POLS 2580

Plan for today

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Sundry thoughts on writing
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On writing

Good writing is incredibly important
Good writing is incredibly hard

Some general tips:

Read good writing
Write early, edit often
Outline, write, outline, revise
Show don’t tell
Why use many word, when few do trick?
Avoid cliches and statistical jargon when possible
When statistical jargon is necessary, be precise and clear.

In this paper, “Racial Diversity and Exclusionary Zoning: Evidence from the Great Migration,” Alexander Sahn examines why U.S. cities adopt restrictive zoning laws that limit multifamily housing. He theorizes that the key driver is racial threat, above all other causes like economic self-interest, that makes white residents advocate for restrictive zoning laws. Sahn uses data from 125 Northern U.S. cities, where he found that as racial diversity increases, so do restrictions on multifamily zoning to maintain segregation.

Climate change is a major concern that requires attention not only to rapid progress on the technological front but also to the complex political considerations involved in enacting green policies. Not all green policies are adopted successfully. Their effectiveness depends immensely on the political support that the policy earns. The 2018 protests in France under President Macron and the 2019 unrest in Chile both illustrate how environmental reforms can provoke strong backlash

With the rise of social movements like the Movement for Black Lives and the Arab Spring, many journalists highlight how social media facilitates collective action efforts and political discourse spaces that have made movements stronger and helped users contest racial dominance. Yet these phenomena are contradictory to political communication scholarship that portrays social media as a enclave for the politically privileged. These scholars suggest that white users have a higher likelihood of using social media to politically express themselves because they have highers socio-economic capital which generates higher levels of political interest. This paper seeks to bridge the gap between these two accounts. We examine whether social media reproduces political inequality between racial groups or if they are powerful tools for marginalized racial groups to contest the status quo.

The main research question Bonilla leads off this article with is “how do voters assess promise-keeping and hold elected officials accountable in a hyper-partisan environment”? Bonilla explores two different veins of political science literature that form the theoretical basis for her study: partisan decision-making and representation. Bonilla’s broad hypothesis across both studies is that “assessments of promise fulfillment may differ based on partisanship.” This replication will focus only on Study 1. The pre-registration documents articulate two specific hypotheses being assessed in Study 1. Hypothesis 1 states “In-partisans have more acceptance of broken promises or partially kept promises.” Hypothesis 2 states “Out-Partisans have more criticism of broken promises or partially-kept promises. Bonilla explores at length in this literature review how individual people utilize the lens of partisanship when consuming information about politics. However, Bonilla does not discuss in this paper what or how much political information is being consumed. Zaller (1992) highlights how the public gains information about politics from elites, and public opinion will respond to elite cues. Information from elites can be explicitly and intentionally biased to generate views, or it can experience subtler forms of bias as elites are the ones selecting what information to provide. It would follow that the amount of political news an individual consumes could be associated both with that individual’s level of partisanship and their capacity to make decisions about the extent to which elected officials are keeping their promises. For my extension of Bonilla’s work I will be exploring the effect that engagement with political media may have on Bonilla’s findings.

This paper replicates Horn, Haselmayer, and Kluser’s 2025 article on how political parties respond to inequality. The authors center their analysis on determining when political parties, especially left parties, address inequality in rich democracies. They use linear mixed-effects regression models to account for within-country variation over time in inequality levels and changes, combining it with party program differences on economic equality emphasis. They find that there is no positive programmatic response to high levels of inequality, but left parties respond to changes in the level of inequality: left parties address inequality mainly when it is rising. However, this response does not address the growing top-level inequality (top 10%).

The current political climate in the United States exhibits significant hostility toward immigrants. This antagonism is often fueled by misconceptions regarding the economic and social impacts of immigration. A prominent example involves welfare-related beliefs: the perception that undocumented immigrants receive public assistance, and that documented immigrants receive disproportionate benefits compared to U.S. citizens. Such misconceptions are concerning, as they foster resentment that can manifest in harassment, discrimination, and, in some cases, violence.

It is well known that racial attitudes permeate various parts of the legal infrastructure. For example, there has been a wealth of literature on law enforcement, and the issue is also getting increasing visiblity because of widely reported incidents in recent years. Another context in which racial attitudes are known to exert some influence is inside the courtrooms. In particular, it is well known that the life experiences and prior beliefs of jurors can influence the outcome. This has given rise to lawyers trying to manipulate aspects of the jury to obtain favorable outcomes on the one hand and additions and amendments to legal rules themselves to insulate the jury process from these lawyerly influences.

In the mid-2000s, organized crime groups (OCGs) in Mexico took over the avocado market in parts of the country. They gained control of large orchards, processing facilities, and distribution networks. In some cases, these OCGs clashed with avocado producers and local defense forces (Estancona and Tiscornia 2025). Political scientists have written extensively on illicit markets, particularly narcotics (Lessing 2017; Barnes 2017; Snyder and Durán-Martínez 2009). Yet little is known about why OCGs capture licit (i.e., “legal”) markets and the conditions that produce violence. Estancona and Tiscornia (2025) fill that gap by offering a theory of criminal market diversification that explains how exogenous price shocks create short- and long-term opportunities in certain agricultural sectors. They specifically ask, how does price and export share of avocados jointly affect OCG violence (p427)?

Does compulsory voting affect men’s and women’s voter turnout differently, and if so, which gender benefits more from compulsory voting?
The author suspects that mandatory voting will lead to a larger increase in men’s voting rate.