Book

“Who Attacks Whom? The Correlates of Media Reports of Inter-party Conflict and Cooperation Between European Elites.” with James Adams, Josephine Andrews, Braeden Davis, Alexa Federice, Noam Gidron, and Will Horne.

Abstract: Political elites’ inter-party conflict plausibly intensifies citizens’ hostility towards political opponents, i.e., affective polarization, while depressing their democratic satisfaction. Yet, while mass-level affective polarization and democratic satisfaction are widely studied, less is known about patterns of animosity among political elites. To address this gap, we analyze Western European politicians’ interparty interactions based on coded news reports in thirteen countries between 2001 and 2019, finding sharp cross-national and temporal variations in reported levels of interparty conflict. Within countries, elites’ interactions are more conflictual when parties diverge in their ideologies, their attitudes towards European integration, and their populist orientations, and are also related to governing coalition arrangements. Moderate economic downturns are associated with greater interparty conflict, but severe recessions – such as the global downturn beginning in 2009 – are associated with more interparty cooperation as elites work together to address the ongoing economic crisis. We also estimate that political elites’ interactions are far less conflictual in countries that feature more consensual political institutions, supporting Lijphart’s contention that consensualism promotes kinder, gentler, politics. Our findings illuminate how interparty cooperation and conflict vary within and between European party systems.

Peer-Reviewed Publications

“Does Political Sophistication Moderate How Citizens Use Information to Infer Left-Right Distances between Parties?” with Will Horne, Simon Weschle, James Adams, and Christopher Wlezien. 2025. Published in the Journal of Elections, Public Opinion and Parties.

Abstract: Research identifies numerous factors associated with citizens’ perceptions of party ideologies, including the Left-Right orientations of parties’ election manifestos, governing coalition arrangements, and media reports of party elites’ interactions. We analyze whether citizens’ reliance on these factors varies with their levels of education and political knowledge. In analyses of 51 election surveys from 18 countries between 2001 and 2015, we find that more politically sophisticated citizens attach (modestly) more weight to parties’ election manifestos and media reports of political elites’ interactions, but no evidence that sophistication moderates citizens’ reactions to governing coalition arrangements. There thus appears to be far more homogeneity than heterogeneity in the structure of party placement perceptions.

“A comment on Herzog, Baron, and Gibbons (2022)” with Haley Daarstad and RyuGyung (Rio) Park. 2023. Published in I4R Discussion Paper Series, No. 97, Institute for Replication (I4R), s.l.

Abstract: Herzog, Baron, and Gibbons (2022) explore the effects of exposure to official elite rhetoric and group cues on public support against the international nuclear weapons prohibition norm. The authors find that elite cues, in particular security and institutional cues, increase individuals’ opposition to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW). However, elite cues do not seem to have an effect on changing individuals’ broader attitudes towards nuclear weapons, as measured by individuals’ existing opposition to nuclear arms. We replicate and expand the authors’ methods and results to test the robustness of the effects found in the study. First, we reproduce the main finding using the authors’ original data and method. We do not find any coding errors that undermine the authors’ analysis or conclusions. Second, we test the robustness of the results by (1) using a different operationalization of party identity, and (2) calculating additional subgroup analysis for gender. We find no significant differences between our replicated and the original results, however females’ support for the TPNW is more responsive to security cues, while males’ support is more responsive to institutions cues.

Invitations to Revise and Resubmit

“Conjoint Analysis of Interpersonal Affective Polarization: Limits of Partisan Bias in Dating, Housing, and Shopping” with Spencer Kiesel and Sharif Amlani.

Abstract: Scholarship shows that partisanship can inform individuals’ decisions in areas outside of politics, such as roommate choice, spousal selection, and economic behavior. However, few studies can systematically determine whether these decisions are based on partisanship or if they use partisanship to make inferences about other characteristics relevant to a given social choice. To determine to what extent partisanship informs decisions, we use a conjoint analysis to isolate the impact of partisanship on nonpolitical considerations across three types of social decisions: selecting a spouse to marry, a neighborhood to live in, and a business to frequent. We find that partisanship influences all three social decisions, even while controlling for other salient considerations. Further, we find that the degree to which partisanship matters is similar to and, in some cases, exceeds other relevant considerations. Overall, we show that when individuals make key decisions that affect the trajectory of their life, partisanship is a fundamental consideration.

Working Papers

“Policies, But for Whom? Testing the Effect of Social Group Appeals on British Voters’ Party Preferences” [Job Market Paper]

Abstract: This study examines how political parties’ rhetorical appeals to social groups affect voters’ party preferences. Parties regularly appeal to social groups in their political communications, often pairing these appeals with policy promises. Yet, existing models of voting behavior focus almost exclusively on the role of policies. I use a pre-registered conjoint experiment fielded on a nationally representative sample of British adults that has voters consider parties’ promises to social groups in four different issue areas, and I show that voters punish parties who explicitly appeal to women, while appeals to workers are more generally accepted. Moreover these effects are moderated by the importance of the group to the individual. I find that the punishing effect of appeals to women are not driven by men, but rather those who do not consider women important. These findings shed light on the role of group attitudes in explaining voting behavior and advance our understanding of the consequences of group appeals.

“The Greens’ Disadvantage: How Party Reputations Shape Public Perceptions of Climate Policy” with RyuGyung (Rio) Park

Abstract: The environment-economy trade-off is regarded as one of the biggest obstacles to climate action. Ambitious decarbonization measures imply big economic costs, and electorates often worry about the economic repercussions of climate action. Do green parties suffer a systematic disadvantage from their reputation for too heavily prioritizing the environment over the economy? We theorize that, controlling for individuals’ ideology and policy issue priorities, climate policies supported by parties that have ex ante reputation for prioritizing the economy will be perceived more favorably than a green party, or a party with environmental issue competence. We use survey experiments in the U.S. and Germany to test our theory. Our results show that, while overall policy support remains relatively stable, having a green party as the main supporter of a policy creates more concerns for its economic consequences, which is consistent with our theory. While green parties appear to suffer a disadvantage, we do not find any evidence that right-wing parties experience an advantage.

“Protecting Migrant Rights: Barriers to Naturalization” with Enrico Antonio La Viña and Jeannette Money

“Introducing the Transnational Security Cooperation Agreement Dataset (TSCAD)” with Brandon Kinne