UCLA Political Science

Electoral Geography, Strategic Mobilization, and Implications for Voter Turnout
2018-11-23 00:00 (America/Los_Angeles)
Electoral Geography, Strategic Mobilization, and Implications for Voter Turnout
DateNovember 22, 2013
Time6:00am to 7:30am
Location
4357 Bunche Hall
Contact
When will parties mobilize the electoral support of low-income voters? This discussion presents evidence that rates of turnout among low-income citizens reflect legislators’ and parties’ electoral incentives to be responsive to the poor, and that these electoral incentives are determined by electoral geography – the joint geographic distribution of legislative seats and low-income voters across electoral districts. Further, this discussion demonstrates that under SMD electoral rules, low-income voters are more likely to vote in those electoral districts in which they are likely to be pivotal. By presenting a strategic mobilization account of voter turnout, this discussion breaks with current accounts of voter turnout that emphasize facilitative and motivational individual- and system-level factors. Instead, this discussion argues that low-income voters’ turnout decisions, in fact, reflect parties’ electoral incentives to cultivate and mobilize a low-income constituency.
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International Law/IR Workshop with Wayne Sandoltz
2018-11-23 00:00
International Law/IR Workshop with Wayne Sandoltz
DateNovember 21, 2014
Time2:00pm to 3:30pm
Location
4357 Bunche Hall
Contact
Presenter:Wayne Sandoltz, University of Southern CaliforniaTitle: “Law and Politics in a Trustee Court: Amnesty Laws and the Inter-American System”Abstract:In a series of decisions starting in 2001, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACtHR) has ruled that amnesty laws that create impunity for serious violations of human rights violate the American Convention on Human Rights and other treaties. In addition, the IACtHR has, in some of its decisions, taken the extraordinary step of nullifying national amnesty laws. We argue that the work of the Inter-American Court and its partner institution, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, can be understood as that of trustees. Our central claim is that the Commission and the Court will try to expand the fulfillment of human rights in the Americas but that they modulate their decisions in light of the domestic politico-legal context in respondent states. The Commission controls the timing of when cases arrive at the Court, and the Court controls the scope of final decisions. We offer a set of propositions regarding the timing of decisions, the scope of decisions (narrow versus expansive), and the degree to which decisions follow the Court’s existing jurisprudence. The analysis of all fourteen of the Court’s amnesty decisions is generally consistent with our propositions.Paper: Click here to download.
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Recruitment Job Talk with Marko Klasnja
2018-11-23 00:00
Recruitment Job Talk with Marko Klasnja
DateNovember 21, 2014
Time12:00pm to 1:30pm
Location
4357 Bunche Hall
Contact
Presenter:Marko Klasnja, New York UniversityTitle: “Corruption and the Incumbency Disadvantage: Theory and Evidence”Abstract:Incumbents in many developing democracies face significant disadvantages when seeking reelection, in stark contrast to the well-known incumbency advantage that exists in the U.S. and other mature democracies. Here I propose and test a new explanation for this incumbency disadvantage: corruption. Formally, I show that incumbents become more disadvantaged as the cost of committing corruption decreases, as the quality of the pool of candidates for office deteriorates, and when gains to corruption increase with time spent in office. I test these hypotheses by developing innovative measures of local corruption in Romania. Identification comes from two discontinuities: (1) national rules tying mayoral salaries to thresholds in town populations that cause jumps in the opportunity cost of corruption and thus its incidence, and (2) close elections that assign incumbency status to candidates in an as-if random fashion. This strategy provides strong evidence that the large incumbency disadvantage found in Romanian local elections is caused by the incidence of corruption and the large seniority premium to corruption exploited by Romanian mayors.
