This page includes an overview of my research program and links to my papers. My blog is here. My CV is available here.
RESEARCH PROGRAM
My research focuses on the institutional and behavioral foundations of electoral conflict and its implications for economic growth, democratic self-government, and human well-being in general.
The descriptive aspect of my research focuses on why bad policy can be good politics and why attempts to remedy this by reforming the policy-making process are difficult to initiate and difficult to maintain.
The institutional design aspect of my research proposes an electoral reform that gives good policy a systematically better chance of becoming good politics, by addressing the core hurdles to initiating and maintaining mutually beneficial institutional reforms.
A one-page account of my research program is available here. An eight-page account is available here. A forty-page account is available in the paper “Making Executive Politics Mutually Productive and Fair.”
PAPERS
Abstract: Winner-take-all elections for executive offices create high-stakes electoral conflict that distorts policy-making and constitution-making behavior. When the stakes are high, so long as it increases the chances of victory, office-seekers seek to shift perceived benefits toward and burdens away from potentially pivotal participants. This can entail the strategic allocation of spoils (e.g. regulatory privileges, subsidies, tariffs, tax loopholes, appointments, or government contracts), the strategic selection of public policies that mobilize one’s base or divide the opposition (e.g. divisive social or foreign policy), the strategic shifting of benefits into the present and costs into the future, and the strategic deception of the uninformed, whether by passively flattering existing hopes and fears or actively stoking new ones (e.g. using foreigners, immigrants, ethnic minorities, the rich, the poor, the opposition, or the media as scapegoats). This paper proposes a “turn-taking institution,” an electoral system in which the whole term is awarded only to a sufficiently inclusive supermajority coalition; if no coalition qualifies, the plurality winner and the runner-up take alternating one-year turns for the length of the term. This institution lowers the stakes of electoral conflict by roughly an order of magnitude, and fosters the formation, enforcement, and adaptation of mutually beneficial policy-making and constitution-making behaviors. Critically, these results hold up even when voters and policy-makers are impatient, when there is an incumbency advantage, and when only short-run commitments are possible.
Status: Forthcoming in Constitutional Political Economy.
Co-authored with Michael Weintraub
Abstract: Twenty years ago Leif Lewin made the case that altruistic motives are more common than selfish motives among voters, politicians, and bureaucrats. We propose that motives, like beliefs, emerge as reactions to immediate feedback from technical-causal, material-economic, and moral-social aspects of the political task environment. In the absence of certain kinds of technical-causal and material-economic feedback, moral-social feedback leads individuals to the altruism Lewin documents, but also to righteousness (moralized regard for the in-group and disregard for the out-group) and myopia (a disregard for distant consequences). The mix of altruism, righteousness, and myopia increases the focus on winning the next high-stakes election rather than on discovering or enforcing socially productive institutions.
Status: Forthcoming in Critical Review.
Co-authored with Michael Weintraub
Abstract: Any electoral institution that aims to sustain peaceful and democratic government after civil war must enable citizens to overcome two successive problems. First, it must make the distribution of benefits to potential spoilers proportionate to their relative bargaining power, where bargaining power equals capabilities to use violence. Second, it must adaptively reallocate spoils over time to accommodate fluctuations in the value of spoils and violent capabilities of potential spoilers. We examine two polar-opposite kinds of post-conflict institutions – majoritarian and power-sharing institutions – to show how neither can robustly solve the two problems. We propose a novel “turn-taking” electoral institution designed to solve both. With this mechanism, the whole executive term goes to a sufficiently-inclusive supermajority coalition; if no coalition qualifies, major coalitions take short, alternating turns several times before the next election. A game-theoretic model formalizes our claims about the barriers and pathways to constitutional democracy after civil war.and increase their chances of election by shifting benefits toward and burdens away from potentially pivotal coalition-members.
Status: Under review.
Co-authored with Michael Weintraub
Abstract: When the difference between winning and losing elections is large, elites have incentives to use ethnicity to control access to spoils, mobilizing some citizens and excluding others. This paper presents a new electoral mechanism, the turn-taking institution, that could move states away from ethnically-mediated patron-client politics. With this mechanism, the whole executive term goes to a sufficiently inclusive supermajority coalition; if no coalition qualifies, major coalitions take short, alternating turns several times before the next election. A decision-theoretic model shows how the turn-taking institution would make it easier for mass-level actors to coordinate on socially productive policy and policy-making processes. We argue this institution would raise the price elites would pay to deploy and enforce exclusive ethnic markers.
Status: Under review.
Co-authored with Michael Weintraub
Abstract: High stakes electoral conflicts induce politicians to put politics before policy. One widely proposed solution is to improve policy-making processes: specifically, to implement rules that accommodate diverse interests and values by fostering impartiality, generality, transparency, deliberation, and consensus. The higher order problem, however, is that incentives to make better constitutional choices are often absent. This paper explores the potential of a “turn-taking institution” as a way to improve constitutional incentives. Turn-taking institutions lower the stakes of electoral conflict and foster the formation, enforcement, and adaptation of broadly beneficial constitutional rules. We use a game-theoretic model to assess the robustness of these results when participants are impatient and have limited commitment horizons, when incumbents have the advantage, and when electoral accountability is biased against good policy.
Status: Under review.
Harnessing Hypocrisy to Tame Hubris: How to Make Perception of Bias in the Opposition Limit the Effects of Bias in the Ruling Coalition
Abstract: The empirical literature in social psychology documents that people commonly exhibit both “hubris” and “hypocrisy”. Hubris is an upwardly biased estimate of one’s own benevolence or competence. Hypocrisy is a greater ability to spot bias in others than in oneself. This paper considers the effects of partisan variants of hubris and hypocrisy on the demand for constitutional limits on the scope of a winner-take-all executive office. Abiding by such limits tends to be costly when one’s co-partisans are in office and beneficial when they are not. Even citizens with unbiased estimates of the benevolence and competence of their co-partisans would exhibit time-inconsistent or myopic behavior: they would prefer partial public policy when their team is in office, and impartial public policy when it is not. The political process amplifies the motivational and cognitive factors that cause beneffectance bias in non-political settings. Beneffectance bias amplifies the bias against demand for impartial public policy. Some proposed remedies (deliberation, voting, leadership, and ideology) and their limits are discussed.
Status: Working paper.
How the Wish to Win Makes Politics More Partial and Myopic:
Neglected Implications of Partisan Optimism Bias
Abstract: This paper joins the literature on constitutional rules that limit political conflict with the empirical literature on partisan optimism bias: citizens’ upwardly biased estimates of the probability their preferred party will win an upcoming election. Abiding by impartial rules tends to be costly when one’s preferred team is in office and beneficial when it is not. Even citizens with unbiased estimates of the probability their preferred party will win the next election would exhibit time-inconsistent or myopic behavior: they would prefer partial public policy when their team is in office, and impartial public policy when it is not. Partisan optimism bias amplifies the bias against demand for impartial rules. This suggests a neglected empirical research angle. Whereas now the research is focused on citizens’ estimates of probabilities of winning the next election, their estimates of future elections may be more relevant to the bias against demand for impartial rules.
Status: Working paper.