UCLA Political Science

Understanding Ethnic Cooperation: Evidence from Experiments in Kenya and Tanzania
2018-11-02 00:00 (America/Los_Angeles)
Understanding Ethnic Cooperation: Evidence from Experiments in Kenya and Tanzania
DateNovember 1, 2013
Time7:00am to 8:30am
Location
4357 Bunche Hall
Contact
We employ lab experiment data from Nairobi, Kenya and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania to document the extent of ethnic divisions, and to test whether – and how – ethnic divisions can be rendered less salient. The study employs both standard and novel lab measures, develops new ways to prime both ethnic and national identity, uses implicit association tests to clarify the mechanisms underlying behavior, and employs a pre-analysis plan that specifies hypotheses to generate more credible estimates.
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Dimitris Vardoulakis
2018-11-01 00:00
Dimitris Vardoulakis
DateOctober 26, 2017
Time4:00pm to 6:00pm
Location
4357 Bunche Hall
Contact
Contact Information
Belinda SunnuPhone 3102067558bsunnu@polisci.ucla.edu
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Pieces of the Craft
2018-10-31 00:00
Pieces of the Craft
DateOctober 28, 2015
Time12:00pm
Location
4276 Bunche Hall
Contact
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Julia Lee - Practice Job Talk
2018-10-30 00:00
Julia Lee – Practice Job Talk
DateOctober 27, 2015
Time12:30pm to 1:45pm
Location
4357 Bunche Hall
Contact
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Nadia E. Brown: "It's More than Hair...That's Why You Should Care"
2018-10-29 00:00
Nadia E. Brown: “It’s More than Hair…That’s Why You Should Care”
DateOctober 24, 2016
Time3:00pm to 4:30pm
Location
4357 Bunche Hall
Contact
Abstract:African American women female state legislators navigate the politics of appearance differently from others. Black women’s texture and style of their hair and their skin tone influences their experiences as state legislators. In sum, this essay contends that Black women’s appearances have led to experiences that are linked to building their self-confidence, internal fortitude, and building their character, which they attribute to assisting them with dealing with adversities. In turn, these experiences impact their practices as state legislators.Full paper can be found here
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Comparative Politics Workshop with Thad Dunning
2018-10-29 00:00
Comparative Politics Workshop with Thad Dunning
DateOctober 27, 2014
Time12:30pm to 2:00pm
Location
4357 Bunche Hall
Contact
Presenter:Thad Dunning, UC BerkeleyTitle: “Positive vs. Negative Incentives for Compliance: Evaluating a Randomized Tax Holiday in Uruguay”Abstract:Can positive rather than negative incentives boost tax compliance in developing countries? We study a unique randomized policy innovation in Montevideo, Uruguay, in which the municipal government raffles tax holidays to good taxpayers who are current on past payments. Using unusual access to over-time tax payment records as well as survey data, we assess the impact of holidays on subsequent tax compliance, as well as citizens’ attitudes towards taxation and governance. We also use field and survey experiments to study the effects of informing eligible and ineligible taxpayers about the rebate lottery—which has not been effectively advertised by the government. Our informational treatments allow us to compare the influence of priming negative incentives for tax compliance, such as fines and punishment for non-payment, with the positive inducement provided by the lottery.Paper:Click to download plan and amended plan.
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Priming Predispositions and Changing Policy Positions: An Account of When Mass Opinion is Primed or Changed
2018-10-29 00:00
Priming Predispositions and Changing Policy Positions: An Account of When Mass Opinion is Primed or Changed
DateOctober 28, 2013
Time5:00am to 6:30am
Location
4357 Bunche Hall
Contact
Prior research provides limited insights into when political communications prime or change citizens’ underlying opinions. This paper attempts to fill that void by putting forth a new account of priming and opinion change. I argue that crystallized attitudes can often be primed by new information. An influx of attention to less crystalized issues, however, should lead individuals to alter their underlying opinions in accordance with prior beliefs. Since predispositions acquired early in the lifecycle like partisanship, religiosity and group-based affect/antagonisms are more crystallized than mass opinion about public policy, media and campaign content will tend to prime citizens’ predispositions and change their policy positions. Both my review of previous priming research and original analyses presented in this study from five new cases strongly support that crystallization-based account of when mass opinion is primed or changed. I conclude with a discussion of the paper’s potential methodological, political, and normative implications.
