working papers

My dissertation speaks to two different broader research agendas.

1. Long-run impacts of revolutionary mobilization

The first focuses on the effects of mobilization in revolutionary conflicts for long-run post-revolutionary inequalities, networks, and identities. I theorize and test for “bottom-up” processes of state formation rooted in mobilization. I also focus on the family as an important conduit for intergenerational transfers of benefits and networks centered on the nation-state.

The pull of the center: mobilization, states, and rural transformation in communist revolution Under review.

Abstract:

I study how individuals and families from marginalized, rural communities have become integrated into networks centered on the state through revolutionary mobilization. Using a unique intergenerational and genealogical dataset from Laos, I test a historically influential view of communist revolutions, which sees individual-level mobilization into revolutionary political parties as central to revolutionary transformation. In Laos, revolutionary mobilization in the 1960s and 1970s pulled in individuals from marginalized communities into positions of power. I find that descendants of such people were then more likely to work for the party-state than people from similar, unmobilized families. I also find differences in social networks, human capital, and the salience of traditional social norms between unmobilized and mobilized families. Mobilization has conferred self-sustaining political and economic advantages, which have been transmitted within families, beyond “pork” from the state. By facilitating denser state-society interactions, these transformations have advanced state capacity and control.

Two possible future lines of research emerge: first, how do such processes impact regime stability? Comparative work on this question involving the countries of mainland Southeast Asia is a promising path forward. Second, how common have such bottom-up processes of state formation been in other revolutionary contexts? Could they help explain rapid expansions of state power following revolutions?

2. Authoritarian coalitions, dynamic incentives, and institutions

A second research agenda involves the formal modeling and empirical study of dynamic incentives in authoritarian coalitions. In another paper from my dissertation, I argue that institutional change during the third wave of democratization can be more parsimoniously understood by accounting for the impact of economic shocks on authoritarian coalitions. I study authoritarian institutions in the historical context of the 1970s and 1980s, when they steadily emerged across the world in a range of country contexts.

Sovereign debt, democratization, and authoritarian institutions in the third wave (draft available on request)

Abstract

I offer a reevaluation of the history of authoritarian institutionalization, which centers the global economic shocks of the 1970s rather than the end of the Cold War. I find that institutionalization occurred after debt buildups. Debt buildups, in turn, happened as developing countries used favorable commodity shocks to jump-start attempts at economic growth and transformation. In addition to cooptation and credible commitments, I argue that institutionalization helped solve principal-agent problems in the process of debt-fueled growth by allowing for limited areas of political and economic competition; functions related to cooptation and credible commitments also widened the scope of politically feasible competition. I also find that debt flows to institutionalized regimes were less sensitive to subsequent negative economic shocks than flows to uninstitutionalized regimes, suggesting that lenders responded favorably to institutionalization.