working papers

I study social change and cooptation in autocracies at both micro and macro levels. At the micro level, I study the historical development of state-society relations in the context of rural revolutionary movements. At the macro level, I study the global history of authoritarian institutionalization.

1. Long-run impacts of revolutionary mobilization

This line of work 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” state-society interactions rooted in revolutionary mobilization. I also focus on the family as an important conduit for intergenerational transfers of benefits and networks centered on the nation-state. This relies on a unique intergenerational and genealogical dataset collected from heavily mobilized communities in upland Laos. The data collection effort involved local communities and brought to bear local historical knowledge.

The pull of the center: the mobilizational roots of transformation in social revolution Under review.

Abstract:

I study how marginalized people have become integrated into networks centered on the state through revolutionary mobilization. Using a unique genealogical dataset from Laos, I test for the intergenerational, biographical effects of wartime mobilization into a revolutionary political party. In Laos, revolutionary mobilization in the 1960s pulled in individuals from peripheries into political organizations. Results show that descendants of such people were then over twice as likely to work for the party-state than people from similar, unmobilized families. Descendants were over five times as likely to have a cross-ethnic marriage and more than eight times as likely to attain a college diploma, among other social shifts. Mobilization conferred abilities and created opportunities for social advancement, leading to self-sustaining political and economic benefits, which have been transmitted within reconstituted families. The nature of revolutionary mobilization itself is an important, neglected, factor in post-revolutionary social transformation and class formation in revolutionary autocracies.

The long-run postwar integration of the losing side: networks, human capital, and narratives (in preparation)

Abstract:

Choosing the wrong side in a civil war has dire consequences, but many who survive punishment return home to be ruled by their once enemies. What determines whether such returnees and their descendants are able to integrate into the post-war polity in the long-run? Using a unique dataset from communities in Laos that were divided by war in the 1960s, I theorize and test three novel mechanisms: networks, human capital needs, and narratives. I find that kinship connections to the winning side remove punishment effects intergenerationally: children of mixed families attained skilled jobs and higher education at rates significantly higher than even those from purely winning families. The availability of exculpatory narratives and the allocation of human capital are important mechanisms in this integration. This illustrates how dynamics internal to conflict shape the possibilities of post-war integration over the long run, even in a context with no official reconciliation policy.

1.1 Revolutionary mobilization: legacies in defeat

This agenda extends the mobilization framework to Thailand, where the Communist Party of Thailand (CPT) waged a rural insurgency from the 1960s through the 1980s before being defeated. Using original survey and oral history data collected through community partnerships in Isan, northeastern Thailand, I study the long-run consequences of revolutionary participation in a context of defeat rather than victory, illuminating how mobilization shapes life trajectories, and paths of political development, regardless of revolutionary outcome. I replicate the data collection effort previously conducted in Laos, allowing for direct comparisons tracing how the impacts of revolutionary mobilization acted on two very different revolutionary trajectories.

The long-run effects of revolutionary mobilization: evidence from the CPT (data collection)

Who stays in opposition? (with Somchai Phatharathananunth, data collection)

2. A historical perspective on authoritarian institutionalization

This line of research progresses at a macro, global level. 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 (in preparation)

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.