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Josiah Ober
2018-10-26 00:00
Josiah Ober
DateOctober 20, 2017
Time4:00pm to 6:00pm
Location
4357 Bunche Hall
Contact
Contact Information
Belinda SunnuPhone 3102067558bsunnu@polisci.ucla.edu
Paper
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Panel Discussion: Jobs At Teaching-Oriented Institutions
2018-10-26 00:00
Panel Discussion: Jobs At Teaching-Oriented Institutions
DateOctober 21, 2016
Time3:00pm to 5:00pm
Location
4357 Bunche Hall
Contact
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Political Theory Workshop
2018-10-26 00:00
Political Theory Workshop
DateOctober 23, 2015
Time4:00pm to 6:00pm
Location
Bunche Hall 4357 (Conference Room)
Contact
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American Politics Workshop with Larry Bartels
2018-10-26 00:00
American Politics Workshop with Larry Bartels
DateOctober 24, 2014
Time12:30pm to 2:00pm
Location
4357 Bunche Hall
Contact
Presenter:Larry Bartels, Vanderbilt UniversityTitle: “Democracy for Realists”Overview:Prof. Bartels’ presentation will address the promise and pitfalls of “retrospective voting,” in which voters reward or punish incumbents for past performance. While the approach sounds appealing, findings detailed in his upcoming book — “Democracy for Realists” (co-authored with Prof. Chris Achen of Princeton) – provide evidence that retrospective judgments are often altogether too blind, myopic, and random to reliably select competent leaders.Prof. Bartels is Professor of Political Science and May Werthan Shayne Chair of Public Policy and Social Science at Vanderbilt University, where he also directs the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions. He is the author of several books on democracy, elections and voting.
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2nd Annual Wolfenstein Memorial Lecture
2018-10-25 00:00
2nd Annual Wolfenstein Memorial Lecture
DateOctober 23, 2014
Time4:30pm
Location
Faculty CenterCalifornia RoomUCLA CampusParking available for $12 in Structure 2
Contact
Contact Information
Kelli A O’LearyPhone 310-825-4038koleary@support.ucla.edu
E. Victor Wolfenstein Memorial Lecture “Fugitives’ Democracy: The Political Worlds of Toni Morrison’s Essays and Fiction”Presented byKatharine Lawrence Balfour, Professor of Politics, University of VirginiaThis lecture will be streamed live beginning at 4:30 p.m. PST, here.Abstract “I can’t wait for the ultimate liberation theory to imagine its practice and do its work.” Challenging both the wishful thinking of liberal color-blindness and the cynicism of post-civil rights era complaints that it is time to “get over” race, Toni Morrison asks what democracy demands of us in the shadow of slavery and Jim Crow. This lecture traces Morrison’s political thought by focusing on the work of fugitives and the meaning of responsibility in her art. Morrison draws on the heritage of the fugitive slaves—whose self-authorization not only produced the rich literary tradition of which she is a part but also played a pivotal role in redefining American freedom—to track how African Americans have contended with white attributions to them of both the absence and the excess of responsibility. At a time when the political language of “personal responsibility” plays a crucial role in reinforcing the racial hierarchies it denies, Morrison charts a more democratic course and elicits readers’ judgment of our responsibilities as citizens and human beings. Bio Lawrie Balfour is Professor and Interim Chair of Politics at the University of Virginia. She is the author of Democracy’s Reconstruction: Thinking Politically with W. E. B. Du Bois, The Evidence of Things Not Said: James Baldwin and the Promise of American Democracy, and numerous articles on race, democracy, and literature. Balfour has held fellowships from the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for Afro-American Research, the Center for the Study of Values in Public Life at Harvard Divinity School, the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. A recipient of multiple teaching awards, she has served as a visiting professor at Princeton University and the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris. Currently, she is writing a book about reparations for slavery and Jim Crow. E. Victor Wolfenstein Memorial Lecture Established by the friends and family of E. Victor Wolfenstein following his death in 2010, the Wolfenstein Memorial Lecture brings a leading scholar to UCLA each year to speak on a subject in one of Victor’s many fields of research, which