Control over patronage appointments is believed to confer an electoral advantage on the incumbent. We study the effects of the introduction of merit civil service legislation between 1900 and 2016 on reelection rates of individual legislators serving across lower houses of U.S. state legislatures. Using recently-developed statistical methods appropriate for the staggered introduction of reform legislation, results show that reelection rates significantly increase following abolition of patronage appointments to the state bureaucracy. To explain this surprising result, we study changes in the pool of politicians and document a selection effect: post-reform states see faster replacement of politicians than their unreformed counterparts. To understand this more fully, we bring in partial data on rerunning and legislator occupational backgrounds. Neither of these shows significant changes with reform. Overall, our results suggest that once rotation between elected and appointed offices was restricted by reform, more ambitious and professional legislators entered elected office. However, these traits appear unobservable.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Miriam Golden holds the Peter Mair Chair in Comparative Politics at the European University Institute. She uses multiple research methods to investigate the political economy of governance, political representation, and corruption in countries around the world. Golden is currently engaged in a large-scale cross-national and historical study of how and when politicians secure reelection and has recently published The Puzzle of Clientelism: Political Discretion and Elections Around the World (Cambridge University Press, 2023) with Eugenia Nazrullaeva. Her articles have been published in The American Political Science Review, the American Journal of Political Science, The Annual Review of Political Science, Legislative Studies Quarterly, and the British Journal of Political Science. She has been a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study of Behavioral Sciences and a recipient of a fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.

Virtual to Public. Only those with an active Stanford ID with access to Encina E008 in Encina Hall may attend in person.

This talk centers around the forthcoming book, Collisions: The War in Ukraine and the Origins of the New Global Instability, to be published by Oxford University Press in March 2024. Collisions provides historical context for the war that began with Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. It weaves together the origins of this war in Russian, Ukrainian, European, and U.S. politics and policy. With an eye to global context, it assesses the many forms of disruption and instability that the war has caused. Two years after the start of this war, Collisions offers a way of taking stock and trying to understand the big-picture implications of this war.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Michael C. Kimmage is a professor of history at the Catholic University of America and a senior non-resident associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He is the author of The Conservative Turn: Lionel Trilling, Whittaker Chambers and the Lessons of Anti-Communism (Harvard University Press, 2009), and The Abandonment of the West: The History of an Idea in American Foreign Policy (Basic Books, 2020). From 2014 to 2016, Kimmage served on the Secretary's Policy Planning Staff at the U.S. Department of State. He writes regularly on international affairs for Foreign Affairs, the Wall Street Journal, and other publications.

Virtual to Public. Only those with an active Stanford ID with access to Encina E008 in Encina Hall may attend in person.

In a synthesis of political theory, historical narrative, and practical advice, Brook Manville and Josiah Ober trace the evolution towards self-government through political bargaining in Athens, Rome, Great Britain, and the United States. Democratic self-government means having no boss other than ourselves. Democracy arises when citizens strike a civic bargain: an always imperfect agreement for how they will govern themselves. For democracy to survive, citizens must agree that security and welfare are common interests; they must set the bounds of citizenship and agree on core institutions. They must be willing to negotiate in good faith and must treat one another as civic friends, not political enemies. They must invest in civic education. Democracy survives when the civic bargain evolves adaptively in the face of new challenges.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Josiah Ober is Constantine Mitsotakis Professor in the School of Humanities and Science, Professor of Political Science and Classics, and Senior Fellow (by courtesy) at the Hoover Institution. He is the founder and current faculty director of the Stanford Civics Initiative. He joined the Stanford faculty in 2006, having previously taught at Princeton and Montana State Universities. His scholarship focuses on historical institutionalism and political theory, especially democratic theory and the contemporary relevance of the political thought and practice of the ancient Greeks. He is the author of The Greeks and the Rational: The Discovery of Practical Reason (2022), Demopolis: Democracy before Liberalism (2017), The Rise and Fall of Classical Greece (2015), and a number of other books. He has published about 100 articles and chapters, including recent articles in American Political Science Review, Philosophical Studies, Polis, and Public Choice. His new book, The Civic Bargain: How Democracy Survives (with Brook Manville), was published in September by Princeton University Press.

Virtual to Public. Only those with an active Stanford ID with access to Encina E008 in Encina Hall may attend in person.

