Why are some countries in sub-Saharan Africa more prone to outbreaks of urban protests than others? Drawing together insights from the contentious politics and conflict studies literatures I develop an empirical model of protest incidence comprised of basic demographic, political and economic...

Who are the post-Soviet oligarchs? Have they been members of the nomenklatura before 1991? Did they accumulate their initial wealth before or after privatization? To answer these questions, I have compiled an original dataset of oligarchs drawing on publicly available biographical data in the...

Incumbents have a potential advantage not only when running for reelection, but also when pursing other political offices. So far, the literature has mostly ignored these effects. We use evidence from Brazilian elections to show that this `extended incumbency advantage' is an important political...

Why do nondemocratic regimes provide constituency service? This study develops theory based on a national field audit of China's "Mayor's Mailbox," an institution that allows citizens to contact local political officials. Analyzing government responses to over twelve hundred realistic appeals...

Does personal wealth translate into political power, and does it influence the ideology of officeholders? This paper investigates the role of personal wealth in politics using the 1805 Georgia land lottery as a natural experiment. Matching lottery records to a roster of officeholders and roll...

In recent years a great deal of time and effort has been expended toward the development of qualitative methods which retain the advantages of case study and small-n methods, but which ameliorate the various problems (lack of transparency, excessive subjectivity, etc.) Qualitative Comparative...

Following the transition to a market economy, postcommunist states experienced sharp increases in aggregate income inequality and a breakdown in the former social welfare system. New market-consistent social insurance systems replaced the former enterprise-based, budget-financed forms for...

Constitutionalism has long been a byword for legitimate government. Recently, however, legal scholars and political theorists have begun attending to the ways in which constitutional rule can fail to realize (or actively hinder) the lofty ideals with which it is traditionally associated. This...

Political scientists have never systematically investigated patterns of residential segregation using comprehensive datasets. In response, this paper examines an important research question involving race, segregation, and housing in the United States: were racial minorities in America's largest...

This paper examines how citizen activism in Vietnam on the issue of water governance is shaped by the regional context in which it is embedded. It is part of a larger research project that explores stakeholder participation at the local, national and basin level. The Mekong River Commission,...