included African-American thought and politics, Ancient Greek political theory, psychoanalysis and Marxism among others. The lecture creates an opportunity for faculty, students, and the broader community to come together to consider the fundamental questions of justice, race, history, and their representation in theory, music and literature that animated Victor’s work. The lecture also serves as a venue to recognize undergraduates who have excelled in the Political Science 10: Introduction to Political Theory, a staple of Victor’s teaching. In addition to being named as Wolfenstein Fellows, these students have the opportunity to meet with the lecturer at a private dinner. E. Victor Wolfenstein was Professor of Political Science at UCLA from 1965 to 2010. During that time, Victor taught political theory, critical thinking, and radical ideas to generations of UCLA undergraduates. With his unique teaching style that at times included his guitar, Victor won a strong student following and numerous university teaching awards. He was also a renowned scholar and author of seven books and many shorter works, most importantly The Victims of Democracy, Inside/Outside Nietzsche, A Gift of the Spirit and Talking Books.
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James Lo
2018-10-22 00:00
James Lo
DateOctober 16, 2017
Time12:00pm to 1:30pm
Location
4357 Bunche Hall
Contact
Contact Information
Belinda SunnuPhone 3102067558bsunnu@polisci.ucla.edu
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Sarah Anzia, UC Berkeley - AP Workshop
2018-10-22 00:00
Sarah Anzia, UC Berkeley – AP Workshop
DateOctober 17, 2016
Time12:30pm to 2:00pm
Location
4357 Bunche Hall
Contact
Abstract:The idea that public policy is biased in favor of groups of citizens who vote at high rates is central to scholarship on American politics, but few studies have actually tested it. In this paper, I carry out a test of the expected turnout-policy connection that leverages variation in the turnout of senior citizens in city elections and the senior-friendliness of city transportation policy. Surprisingly, my results do not support the conventional wisdom: I find no significant association between the percentage of seniors in the electorate and better transportation for seniors. I then use this null finding as a launching pad for developing expectations about the conditions under which a group of citizens will influence policy. In a second round of empirical tests, I find support for those expectations: transportation policies are friendlier to seniors in cities where senior citizens are a cohesive, politically-focused group, and where they engage in political activities other than voting.
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International Relations Workshop with Brian Rathbun
2018-10-22 00:00
International Relations Workshop with Brian Rathbun
DateOctober 20, 2014
Time12:30pm to 2:00pm
Location
Bunche 4357
Contact
Presenter:Brian Rathbun, University of Southern CaliforniaTitle: “Variation in Strategic Rationality”Click here for information on the presenter.
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Party Activists as Campaign Advertisers: Why the Ground Campaign Can't Move to the Middle
2018-10-22 00:00
Party Activists as Campaign Advertisers: Why the Ground Campaign Can’t Move to the Middle
DateOctober 21, 2013
Time5:00am to 6:30am
Location
4357 Bunche Hall
Contact
Recent Presidential campaigns have emphasized recruiting workers to engage in direct voter contact. We develop a model of direct contact as a principal-agent problem. Unlike other political activists, workers engaged in “ground campaign” tactics are not merely a constituency; they are intermediaries between candidates and voters. As intermediaries, we argue, they are ill-suited to convey messages to general-election audiences. Through a partnership with Obama’s campaign, we interviewed approximately 4,000 workers as they engaged in direct contact. We show that workers who directly engaged swing voters on behalf of the Obama campaign were ideologically extreme, cared about different issues than the general public, and misunderstood the issues that voters care about. We further test whether the campaign was able to control its agents by the strategic recruitment or strategic placement of volunteers. We find no evidence that the campaign was able to employ these strategies and overcome its principal-agent problem. We conclude that it is unlikely that the individuals typically willing to act as volunteer surrogates are capable of conveying messages that benefit a strategic campaign.