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IR Reading Group
2018-11-23 00:00
IR Reading Group
DateNovember 20, 2015
Time3:00pm
Location
4276 Bunche Hall
Contact
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PT Workshop - Jennifer London
2018-11-23 00:00
PT Workshop – Jennifer London
DateNovember 20, 2015
Time4:00pm
Location
4357 Bunche Hall
Contact
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REP Reading
2018-11-23 00:00
REP Reading
DateNovember 20, 2015
Time4:00pm
Location
4280 Bunche Hall
Contact
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PT Workshop - Sharon Krause, Brown University
2018-11-23 00:00
PT Workshop – Sharon Krause, Brown University
DateNovember 18, 2016
Time4:00pm to 6:00pm
Location
4357 Bunche Hall
Contact
The password-protected paper can be found here
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Gayil Talshir
2018-11-23 00:00
Gayil Talshir
DateNovember 17, 2017
Time4:00pm
Location
4357 Bunche Hall
Contact
Contact Information
Belinda SunnuPhone 3102067558bsunnu@polisci.ucla.edu
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AP Workshop - Rocio Titiunik
2018-11-26 00:00
AP Workshop – Rocio Titiunik
DateNovember 23, 2015
Time3:00pm
Location
4357 Bunche Hall
Contact
The widespread availability of voter files has changed the study of participation in American politics. However, many studies calculate voter turnout among registrants, which may lead to invalid causal inferences if registration rates differ between treatment and control groups. We introduce a sensitivity analysis approach that can be used to assess the potential bias induced by this problem, which we call differential registration bias, and illustrate its use with two empirical studies of the effects of voting eligibility on subsequent turnout among young voters. In both cases, we find that eligibility decreases turnout as a proportion of total registration. However, these negative effects are highly sensitive to differential registration bias and, in one study, change signs when we instead calculate turnout as a proportion of the population. These results suggest the need for scholars to provide rigorous sensitivity analysis as part of any study of voter file data.Paper: PDF
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AP Workshop - Ariel White, MIT
2018-11-26 00:00
AP Workshop – Ariel White, MIT
DateNovember 21, 2016
Time12:30pm to 2:00pm
Location
4357 Bunche Hall
Contact
Abstract:This paper presents new causal estimates of incarceration’s effect on voting, using administrative data on criminal sentencing and voter turnout. I use the random case assignment process of a major county court system as a source of exogenous variation in the sentencing of misdemeanor cases. Focusing on misdemeanor defendants allows for generalization to a large pool of people, as such cases are extremely common. Among first-time misdemeanor defendants, I find evidence that receiving a short jail sentence decreases voting in the next election by several percentage points. Results differ starkly by race. White defendants show no demobilization, while Black defendants show a turnout decrease of about 13 percentage points due to jail time. Evidence from pre-arrest voter histories suggest that this difference could be due to racial differences in who is arrested. These results paint a picture of large-scale, racially-disparate voter demobilization in the wake of incarceration.Full paper can be found here
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Pieces of the Craft
2018-11-28 00:00
Pieces of the Craft
DateNovember 25, 2015
Time12:00pm
Location
4276 Bunche Hall
Contact
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REP Reading Group
2018-11-30 00:00
REP Reading Group
DateNovember 27, 2015
Time4:00pm
Location
4280 Bunche Hall
Contact
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Comparative Politics Job Talk with Emily Sellars
2018-12-03 00:00
Comparative Politics Job Talk with Emily Sellars
DateDecember 1, 2014
Time12:00pm to 1:30pm
Location
4357 Bunche Hall
Contact
Contact Information
Belinda SunnuPhone bsunnu@polisci.ucla.edu
Presenter:Emily Sellars, University of Wisconsin–MadisonTitle: “Does Emigration Inhibit Political Reform? Evidence from the Mexican Agrarian Movement, 1916–1945″Abstract:Does emigration encourage or inhibit political reform? I investigate this question using data from a critical period in Mexican history. Following the Revolution in 1910, the Mexican government implemented a major redistributive land reform program. The program began during a period of high emigration from Mexico, but migration patterns were halted and reversed following the Stock Market Crash of 1929. Using a research design similar to a difference-in-differences approach, I demonstrate that there was a significant acceleration in land redistribution in high- relative to low-emigration states after the shock to emigration opportunities. Drawing on an original formal model and on archival research on the agrarian movement, I trace this outcome to the role of emigration in reducing political pressure on the government during the 1920s and to the importance of repatriates in the agrarian movement after 1930. These findings have important implications for understanding the political impacts of emigration and their development consequences.
