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: legacies of mobilization in communist revolution Under review.

Abstract:

A historically influential view of revolutions, guiding communist movements in the twentieth century, holds that revolutionary social reconfigurations begin with individual-level transformations through political mobilization. I provide theoretical explication and empirical tests of this understudied view, leveraging a unique intergenerational dataset from Laos, which captures genealogical histories covering pre-revolutionary, revolutionary, and post-revolutionary generations. I compare individuals and families who were mobilized into the communist side during the Laotian Civil War of the 1960s-1970s with those from the same villages who remained as farmers. Results show how wartime mobilization pulled in individuals from marginalized communities into positions of power, socializing them to government work, transforming social networks and providing leadership experience, status, and benefits. After the revolution, impacts spread through families and localities intergenerationally, shaping heirarchies, forging connections to the state, and defining paths of economic development and cultural change in the long-run.

Two possible future lines of research emerge: first, how do such processes impact political order and 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

Much analysis of democratization has focused on the effect of the end of the Cold War on bringing about a period of dramatic transition from autocracy to democracy and to hybrid regimes in countries around the world. Yet data suggests a remarkable continuity in trends towards democratization from the late 1970s to the early 1990s. Additionally, though overlooked in existing literature, a steady trend towards greater institutionalization took place among autocracies from 1977 to the mid 1980s. I argue that both the third wave of democratization and the global move towards autocratic institutionalization were rooted in the weakness of many autocracies in building coalitions and managing social and factional conflict domestically in the context of deep external economic shocks. I formalize the idea that high levels of social conflict place increasing budgetary demands on regimes as they build social coalitions to block oppositions and stay in power. I go on to show how the very possibility of budgetary shocks can then cause autocratic coalitions to unravel in the absence of mechanisms of credible commitment. This happens because actors choose to launch favorable rebellions rather than risk unfavorable future rebellions launched by others.I empirically investigate key hypotheses by analyzing macroeconomic data as well as data on opposition events, cabinets, and institutionalization. In the process, I also present an account of authoritarian institutions rooted in the global history of institutionalization, where institutions emerge to avert coalitional unraveling during times of regime weakness.