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Juliet Hooker, UT Austin - PT Workshop
2018-10-19 00:00
Juliet Hooker, UT Austin – PT Workshop
DateOctober 14, 2016
Time4:00pm to 6:00pm
Location
4357 Bunche Hall
Contact
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Political Theory Workshop with Megan Gallagher
2018-10-19 00:00
Political Theory Workshop with Megan Gallagher
DateOctober 17, 2014
Time4:00pm
Location
Bunche 4357
Contact
Title: “In Excess: Emotional Regimes in Montesquieu’s Lettres Persanes”Presenter: Megan Gallagher Respondent: Anna-Elisabeth ScheidtAbstract: In this paper, I read Montesquieu’s Lettres persanes as an attempt to theorize a virtuous, republican alternative to despotic rule. As Montesquieu argues in the Esprit des lois, fear – specifically fear of the ruler’s emotional and material excesses – dominates the life of the despotic subject. Yet though the despotic state’s parallel in the Lettres, the seraglio, is the site of overflowing and barely governed passions, Montesquieu’s solution to its excesses is not the eradication of emotion. Rather, he theorizes a transmutation of an excessive and self-regarding emotion – fear – into temperate and other-regarding affective practices that open the possibility of republican government. We see this most clearly in the account of Roxane, the rebellious wife whose actions precipitate the collapse of the seraglio. I argue that Roxane’s attack at the hands of her husband Usbek and her eventual suicide evoke the republican model established by the Roman matriarch Lucretia. Though not republican actors themselves, both Lucretia and Roxane anticipate the possibility of a republican future through their inauguration of new emotional regimes and their refusal of fear-based, despotic politics.Paper: Click here to download.
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BOLLENS-RIES-HOFFENBERG LECTURE
2018-10-16 00:00
BOLLENS-RIES-HOFFENBERG LECTURE
DateOctober 10, 2017
Time6:00pm to 9:00pm
Location
California NanoSystems Institute (CNSI)UCLA Campus
Contact
CollegeEvents@support.ucla.edu
Barbara GeddesChair and Professor, UCLA Department of Political Scienceinvites you to attend the 31st AnnualBOLLENS-RIES-HOFFENBERG LECTURE Fiction When Truth is Stranger Than Fiction: Hollywood in The Trump Era featuring Franklin LeonardFilm Executive and Founder, The Black List with introduction by Lynn VavreckProfessor of Political Science, UCLA Tuesday, October 10, 2017 at 6:00 p.m.Reception to follow California NanoSystems Institute (CNSI)UCLA Campus Parking available for $12 in Parking Structure 9Inquiries: CollegeEvents@support.ucla.eduAbout the SpeakersClick here to learn more about Franklin Leonard and Lynn Vavreck. About the SeriesThe annual series’ aim is to bring together the worlds of academic exploration and practical politics to illuminate discussion of the broader principles and ideas of representative government. Such a synthesis is true to the spirit of the lecture’s honorees – John C. Bollens, John C. Ries, and Marvin Hoffenberg – former distinguished professors in UCLA’s Department of Political Science.
