Who gets deplatformed? More specifically, why do social media firms designate only some militant organizations as “terrorists,” imposing consequences on the groups and their supporters? There has been little research on which political actors are removed from tech platforms, despite the importance of this topic. Militant organizations use social media for recruiting, fundraising, and other necessities, so being banned is costly. We build an argument drawing on comparisons to governmental terrorist designation policies, but highlighting firms’ profit motivation.

(joint work with Roman Senninger and Daniel Bischof)

Abstract: Partisanship is the primary driver of voter decision-making in the United States. Even when partisans learn negative information about their candidate, motivated reasoning often limits the extent to which they will change their evaluations or vote choice. However, there is evidence of a “tipping point” at which partisans will update their prior beliefs about their party’s candidate. This study seeks to determine whether that tipping point comes earlier when voters see a woman running in their party and under what circumstances.

Under what conditions do positive price shocks facilitate cycles of crime and violence? While extant literature posits that positive shocks in licit industries will decrease crime and violence, evidence for this outcome is often taken from contexts with at least nominal levels of state capacity. I challenge these expectations using evidence from Madagascar, which is characterized by extremely low state capacity, and the rapid increase in vanilla prices following an abrupt shift away from synthetic vanilla by several multinational companies.

Ethnic minorities make contemporary Europe increasingly diverse. The wisdom in research on ethnicity is that it is a trouble-maker disrupting programmatic politics, prioritizing group identity over ideology, polity over policy, principle over compromise. In this book, Jan Rovny approaches ethnic politics as normal politics, and investigates the ideological potential of ethnicity. He shows that ethnic minorities often search for group preservation by championing liberal rights that would protect them from the tyranny of the majority.

[joint work with Sofía Breitenstein and Enrique Hernández]

Why do some people support redistributive policies? And why, depending on the level of redistribution provided, do some engage in crime while others choose to invest in policing as a response to inequality? Using a novel survey and lab experiment, this presentation aims to explore four main arguments.

Sandipto Dasgupta will speak on his book, Legalizing the Revolution: India and the Constitution of the Postcolony. Following decolonization, the challenge was to give institutional form to the varied and ambitious ideas of freedom generated by the anticolonial struggles. Through an original and comprehensive account of India’s anticolonial movement and constitution making, Legalizing the Revolution explores the unique promises, challenges, and contradictions of that task.

Hate crime laws, which criminalise violent expressions of prejudice, have faced growing criticism. Scholars have argued that hate crime legislation relies on the collaboration of legal institutions that are themselves shaped by histories of prejudice and fail to bring justice to survivors of identity-based violence. But what does it mean for a hate crime law to be successful? And to whose vision of justice are hate crime laws accountable?