Risk and Responsibility: Climate Disasters and IMF Conditionality (with Richard Clark). Revise & Resubmit, Journal of Politics.
International Monetary Fund (IMF) loans often require states to implement stringent policy conditions for funds to be disbursed. However, many recipients experience frequent climate disasters, which limit the feasibility and political desirability of taking on cumbersome conditions (e.g., those mandating drastic cuts to public spending). We examine whether and how the IMF accounts for the burden posed by states’ experiences of climate disasters when designing loan programs. The Fund appears to balance moral hazard concerns against climate vulnerability by granting disaster-prone countries access to IMF programs with fewer and less stringent prior actions — stringent pre-approval conditions. Mechanism tests and unique interviews with IMF staff and Executive Board members suggest this effect is driven by bureaucrats’ attention rather than the desires of management or member states. These findings highlight the responsiveness of international financial institutions to countries’ climate vulnerabilities and illustrate how climate change influences international economic policymaking processes.
Think Globally, Act Locally: The Determinants of Local Policymakers’ Support for Climate Policy (with Joshua A. Schwartz). Under review.
Although much progress to combat climate change has occurred subnationally, little research examines the policy preferences of local policymakers themselves and whether policymaker and public preferences are contradictory or compatible. To address these questions, we conduct identical conjoint experiments on over 500 local policymakers and the American public. Per our theoretical expectations, we demonstrate the probability of policy adoption can be increased by strategic design. Most notably, climate-related subsidies and regulations are preferred over taxes and penalties, suggesting efforts to put a price on carbon may not be the optimal approach. Partisan endorsements of climate plans also have a large effect—greater in some cases than substantive policy design—consistent with increasing polarization. While direct economic relief to the public is popular, it does not increase support for bolder climate policies. Finally, elite and public preferences are highly compatible, which is a positive signal about the representativeness of American democracy.
- Best Graduate Student Paper Award, ISA Environmental Studies Section
Beyond Meating Climate Goals: Masculinity and Climate Policy Backlash (with Christopher W. Blair and Joshua A. Schwartz) Under review.
Political debates over climate change mitigation are inflected with gendered language. While prior work has shown a connection between individual gender and climate-related attitudes, little evidence exists regarding the gendered nature of climate policy itself. We theorize that climate change mitigation policies perceived as “masculine-threatening” elicit more public opposition than gender-neutral climate policies. We further argue that women leaders face a higher penalty when they advocate climate policies that threaten masculine-coded norms and behaviors. To test our theoretical expectations, we fielded three pre-registered survey experiments on representative samples of the US public (n $\approx$ 2,700). While we find that masculine-threatening policies face substantially more opposition—suggesting that proposing them is politically fraught—we do not find that women policymakers face a disproportionate penalty for advocating them. These results underscore the nuanced ways gender dynamics shape public attitudes on climate change and bear key implications for our understanding of political communication on climate policy.
- Paul Sabatier Best Paper Award, APSA Science, Technology and Environmental Policy Section
Proximity Matters: Exploring the Impact of Physical Arrangement on Diplomatic Interactions (with Fiona Bare) Under review.
Multilateral diplomacy is a deeply social activity, in which interpersonal interactions allow diplomats to negotiate compromises across heterogeneous preferences. Deeper social ties enable diplomats to develop trust, exchange information, and reduce miscommunication, which are instrumental in successful negotiations. Can physical proximity between diplomats facilitate social relationships, thus fostering increased multilateral cooperation? We leverage the randomized seating arrangement of the UN General Assembly to investigate this question, probing whether spatially proximate diplomats are more likely to collaborate and vote similarly compared to spatially disparate diplomats. We find support for our expectation that diplomats seated next to each other are more likely to vote similarly, even after controlling for measures of state influence and affinity, and that the mechanism behind this effect is individual-level social relations between diplomats. Our results speak to the importance of face-to-face diplomacy conducted through international organizations (IOs), as well as the role of individual bureaucrats in shaping international political outcomes.
Breaking Commitments: Public Reactions to Withdrawals from International Institutions (with Lotem Bassan-Nygate)
How does withdrawal from international institutions shape public opinion? We examine this question in the context of climate change, focusing on the Paris Agreement in both the U.S. and Argentina. While past research has examined the consequences of state withdrawal for compliance and international behavior, its effects on public opinion remain understudied. To investigate these dynamics, we conducted three studies: a U.S. survey-experiment manipulating expectations about withdrawal prior to President Trump’s withdrawal from the Agreement, a follow-up study measuring reactions to the actual U.S. withdrawal, and a replication in Argentina testing both domestic withdrawal and third-party reactions. Across studies, withdrawal cues reduce support for the Paris Agreement and, in some cases, climate attitudes and support for international law, with effects concentrated among politically aligned respondents. Overall, we show that withdrawing from international climate agreements can undermine public support for both the agreements themselves, the policies they govern, and broader international norms.
