Emily Beaulieu

In the Shadow of Democracy Promotion Strategic Manipulation, International Observers, and Election Boycotts

International efforts to promote democracy can have unanticipated effects. International election observation is perceived to increase domestic confidence in the electoral process and reduce fraud. Conversely, election boycotts are perceived to be more likely as electoral fairness decreases. The authors document a puzzling relationship between monitored elections and opposition party boycotts: Observers are associated with an increased boycott probability. They argue that international benefits for democratic elections give electoral autocrats the incentive to invite international observers and manipulate elections to minimize international criticism. This increase in “strategic manipulation” has led to changed incentives for opposition political parties, which have the most to lose from a manipulated but internationally certified election. Consequently, international monitors increase boycott probability. The authors support this explanation with an original data set of elections, boycotts, and international observers (1990 to 2002).

Sovereign Debt and Regime Type: Reconsidering the Democratic Advantage

The literature exploiting historical data generally supports the democratic advantage thesis, which holds that democracies can sell more bonds on better terms than their authoritarian counterparts. However, studies of more recent—and extensive—data sets find that democracies have received no more favorable bond ratings from credit rating agencies than otherwise similar autocracies; and have been no less prone to default. These findings raise the question: where is the democratic advantage? Our answer is that previous assessments of the democratic advantage have typically (1) ignored the democratic advantage in credit access; (2) failed to account for selection effects; and (3) treated GDP per capita as an exogenous variable, ignoring the many arguments that suggest economic development is endogenous to political institutions. We develop an estimator of how regime type affects credit access and credit ratings analogous to the “reservation wage†model of labor supply and treat GDP per capita as an endogenous variable. Our findings indicate that the democratic advantage in the postwar era has two components: first, better access to credit (most autocracies cannot even enter the international bond markets); and second, better ratings, once propensity to enter the market is controlled and GDP per capita is endogenized.

Women Also Know Stuff: Meta-Level Mentoring to Battle Gender Bias in Political Science

Women know stuff. Yet, all too often, they are underrepresented in political science meetings, syllabi, and editorial boards. To counter the implicit bias that leads to women’s underrepresentation, to ensure that women’s expertise is included and shared, and to improve the visibility of women in political science, in February 2016 we launched the “Women Also Know Stuff” initiative, which features a crowd-sourced website and an active Twitter feed. In this article, we share the origins of our project, the effect we are already having on media utilization of women experts, and plans for how to expand that success within the discipline of political science. We also share our personal reflections on the project.

Electronic Voting and Perceptions of Election Fraud and Fairness

This paper contributes to a growing body of research on voting technology and voter confidence, which generally concludes that voters are less confident in technology—particularly in developed democracies. Using a unique survey experiment, this paper demonstrates that far fewer individuals are concerned about election fraud involving electronic voting, compared with other potential forms of election fraud such as registering ineligible voters or voter suppression. Other interesting findings emerge from the data: Older individuals are more concerned about fraud with electronic voting but the effects of age appear to be conditioned on political polarization. This paper advances our understanding of the impact of voting technology on electoral confidence, and raises important substantive and methodological questions about priming.

Engaging Women: Addressing the Gender Gap in Women’s Networking and Productivity

Women earn 40% of new PhDs in political science; however, once they enter the profession, they have strikingly different experiences than their male counterparts—particularly in the small but influential field of political methodology. For several years, the Society for Political Methodology, with support from the National Science Foundation, has attempted to address this gender gap through the Visions in Methodology (VIM) program. VIM features an annual conference that brings women together to present and discuss their research and to participate in professional-development sessions. Do programs like VIM have the desired impact? Using an original survey of political scientists, this study provides insights into the ways that bringing women together in small-group settings like VIM might facilitate networking and enhance productivity. In particular, the study finds that women who attend the VIM conference are better networked and more productive in terms of publication.

Political Parties and Perceptions of Election Fraud in the U.S.

This paper uses a series of survey experiments to assess what individuals understand about election fraud and under what circumstances they see it as a problem. I argue that political parties are central to answering both these questions. Results from the 2011 CCES survey suggest respondents are able to differentiate accurately between the relative incentives of Democrats and Republicans where fraud tactics are concerned, but whether voters see these tactics as problematic is heavily influenced by partisan bias. These results provide limited evidence for motivated reasoning based on accuracy goals (Taber and Lodge 2006) and more compelling evidence for motivated reasoning based on partisan goals that are shaped by party cues rather than values (Kam 2005).

Sex and corruption: how sexism shapes voters’ responses to scandal

ABSTRACT Conventional wisdom suggests that voters rarely punish politicians for involvement in sex scandals. Yet, we argue that some voters are likely to hold politicians accountable for their moral transgressions. We theorize that both hostile and benevolent sexists are more likely than nonsexists to punish women for involvement in a sex scandal – but each for different reasons. We posit that women politicians involved in sex scandals activate traditional gender norms and challenge men’s dominant position in the society, thus provoking hostile sexists to punish women more severely than men. Benevolent sexists are likely to punish women who fail to comply with stereotypical expectations of being pure and moral, and the men who fail to safeguard those virtues. To test our theory, we rely on a survey experiment that manipulates politician sex and scandal type. We find strong support for our expectations, indicating that sexism continues to structure evaluations of women politicians and shapes voter reactions to political scandal.

Women Politicians, Institutions, and Perceptions of Corruption

Why do people assume female politicians are less likely than men to engage in the illegal use of public positions for private gain? We argue that voters may perceive women as marginalized within political institutions, or as more risk averse and consequently more constrained by institutional oversight, which could lead to perceptions of women as less likely to engage in corruption. Using an original survey experiment, we test these mechanisms against conventional wisdom that women are seen as more honest. We find strong support for the risk aversion explanation, as well as heterogeneous effects by respondent sex for both the marginalization and honesty mechanisms. These findings suggest that the institutional contexts in which women are operating can help explain why people perceive them as less likely to engage in corruption. Identifying these mechanisms is critical to understanding the role of women in politics and for improving trust in government.