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Pieces of the Craft
2018-12-05 00:00
Pieces of the Craft
DateDecember 2, 2015
Time12:00pm
Location
4276 Bunche Hall
Contact
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Methods Workshop with Branislav Slantchev
2018-12-06 00:00
Methods Workshop with Branislav Slantchev
DateDecember 4, 2014
Time2:00pm
Location
4357 Bunche Hall
Contact
Contact Information
Belinda SunnuPhone bsunnu@polisci.ucla.edu
Presenter:Branislav Slantchev, UC San DiegoTitle: “Rich Subjects, Poor Kings: Rebellion Relief and the Ratchet Effect in Taxation”Abstract:Rulers face serious difficulties in their efforts to extract wealth from society through taxation. Historically, taxation was often not very high and attempts to increase it frequently caused revolts. Over time, however, taxation has increased dramatically while violent resistance has virtually disappeared. We present a model that shows how these patterns can be understood as arising from the Crown’s desire to maximize its income from taxation in a context where it is institutionally unconstrained but does not have very good information about the wealth of the subjects it is trying to tax. In this setting, high tax demands can push poor subjects into violent resistance, which might provide the Crown with evidence that it needs to lower the tax to acceptable levels (provide tax relief). This possibility, however, provides an incentive to the rich subject to join the revolt to take advantage of tax relief and avoid an increase of taxation that willingness to accept might entail in the future (ratchet effect). This interaction is resolved in the Crown settling for taxation that, depending on its information about the subjects’ wealth, can be low but peaceful, moderate but provoking occasional revolts by the poor, and high but risking that even the rich would join a revolt. As the Crown’s ability to better assess the wealth of its subjects grows, taxation will increase while violent resistance will decrease even in the absence of an increase in the Crown’s coercive capabilities or its public goods provision. The growth of the state can be understood as a direct consequence of administrative improvements rather than centralization of power, monopolization of violence, or provision of public goods.Paper: Click here to download.
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GSC Meeting
2018-12-06 00:00
GSC Meeting
DateDecember 3, 2015
Time3:30pm
Location
4280 Bunche Hall
Contact
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Is War Disappearing?
2018-12-07 00:00
Is War Disappearing?
DateDecember 6, 2013
Time7:00am to 8:30am
Location
11377 Bunche Hall
Contact
There is a large and growing belief, based on a handful of recent scholarly works, that the propensity of states to use force against one another is on the decline. I take issue with two lines of argument that support this conclusion. The first is the claim that, whereas the two World Wars were statistical anomalies, the “Long Peace” that followed is a meaningful trend: I show that both are very plausibly the result of the same stochastic process. The second is the claim that there is less war now than there was in the recent past: I examine what is meant by war, control for two confounding influences that resulted from the proliferation of states in the 20th century, and show that, taking those considerations into account, no such trend is evident.
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Dramatizing Democracy: Crisis, Civic Education, and the Common Good
2018-12-07 00:00
Dramatizing Democracy: Crisis, Civic Education, and the Common Good
DateDecember 6, 2013
Time8:00am to 9:30am
Location
4357 Bunche Hall
Contact
After 9/11, hope arose that democracy in America would be revitalized. Crisis, it was said, “represents an opportunity” for social and political reformation, and the American people will “come together and rise to the occasion.” I examine the philosophical underpinnings of this familiar rhetoric and the belief that crisis may be good for democracy, a belief which runs against traditional views that popular governments cannot cope with crises. What is revealed about our understanding of democracy when we dramatize the state of insecurity as its born-again moment? Crisis-based democracy is compelling because it reframes republican civic virtue, and radical collective action, in ways compatible with modern society and liberal democracy. This formulation, I argue, signifies a transformation of the participatory ideal, from common people arguing together to the heroic transcendence of partisanship. To analyze the crisis/democracy linkage I consider the surprisingly similar democratic theories of Bruce Ackerman and Sheldon Wolin.