Populism and IO Appointments (with Richard Clark and Allison Carnegie)
Widespread agreement exists that populists oppose global governance, yet the impacts of this hostility remain under-explored. We argue that populist leaders undermine international organizations (IOs) through the strategic politicization of their leadership and key staff positions. While IOs depend on experts like scientists, lawyers, and economists to fulfill their mandates, populists prefer political appointees who reflect their anti-elite orientation and desire for greater control. However, weak populist states face a trade-off, as they need highly qualified appointees to maintain legitimacy and effectively influence IO policy. In contrast, powerful populist governments leverage their strength to appoint less qualified, politically loyal individuals as a tactic to reshape or undermine these organizations. Using new data on United Nations staff appointments, we show that populist governments significantly favor appointees who are less qualified and more closely tied to their administration. Our findings imply that populism compromises IOs’ effectiveness by eroding the institutional expertise needed to tackle global challenges.
Is a picture worth a hundred votes? Diplomatic gifts and UNSC elections (with Mirko Heinzel)
Soft power is frequently invoked in discussions of international diplomacy, but rarely subjected to systematic empirical testing. This paper examines whether material expressions of soft power—specifically, gifts to the United Nations—shape a country’s likelihood of winning election to a nonpermanent seat on the UN Security Council (UNSC). We argue that such contributions function as a diplomatic signal aimed not at powerful states, but at the broader international community. This approach contrasts with canonical explanations of election to the UNSC, which focus on foreign aid and trade inducements (e.g., Dreher, Vreeland, Kuziemko & Werker), shifting the focus from bilateral incentives to international organizational dynamics. To address concerns of endogeneity and self-selection, we analyze all candidate countries, including those that ran and lost, and assess how gift-giving correlates with electoral success, paying particular attention to whether gifts increase the success rate of weaker states. Our findings shed new light on how soft power strategies operate within IO politics and diplomacy.
Everything Old is New Again: Textual Recycling in UN Resolutions
Why do negotiators recycle previous texts in the drafting of legal documents in international organizations? I engage with theories of international lawmaking to understand how the unique context of IOs leads to different expectations of textual recycling compared to previously studied contexts, primarily treaty negotiations. I argue that textual recycling is an efficiency-enhancing strategy which negotiators are particularly likely to use when confronted by demanding policy agendas and when addressing low-salience issues. To assess this theory, I deploy a machine learning approach to measure textual recycling across all UN resolutions passed from 1946-2018. In line with my expectations, I find that rates of textual recycling are higher in the UNGA—which has an extensive agenda—than the UNSC—which has a narrower agenda. I further find that recycling is more likely to be used within chambers compared to across chambers, and on lower salience issues than on security matters. These findings suggest that negotiators weigh the benefits of efficiency against the importance of specificity when choosing to recycle texts.
Influencer Diplomacy: Non-Traditional Actors in Public Diplomacy (with Lotem Bassan-Nygate)
Public diplomacy, traditionally led by government actors through initiatives like state visits, foreign aid, and official messaging, aims to communicate with and attract foreign publics. However, states are increasingly delegating these efforts to private and non-state actors, including celebrities and social media influencers. Is this `influencer diplomacy‘ effective at accomplishing the goals of traditional public diplomacy? We theorize that the credibility and positionality of non-traditional messengers significantly impact their effectiveness. We propose a series of survey experiments in the U.S. to evaluate whether influencers, due to their likability and perceived authenticity (positionality), are more effective than traditional diplomats, or if their potential lack of expertise and objectivity (credibility) undermines their impact. This research contributes to understanding the evolving landscape of public diplomacy and the strategic use of influencers in IR.
Who are Powerful Diplomats?: Ambassador Biographies and Social Embeddedness
Biographical features such as gender, military experience, and Western education have been shown to affect the ways that leaders and diplomats act in meaningful ways — particularly in contexts in which actors have little information about their counterparts. To what extent do these features matter in the conduct of multilateral diplomacy, a unique setting in which actors engage in deep, repeated forms of social interaction? I explore the biographical features of individual ambassadors to the UN to develop a more fine-grained understanding of the features that translate experience into effectiveness, and compare the relative impact of biographical features to diplomats’ social embeddedness. I collect biographical data on more than 900 Permanent Representatives to the UN from 1995-2005, comprising the first cross-national dataset of diplomatic biographical information. I also construct a network of co-sponsorship of agenda proposals to capture social embeddedness. Drawing on theories of leader effectiveness and diplomatic practice theory, I assess how key biographical features moderate the impact of diplomatic experience and contribute to effectiveness, and provide illustrative evidence in favor of the role of social dynamics in predicting diplomatic success in IO policymaking.