Aid, peasants and social exclusion

Using unique village census data collected in 2003 and 2008 in Senegal, we assess the impact of a major World Bank-funded Community Driven Development (CDD) program on membership and assortative matching in community-based organizations (CBOs). We implement both standard discrete choice and dyadic regression techniques. We find that channeling development aid through CBOs makes these organizations more inclusive in the sense that a number of tradition-bound assortative matching patterns are partly broken. Ceteris paribus, this leads to more heterogeneous CBOs. On the other hand, the likelihood of CBO membership is reduced in treated villages, with significant differences between men and women. Our results suggest that grassroots level development projects which target CBOs must be carefully designed and executed if they are not to result, paradoxically, in a greater degree of social exclusion, with differentiation by gender playing a crucial role.Community Based Organizations, Dyadic Regression, Gender Differences, Social Exclusion

The Dynamics of Vote Buying in Developing Democracies: Party Attachment and Party Competition in Southeast Asia

Broadly defined, what factors explain changes in party competition in developing democracies? The dominant theoretical paradigm used to explain changes in party competition in established democracies does not offer much leverage in emerging ones. The literature argues that linkages between voting blocs and parties erode and cleavages shift, allowing for new voter blocs or even new parties. However, if social groups, parties, and party systems are different in emerging democracies than in established ones, does this mean the dynamics of party competition are also different? Also, what does is the role of voters in these systems? My dissertation outlines a theory for how changes in competition occur. Over time, voters form partisan attachments to parties based upon what parties say and do. Using extensive fieldwork my dissertation maps the broad contours of clientelism in Malaysia. I demonstrate that clientelism, as part of the party brand, has been a significant part of the electoral strategy for Malaysia’s longstanding dominant coalition. Nonetheless, in recent years programmatic platforms of opposition parties have become more popular, culminating in a substantial decline of Malaysia’s longstanding ruling coalition in the 2018 elections. This finding challenges much of the existing literature, which treats Malaysia as a case where ethnic political parties are the driving force behind electoral politics. However, in failing to account for clientelism and the way it is changing, this literature misses a major factor driving party competition. This has broad implications for democracy in Malaysia

A quantum categorification of the Alexander polynomial

Using a modified foam evaluation, we give a categorification of the Alexander polynomial of a knot. We also give a purely algebraic version of this knot homology which makes it appear as the infinite page of a spectral sequence starting at the reduced triply graded link homology of Khovanov--Rozansky.Comment: v2: A technical Proposition was missing, now included as an Appendix. 57 pages, many figures. Comments welcome! v3: Some typos corrected. Introduction re-writte

Prospective Physicians’ Intention to Adopt Artificial Intelligence: A Configurational Perspective

Artificial intelligence (AI) drives transformation across medical specialities, requiring current and future generations of physicians to navigate ever-changing digital environments. In this context, prospective physicians will play a key role in adopting and applying AI-based health technologies, underlining the importance of understanding their knowledge, attitudes, and intentions toward AI. To dissociate corresponding profiles, we adopted a configurational perspective and conducted a two-stage survey study of 184 (t_0) and 138 (t_1) medical students at a Canadian medical school. Our principal findings corroborate the existence of distinct clusters in respondents’ AI profiles. We refer to these profiles as the AI unfamiliar, the AI educated, and the AI positive, showing that each profile is associated with different intentions towards future AI use. These exploratory insights on the variety of AI profiles in prospective physicians underline the need for targeted and adaptive measures of education and outreach