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Stacey Greene - Practice Job Talk
2018-12-07 00:00
Stacey Greene – Practice Job Talk
DateDecember 4, 2015
Time1:00pm
Location
4357 Bunche Hall
Contact
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IR Reading Group
2018-12-07 00:00
IR Reading Group
DateDecember 4, 2015
Time3:00pm
Location
4276 Bunche Hall
Contact
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REP Reading Group
2018-12-07 00:00
REP Reading Group
DateDecember 4, 2015
Time4:00pm
Location
4280 Bunche Hall
Contact
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Amanda Robinson
2018-12-10 00:00
Amanda Robinson
DateDecember 4, 2017
Time12:15pm
Location
4357 Bunche Hall
Contact
Contact Information
Belinda SunnuPhone 3102067558bsunnu@polisci.ucla.edu
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Recruitment Job Talk with Erin Hartman
2018-12-13 00:00
Recruitment Job Talk with Erin Hartman
DateDecember 11, 2014
Time12:00pm to 1:30pm
Location
4357 Bunche Hall
Contact
Contact Information
Belinda SunnuPhone bsunnu@polisci.ucla.edu
Presenter:Erin Hartman, UC BerkeleyTitle: “Call and Non-response: A Design Based Solution for Unit Non-response”Abstract:With the decrease in response rates to surveys, the potential for differential non-response to bias our estimates of public opinion is growing. Changing response rates over the course of an election may be able to explain much of the variance observed in stated vote intention during the cycle. I decompose the potential bias into features that can be addressed in the design and post hoc adjustment stage, and unobservable behavioral bias that must be assumed away. I then consider a new sampling method, response rate sampling, that leverages past data on responsiveness to surveys to alleviate bias due to observable imbalance resulting from unit non-response. This method was used for the internal analytics polling operation during President Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign. I will present findings on the dynamics of response rates over the 2012 election cycle, and how response rate sampling impacts volatility in our measurements and our estimates of public opinion and campaign effects.
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Political Theory Workshop with Ella Myers
2018-12-14 00:00
Political Theory Workshop with Ella Myers
DateDecember 12, 2014
Time4:00pm
Location
4357 Bunche Hall
Contact
Contact Information
Belinda SunnuPhone bsunnu@polisci.ucla.edu
Presenter:Ella Myers, University of UtahRespondent:Kye Barker, UCLATitle: “Invisible Men: Racial Indifference in Theories of Neoliberalism”About the presenter:Ella Myers (Ph.D. 2006, Northwestern) is assistant professor of Political Science at the University of Utah with a joint appointment in Gender Studies. Her research is primarily in the area of democratic theory. She is especially engaged with questions regarding citizen participation, the distribution of political power, and practices of collective resistance. Myers’ current research agenda focuses on contemporary economic conditions in the United States and she is working on a book manuscript entitled Radical Capitalism, which argues that today’s economic regime is both continuous and discontinuous with previous forms of capitalist society.Abstract:Scholarly work on neoliberalism often fails to address the specific workings of racial caste in the U.S. Too often such work presents a grand narrative of capitalist exploitation in the 21st century which overlooks racial domination or implies that it is simply a sub-category of class domination. Drawing on work by Michelle Alexander and Loic Wacquant, this paper argues that racial caste functions today to position black men in the U.S. not merely as exploitable, but expendable. The problem of black men’s disposability – expressed most graphically in the social acceptance of the state-sanctioned use of discriminatory force, imprisonment, and disenfranchisement – points to “the incompleteness of abolition.” The paper argues that understanding the effects of racial caste on black men today requires investigating how capitalism and white supremacy have been linked historically not only by relations of boss/worker but also by relations of owner/owned.Paper:Click here to download.
