect community cohesion. Exploiting variation in missionary activity in southeastern Peru, I document that villages exposed to missions have lower levels of community cohesion compared to non-exposed villages. I adjudicate between two mechanisms that may explain this finding - social networks and pro-social preferences - and find the latter to be more plausible. The third essay expands on this finding by implementing a field experiment with a missionary group in South Sudan in order to parse out the causal effect of Protestant evangelism on social capital. Using attitudinal and behavioral measures, I document that missionaries lower group-level social capital while increasing individual-level pro-social behavior. Taken together, my dissertation adds theoretical considerations and empirical evidence to a broad debate in the social sciences that tries to make sense of variation in social equality and cohesion

Replication Data for The Determinants of Religious Radicalization: Evidence from Kenya

A variety of theories attempt to explain why some individuals radicalize along religious lines. Few studies, however, have jointly put these diverse hypotheses under empirical scrutiny. Focusing on Muslim-Christian tensions in Kenya, we distill salient micro-, meso-, and macro-level hypotheses that try to account for the recent spike in religious radicalization. We use an empirical strategy that compares survey evidence from Christian and Muslim respondents with differing degrees of religious radicalization. We find no evidence that radicalization is predicted by macro-level political or economic grievances. Rather, radicalization is strongly associated with individual-level psychological trauma, including historically troubled social relations, and process-oriented factors, particularly religious identification and exposure to radical networks. The findings point to a model of radicalization as an individual-level process that is largely unaffected by macro-level influences. As such, radicalization is better understood in a relational, idea-driven framework, as opposed to a macro-level structural approach

Replication Data for: Do Online Ads Influence Vote Choice?

Do online ads influence vote choice? We partner with a German party to evaluate the effectiveness of online ads using a cluster-randomized experiment. During the 2016 Berlin state election, 189 postal districts were randomly assigned to i) emotional ads; ii) factual ads; or iii) no ads. Analyzing electoral results at the postal district level, we find that the overall campaign weakly increased the party’s vote share by 0.7 percentage points (p-value=0.155). We also estimate a negative effect of the campaign on the vote share of the party’s main competitors of 1.4 percentage points (p-value=0.094). Turning to the mechanism of persuasion, we find that the factual ads, if anything, fared slightly better than the emotional ads. Our evidence thus provides tentative support that online ads positively affect vote choice

Replication Data for: Do Protestant Missionaries Undermine Political Authority? Evidence from Peru

The relation between religious organizations and political authority is notoriously tense. Max Weber argued that this is because both compete over the same resource: human commitment. This article revisits Weber’s hypothesis. Specifically, we explore two psychological mechanisms through which Protestant missionaries affect political authority: obedience and persuadability. Exploiting exogenous variation in missionary activity in Peru, we demonstrate that missionaries make converts more obedient, which we attribute to a theological and a social mechanism. Yet, we also find that missionaries make converts less susceptible to persuasion by political authorities because they shift attention from secular topics to questions of theological importance, and endorse a skeptical stance towards the government. Exploiting variation in treatment intensity, we argue that the degree to which political authority is affected depends on a given mission’s theological strictness. We arrive at these findings by combining experimental outcomes and process-tracing evidence using Bayesian integration

Replication Data for: Multiple Dimensions of Bureaucratic Discrimination: Evidence from German Welfare Offices

A growing experimental literature uses response rates to fictional requests to measure discrimination against ethnic minorities. This paper argues that restricting attention to response rates can lead to faulty inferences about substantive discrimination depending on how response dummies are correlated with other response characteristics. We illustrate the relevance of this problem by means of a conjoint experiment among all German welfare offices, in which we randomly varied five traits and designed re- quests to allow for a substantive coding of response quality. We find that response rates are statistically indistinguishable across treatment conditions. However, putative non-Germans receive responses of sig- nificantly lower quality, potentially deterring them from applying for benefits. We also find observational evidence suggesting that discrimination is more pronounced in welfare offices run by local governments than in those embedded in the national bureaucracy. We discuss implications for the study of equality in the public sphere

Supplemental Material, 0._Replication - The Determinants of Religious Radicalization: Evidence from Kenya

<p>Supplemental Material, 0._Replication for The Determinants of Religious Radicalization: Evidence from Kenya by Anselm Rink, and Kunaal Sharma in Journal of Conflict Resolution</p

Supplemental Material, FinalAppendix - The Determinants of Religious Radicalization: Evidence from Kenya

<p>Supplemental Material, FinalAppendix for The Determinants of Religious Radicalization: Evidence from Kenya by Anselm Rink, and Kunaal Sharma in Journal of Conflict Resolution</p

Does Rent Control Turn Tenants Into NIMBYs?

Affordable housing is a key challenge of the 21st century. A pivotal driver of growing housing prices is residents' opposition to construction, a phenomenon known as NIMBYism ("Not In My Backyard"). To make housing more affordable, city governments are increasingly implementing rent control policies. Does rent control---by making tenants more likely to stay in their apartments---spark NIMBYism and thus exacerbate the housing crisis? We study the case of Berlin, which recently passed a sweeping rent control law. Leveraging two discontinuities in the policy, we show that rent control made tenants less NIMBY. Specifically, tenants in rent controlled apartments became more likely to approve of local-level construction and immigration, compared to tenants in non-rent-controlled apartments. We argue that the decline in NIMBYism is likely due to an economic channel. Tenants in urban centers associate construction and immigration with displacement pressures and gentrification. Rent control alleviates these concerns by providing financial and residential security