Infrastructure is at the heart of contemporary development strategies. Yet short time horizons are thought to impede infrastructure provision in democracies. Why do elected politicians invest in infrastructure projects that will not be completed during their time in office? The answer depends on understanding what infrastructure is and does in politics.

I argue that the political rewards from infrastructure projects come from the associated contracts. Like many goods and services, infrastructure investments are neither fully privatized, in the sense of transferring ownership to the private sector, nor fully public, in that the state directly builds projects. Governments instead contract out to the private sector. Politicians use their discretion in the contracting process to secure campaign donations, as well as personal rents. They also manipulate contracts — and particularly the use of public-private partnerships (PPPs) — to hide project costs, shift liabilities to future administrations, and move project decisions away from legislatures. Detailed evidence from 1,000 large infrastructure contracts, judicial investigations, leaked financial documents, and qualitative interviews with politicians and bureaucrats in Latin America demonstrate why politicians invest in infrastructure and why projects often fail to produce the economic development and social welfare gains promised.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Alisha Holland is an Associate Professor in the Government Department at Harvard University. Before joining the Harvard faculty, she was an Assistant Professor in the Politics Department at Princeton University and a Junior Fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows. Her first book, Forbearance as Redistribution: The Politics of Informal Welfare in Latin America (Cambridge Studies in Comparative Politics), looks at the politics of enforcement against property law violations by the poor. She is writing a new book on large infrastructure projects in Latin America.

Virtual to Public. Only those with an active Stanford ID with access to Encina E008 in Encina Hall may attend in person.

Join the Cyber Policy Center on Tuesday, November 28th from 12 Noon–1 PM Pacific, for Devices, DMs and D**k Pics: Youth Experiences of Cyberflashing and Missing Safety Nets , a conversation with Stephanie M Reich, professor at UC Irvine's School of Education. The session will be moderated by Jeff Hancock, co director of the Stanford Cyber Policy Center and is part of the Fall Seminar Series, a series spanning October through December, hosted at the Cyber Policy Center. Sessions are in-person and virtual, via Zoom and streamed via YouTube, with in-person attendance offered to Stanford affiliates only. Lunch is provided for in-person attendance and registration is required. This session will take place in Encina Commons, Moghadam Conference Room #119, 615 Crothers Way.

Adolescence is a period of increasing autonomy, identity exploration, and desires for physical and emotional intimacy. It is also when almost all youth have access to both a personal mobile device and social media accounts. One way such digital connectivity intersects with adolescent development is the high use of digital methods of communications, including the sending and receiving of sexual images, videos, or text, known as sexting. Extant research finds that sexting, at least for some, is part of normative sexual development (e.g., sharing with close friends or romantic partners, exploring, questioning), but it can also increase image-based sexual abuse (IBSA: e.g., cyberflashing, sextortion, cyberbullying). This study describes two exploratory studies – of adolescents’ (11-18 years) experiences of sexting and IBSA and of pediatric emergency providers’, as first responders, familiarity and comfort with identify and supporting IBSA in their practice. The talk concludes with recommendations for much-needed structures for supporting adolescents’ safety and wellbeing in a digital age.

About the Speaker:

Stephanie M. Reich earned her Ph.D. in Community Psychology from the Department of Psychology and Human Development at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, TN.

Dr. Reich's research is focuses on understanding and improving the social context of children’s lives. As such, her empirical investigations center on two contributors to children’s socialization: parents and peers. The bulk of her interest examines parent and peer interactions in early childhood with additional research investigating peer interactions in adolescence. Her professional goal is to illuminate how parents and peers affect children’s socio-emotional, cognitive, and physical development with the aim of creating interventions to promote physical and mental health and academic success.

The bulk of Dr. Reich's work explores direct and indirect influences (i.e., transactions) on the child, specifically through the family, online, and school environment. Her research on the family has focused on parenting behaviors and the direct and moderational influences of maternal knowledge, efficacy, support, and home and community environment on development. Dr. Reich has also been involved in peer research where she has been examining the role of individual behaviors (e.g., aggression, emotional regulation, prosocial behavior) and peer interactions (e.g., in-person and on-line) on range of child outcomes.