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Swarr Prize Lecture
2018-10-15 00:00
Swarr Prize Lecture
DateOctober 10, 2016
Time12:00pm to 1:30pm
Location
4357 Bunche Hall
Contact
Abstract:Scholars have established that the emergence and success of Latinos running for office is primarily driven by district demographics. Nonetheless, the Latino presence in Congress continues to be limited despite the rapid growth of the Latino population. What, then, is driving the disproportionate rates of Latinos in Congress? We argue that candidate-specific characteristics do not disadvantage Latinos in succeeding when running for open-seats, but their candidacy, at the pre-emergence stage, is sensitive to potential challengers and the extent to which Latinos can access party resources. We utilize an original dataset of primary candidates for open-seats from 2004 until 2014 that encompasses data on each congressional district and data specific to the campaign of each Latina/o candidate. Our dataset also includes latent contenders or “almost-rans” who did not enter the race. We find that Latino candidates do not underperform in open-seat primary elections because of candidate-specific characteristics. However, Latinos are predicted to receive fewer resources from both their political party and its network. Our findings indicate that the poor integration of Latinos into partisan networks is largely responsible for their limited presence in Congress.
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Comparative Politics Workshop with Jens Hainmueller
2018-10-15 00:00
Comparative Politics Workshop with Jens Hainmueller
DateOctober 13, 2014
Time12:30pm to 2:00pm
Location
4357 Bunche Hall
Contact
Title: “Do Survey Experiments Capture Real-World Behavior? External Validation of Conjoint and Vignette Analyses with a Natural Experiment”Presenter: Jens HainmuellerAbstract: Survey experiments like vignette and conjoint analyses are widely used in the social sciences to elicit stated preferences and study how humans make multidimensional choices. Yet, there is a paucity of research on the external validity of these methods that examines whether the determinants that explain hypothetical choices made by survey respondents match the determinants that explain what subjects actually do when making similar choices in real-world situations. This study compares the results from conjoint and vignette analyses on which immigrant attributes generate support for naturalization to closely corresponding behavioral data from a natural experiment in Switzerland, where some municipalities used referendums to decide on the citizenship applications of foreign residents. Using a representative sample from the same population and the official descriptions of applicant characteristics that voters received before each referendum as a behavioral benchmark, we find that the effects of the applicant attributes estimated from the survey experiments perform remarkably well in recovering the effects of the same attributes in the behavioral benchmark. We also find important differences in the relative performances of the different designs. Overall, the paired conjoint design where respondents evaluate two immigrants side-by-side comes closest to the behavioral benchmark; on average its estimates are within 2 percentage points of the effects in the behavioral benchmark.Paper: Click here to download.Click here to download the Supporting Info.
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Practice Job Talk: Sarah Brierley
2018-10-10 00:00
Practice Job Talk: Sarah Brierley
DateOctober 5, 2016
Time1:00pm to 2:30pm
Location
4357 Bunche Hall
Contact
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Do Primary Electorates Polarize Congress?
2018-10-09 00:00
Do Primary Electorates Polarize Congress?
DateOctober 8, 2013
Time5:15am to 6:45am
Location
4357 Bunche Hall
Contact
The extreme preferences of the citizens who participate in primary elections are often offered as an explanation for divergence between how members of Congress behave and what their constituents would prefer. If candidates must appeal both to a primary electorate with far-from-center policy preferences and a general electorate with more moderate policy preferences, candidates may diverge from the policies they would support if they only had to win the general election. Despite the appeal of this argument, most empirical evidence on the effects of primaries finds small to no effects. I use survey data and a hierarchical model to estimate the preferences of Democratic and Republican primary electorates along with the general electorate in each House district across the country. I find that primary electorates diverge substantially in average policy preferences from general electorates, and my results suggest that primary and general electorate preferences have about equal influence on voting in Congress. I replicate using vote returns in the 2012 Texas senatorial primary.