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Demetra Kasimis
2018-12-14 00:00
Demetra Kasimis
DateDecember 8, 2017
Time4:00pm to 6:00pm
Location
4357 Bunche Hall
Contact
Contact Information
Belinda SunnuPhone 3102067558bsunnu@polisci.ucla.edu
Paper
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Fall Quarter ends, December 19, 2014 – Friday
2018-12-21 00:00
Fall Quarter ends, December 19, 2014 – Friday
DateDecember 19, 2014
Time6:00am
Location
Contact
Fall Quarter ends, December 19, 2014 – Friday
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Winter campus closure begins, December 24, 2014 – Wednesday
2018-12-26 00:00
Winter campus closure begins, December 24, 2014 – Wednesday
DateDecember 24, 2014
Time6:00am
Location
Contact
Winter campus closure begins, December 24, 2014 – Wednesday
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Political Science Commencement 2019
2019-06-16 09:00 - 12:00 | Pauley Pavilion, Los Angeles, CA, 90095, United States
Commencement Speaker: Howard Welinsky ’72
Howard Welinsky is the former Senior Vice President/Administration for Warner Bros. Distributing. His career at Warner Bros. spanned 42 years, where he rose through the ranks from Sales Analyst. He is active in Democratic Party politics, having served on the State Democratic Central Committee since 1977 and chairing the Platform Committee for the past ten years. He has been a delegate to three National Democratic Conventions and served on the Platform Committee for four others. He has long advocated for his twin passions of higher education and Israel. Welinsky served on the California Postsecondary Commission for 11 years, and he co-founded the California Coalition for Public Higher Education. He lives in Toluca Lake with his wife Karren Ganstwig, also a UCLA alum. They were married on campus.
What has UCLA meant to you?
I have always been proud of my UCLA degree. UCLA is such a special place that combines the pursuit of truth and excellence with great humanity. It’s a place where so many first-generation students like me are given a chance to soar.

Commencement live stream will be available at the department’s Facebook page here
The College of Letters and Science Commencement Contact Information page contains multiple links to Message Center topic queues: http://www.college.ucla.edu/commencement/help/contact/
Information for graduates and guests the day of commencement:
On Sunday, June 16, 2019, graduates assemble at the LATC (Los Angeles Tennis Center). Please arrive by 8:00 AM. Enter through GATE B off Bruin Walk.
A processional into Pauley Pavilion will begin promptly at 8:45 AM.
As graduates arrive to the assembly area name cards will be distributed. The name cards include a line for the phonetic spelling of your name to assure that announcers pronounce your name appropriately.
During the ceremony graduates are guided to the stage by event staff and hand their name card to a photographer’s assistant. Faculty members rotate announcing names as graduates walk across the stage. A photography company called GradImages uses the flip side of the card to collect addresses which are used to send photos taken as graduates prepare to step onto the stage, stand center stage and after stepping down from the stage.
Approximately 425 graduates are expected to participate along with 3,000 guests. Guests should arrive an hour before the event. Seating is unassigned and is first come, first seated. The doors of Pauley Pavilion open at 8:00 AM. There are several ceremonies scheduled that morning so guests should allow ample time to park, walk to Pauley Pavilion, and find a seat. The event is anticipated to be 90 to 120 minutes.
SECURITY PRECAUTIONS DURING COMMENCEMENT
Although UCLA does not anticipate any security problems during Commencement, we are constantly monitoring the events to protect the safety and security of our guests. Please observe the following restrictions for all Commencement Activities on the UCLA Campus.

No large bags, back packs, large purses or items larger than 12 x 12
No firearms, knives, explosives or other weapons
No cans, coolers and other containers except in cases of medical need, as certified by a physician
No artificial noise makers, air horns or megaphones may be used
No large signs, flags, poles, banners, or laser pointers
No promotional items with commercial slogans or identification
No food or drinks are allowed in the individual commencement venues
Inspections of small receptacles (bags) might be required as you enter event venues
All Commencement venues have the authority to prohibit any other items deemed to be a security risk. Patrons will not be allowed to bring those items inside the event venues
These policies are subject to change without notice

Jennifer Cryer (Stanford University), Recruitment Job Talk
2019-11-07 12:00 - 13:30 | 4357 Bunche Hall, 4357 Bunche Hall, Los Angeles, CA, 90095, United States

Davin Phoenix (UC Irvine), Recruitment Job Talk
2019-11-13 12:00 - 13:30 | 4357 Bunche Hall, 4357 Bunche Hall, Los Angeles, CA, 90095, United States