Join the Cyber Policy Center on Tuesday, November 14th from 12 Noon–1 PM Pacific, for Does Social Media Support or Worsen Mental Well-Being? What Quasi-Experimental Studies Can Tell Us, a conversation with Munmun De Choudhury, Associate Professor of Interactive Computing at Georgia Tech. The session will be moderated by Jeff Hancock, co director of the Stanford Cyber Policy Center and is part of the Fall Seminar Series, a series spanning October through December, hosted at the Cyber Policy Center. Sessions are in-person and virtual, via Zoom and streamed via YouTube, with in-person attendance offered to Stanford affiliates only. Lunch is provided for in-person attendance and registration is required. This session will take place in Encina Commons, Moghadam Conference Room #119, 615 Crothers Way.

Social media platforms continue to accrue important roles in our lives. Popular discourse has discussed the impact of social media on a variety of outcomes, from political polarization to issues of social justice. Is social media good or bad when it comes to mental well-being? This talk seeks to answer this question through a series of quasi-experimental observational studies, looking to a population that stands to both benefit as well as be harmed online -- those who struggle with mental illnesses. First, through propensity score modeling of language change online, De Choudhury will situate how social support can help to reduce suicidal thoughts. In contrast, a second study will employ an interrupted time series and difference-in-differences approach to reveal the alarming ways online harassment can aggravate mental health outcomes.

Adopting a human-centered lens, De Choudhury will discuss the complex role of social media in patients' social reintegration efforts following a major psychiatric episode. Online social technologies are here to stay, but there are pragmatic paths forward that can amplify its positive uses while mitigating harms for those marginalized by mental illness.

About the Speaker:

Munmun De Choudhury is an Associate Professor of Interactive Computing at Georgia Tech. Dr. De Choudhury is best known for laying the foundation of a new line of research that develops computational approaches to understand how social media can inform us of varied mental health outcomes. As an interdisciplinary researcher, this work combines social computing, machine learning, and natural language analysis with insights and theories from the social, behavioral, and health sciences. Dr. De Choudhury has been recognized with the 2023 SIGCHI Societal Impact Award, the 2023 AAAI ICWSM and the 2022 Web Science Trust Test-of-Time Awards, the 2021 ACM-W Rising Star Award, the 2019 Complex Systems Society – Junior Scientific Award, and over a dozen best paper and honorable mention awards from the ACM and AAAI. Her work has been featured in popular press like the New York Times, the NPR, and the BBC. Dr. De Choudhury serves on the Board of Directors of the International Society for Computational Social Science. She has contributed to the Office of U.S. Surgeon General's recent Advisory on The Healing Effects of Social Connection.

Join the Cyber Policy Center for Facebook and Instagram in the 2020 U.S. Election, a conversation with Talia Stroud and Joshua Tucker, moderated by Jeff Hancock, co director of the Stanford Cyber Policy Center. Stroud and Tucker will discuss the U.S. 2020 Facebook & Instagram Election Study, a first-of-its kind collaboration between academics and Meta. Four papers were recently published from the partnership in Science and Nature, with additional papers in progress. Stroud and Tucker, co-academic leads of the project, will discuss the research to-date and the nature of the project. 

This session is part of the Fall Seminar Series, a series spanning October through December, hosted at the Cyber Policy Center. Sessions are in-person and virtual, via Zoom and live stream on YouTube with in-person attendance offered to Stanford affiliates only. Lunch is provided for in-person attendance and registration is required. This session will take place in Encina Commons, Moghadam Conference Room #119, 615 Crothers Way.

About the Speakers:

Natalie (Talia) Jomini Stroud (Ph.D., Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania) is a Professor in the Department of Communication Studies and the School of Journalism and Media, as well as the founding and current Director of the Center for Media Engagement (https://mediaengagement.org/) in the Moody College of Communication at The University of Texas at Austin. Stroud’s research received honors including the International Communication Association (ICA)'s Outstanding Book Award for her book Niche News: The Politics of News Choice and the inaugural Public Engagement Award in Journalism Studies from ICA.

Joshua A. Tucker (Ph.D., Department of Government, Harvard University) is Professor of Politics, affiliated Professor of Russian and Slavic Studies, and affiliated Professor of Data Science at New York University. He is the Director of NYU’s Jordan Center for Advanced Study of Russia and co-Founder and co-Director of the NYU Center for Social Media and Politics (csmapnyu.org), and was a co-editor and co-author of the award-winning politics and policy blog The Monkey Cage. His most recent books are the co-authored Communism’s Shadow: Historical Legacies and Contemporary Political Attitudes (Princeton University Press, 2017), and the co-edited Social Media and Democracy: The State of the Field (Cambridge University Press, 2020).