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REP Workshop: Jennifer Merolla (UCR)
2018-10-08 00:00
REP Workshop: Jennifer Merolla (UCR)
DateOctober 3, 2016
Time3:00pm to 4:30pm
Location
4357 Bunche Hall
Contact
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Comparative Politics Workshop with Carlo Prato
2018-10-08 00:00
Comparative Politics Workshop with Carlo Prato
DateOctober 5, 2015
Time12:30pm
Location
Contact
SAVE the Date, Next MONDAY, Oct. 5 — Carlo Prato (of) Georgetown Univ. with “RATIONAL IGNORANCE AND ELECTORAL IMBALANCE, ” the 1st Comparative Politics Workshop of 2015-16: 12:30 PM, Bunche 4357 (Conference Room)(from the abstract): [We] study a formal model where “rationally ignorant” voters hold ex-ante different views about candidates’ quality (for example, due to incumbency) and party labels (for example, due to ideology). We study the effect of each of these two types of imbalance on campaign spending, voter attention, and democratic responsiveness. Our theory provides a way to organize a large set of empirical findings, such as the strong impact of incumbency on electoral outcomes, the relatively smaller impact of partisan redistricting, as well as the existence of an incumbency spending advantage with limited electoral consequences. The theory has also implications for the interpretation of estimated incumbency effects.More details at: www.polisci.ucla.edu/content/comparative-politics-workshop-with-carlo-prato
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Libby Barringer - PT Workshop
2018-10-05 00:00
Libby Barringer – PT Workshop
DateSeptember 30, 2016
Time4:00pm to 6:00pm
Location
4357 Bunche Hall
Contact
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Methods Workshop with Adam Glynn
2018-10-05 00:00
Methods Workshop with Adam Glynn
DateOctober 3, 2014
Time12:00pm to 1:30pm
Location
4357 Bunche Hall
Contact
Presenter:Adam Glynn, Emory UniversityTitle: “Front-door Difference-in-Differences Estimators”Abstract:In this paper, we develop front-door difference-in-differences estimators that utilize information from post-treatment variables in addition to information from pre-treatment covariates. Even when the front-door criterion does not hold, these estimators allow the identification of causal effects under assumptions related to standard difference-in-differences assumptions and allow the bounding of causal effects under relaxed assumptions. We illustrate these points with an application to the National JTPA (Job Training Partnership Act) Study and with an application to Florida’s early in-person voting program. For the JTPA study, we show that an experimental benchmark can be bracketed with front-door and front-door difference-in-differences estimates. Surprisingly, neither of these estimates use control units. For the Florida program, we find some evidence that early in-person voting had small positive effects on turnout in 2008 and 2012. This provides a counterpoint to recent claims that early voting had a negative effect on turnout in 2008.Click here to download the paper. Jointly sponsored with the UCLA Department of Statistics
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Autonomy vs. Diversity: Kant and Hegel
2018-10-05 00:00
Autonomy vs. Diversity: Kant and Hegel
DateOctober 4, 2013
Time9:00am to 10:30am
Location
4357 Bunche Hall
Contact
The notions of autonomy and diversity, both important in social and ethical theory, seem to have little to do with one another. To put it roughly, autonomy has to do with self-governance, with the ability to determine your actions by your own nature or principles; its opposite is heteronomy, which is acting from someone else’s nature or principles, as when they give you orders or you want to please them. Diversity, on the other hand, means variation, and its opposite is uniformity. So the two terms are not, it appears, even opposed to each other.
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The PLATO Society of Los Angeles Colloquium
2018-10-04 00:00
The PLATO Society of Los Angeles Colloquium
DateSeptember 28, 2017
Time12:45pm to 3:00pm
Location
Skirball Magnin Auditorium2701 N Sepulveda Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90049
Contact
Contact Information
Front OfficePhone (310)443-7676office@theplatosociety.org
Richard Andersonis Professor of Political Science at UCLA,and a specialist on Russian politics and foreign policy.His books include: Discourse, Dictators and Democrats:Russia’s Place in a Global Process,Public Politics in an Authoritarian Stateand Post-Communism and the Theory of Democracy.Thursday September 28, 2017Skirball Magnin Auditorium12:45 Coffee and Cookies 1:30–3:00 ProgramFree parking Open to the publicRSVP at the front office or office@theplatosociety.org or (310)443-7676
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Fall Quarter begins September 29, 2014
2018-10-01 00:00
Fall Quarter begins September 29, 2014
DateSeptember 29, 2014
Time6:00am
Location
Contact
Fall Quarter begins September 29, 2014 – Monday
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