“The effect of policy traceability on legislative incentives” (with Alexander Sahn)
Theories of legislative politics have long emphasized how a policy's traceability---whether and how voters connect legislative action with policy effects---shapes political incentives to legislate. Arnold (1992) emphasized how the ``nature of the causal chain that links a policy instrument with its policy effects” structures the logic of congressional action. Despite its prominence, this key theoretical claim has received little empirical attention. In this letter, we use two survey experiments to test whether legislators and the public hold traceability in mind when generating policy preferences. We find that elites are responsive to both policy traceability and problem traceability---whether a policy problem itself can be linked to elite actions. By contrast, prospective voters are indifferent to both forms of traceability. With respect to other policy attributes, elites and mass publics share similar preferences. Our results provide support for a previously untested theory of policymaking and describe the nature of strategic decision-making by legislators.
“Conditionality and the politics of climate change” (with Mark Buntaine and Michaël Aklin)
Conditional commitments are thought to be a stepping stone toward deeper cooperation between states. However, while states frequently make conditional policy pledges during international negotiations on climate change, their empirical effects remain unclear. We conducted three experiments in ten of the largest carbon-emitting countries to test whether conditional pledges made by national governments to mitigate climate change increase public preferences for ambitious climate action in other countries. The results reveal that only unconditional pledges made by foreign countries increase public preferences for policy ambition, and that countries seeking financial and technical transfers only gain support from the public in sending countries when they couple conditional pledges with ambitious unconditional pledges. We also find that the public in most countries only prefers to make part of their country's climate pledge conditional on other countries' action when at high levels of unconditional ambition. Overall, conditional bargaining between countries does not appear to significantly shape public preferences for cooperation on climate change.
“Global geographic variation in climate concern at national and sub-national scales” (with Parrish Bergquist, Peter Howe, Jennifer Marlon, and Clara Vandeweerdt)
In December 2023, the world's leaders will meet in Dubai to assess the world's progress towards the goal of limiting global warming to 2 degrees Celsius. Scholars have extensively discussed the complex and thorny geopolitics of this convening, but the micro-foundations of those geopolitics are poorly understood. This is due to the patchy availability of survey data concerning climate change around the world. In this paper, we present a comprehensive dataset estimating concern about climate change in 164 countries around the world, on a common scale. We describe our dataset of responses to 134 questions from 101 surveys measuring concern about climate change between 1998 and 2020. We then develop a group-level item-response-theory model to aggregate these data into a single latent-variable estimate of concern about climate change and support for policy to address it in each country represented in our dataset. We present preliminary results from this model, which we validate by comparing the model outputs to cross-sections of our underlying data. The estimates we present have the potential to open exciting new avenues for deepening scholarly understanding of the drivers of climate concern around the world.
“Process-tracing, counterfactual comparisons and causal inference”
Process tracing is now the dominant method used by qualitative political scientists. However, the nature of process-tracing remains the subject of substantial debate, including the mechanism through which the method supports causal inference-making. Here, I offer a methodological elaboration of process-tracing within the potential outcomes framework. Emphasizing the shared importance of counterfactual comparisons for both qualitative and quantitative inference, I argue qualitative scholars can also manage the Fundamental Problem of Causal Inference. While quantitative approaches to causal inference typically use statistical techniques to estimate group-level causal estimands, particularly causal effects, qualitative approaches can use process-tracing to make informed judgements about unit- level causal estimands, particularly causal mechanisms. Both approaches involve structured frameworks to estimate the value of unobserved counterfactual states of the world, and can be understood as achieving their causal inferential leverage by comparing realized outcomes with assumption-dependent representations of unrealized counterfactual outcomes. Accordingly, I conceptualize process-tracing as a tool to estimate bounds on unit-level counterfactual outcomes and describe how the method can mitigate common biases associated with counterfactual reasoning. In this account, qualitative causal inferences are generated by within-case analysis; correspondingly, qualitative research that draws from multiple cases should be understood as a form of empirical replication to generate conjectures about the scope conditions under which particular causal mechanisms realize. Acknowledging the implicit role of counterfactual reasoning in process-tracing can also increase the transparency and falsifiability of qualitative political science analysis.
“The effect of environmental voter mobilization on turnout and environmental attitudes: Evidence from a field experiment in British Columbia, Canada” (with Geoffrey Henderson and Leah Stokes)
Environmental organizations play an active role in electoral politics, often working to turn their supporters out to the polls. Here, we evaluate how voter mobilization affects voter turnout and environmental attitudes among supporters of several Canadian environmental organizations. Using a field experiment during the May 2017 provincial election in British Columbia, we test the effects of two common types of get-out-the-vote (GOTV) conversations -- a tactical conversation focused exclusively on vote plan-making, and a ``deep canvassing" conversation that first engaged respondents in a personal discussion about environmentalism. Despite our target population being comprised of high-propensity voters, both GOTV interventions still appeared to increase voter turnout. At the same time, these GOTV interventions had divergent effects on environmental attitudes. While the tactical GOTV phone call decreased environmental issue salience, the issue-based GOTV call appeared to partially inoculate voters against this negative effect. We call for further research into the contexts and mechanisms that permit environmental canvassers to effect lasting attitudinal change during elections.
“Policy bundling and the political economy of climate policymaking” (with Parrish Bergquist)
Climate action has been stymied by a challenging political economy: climate policies can impose salient, short-term costs in exchange for uncertain, long-term benefits. Public support for many climate policies has, as a result, remained uneven. We investigate the effects of policy bundling - linking one contentious policy to other programs - on public support for climate action. Using conjoint experiments in 10 of the world’s largest carbon-emitting countries, we show that policy bundling increases support for climate policy across diverse political and economic contexts. Linking climate policy to other economic and social programs expands coalitions of support, particularly on the left, without reducing support on the right. Achieving the Paris Climate Agreement's goals will require every country navigate contentious domestic climate policy conflicts; we find that policy bundling offers a broadly applicable strategy for strengthening public coalitions in favor of a contentious policy.
“How publics in small-island states view climate change and international responses to it” (with Paasha Mahdavi, Cesar Martinez-Alvarez, Sara Constantino, Gabe de Roche, Ingmar Sturm, Emma Franzblau)
Climate change caused by carbon pollution from the world's largest economies poses an existential threat to small-island states and territories this century. These places bear virtually no responsibility for climate change, but will face sea-level rise, degradation of fresh water resources, and intensified storms that will kill or dislocate exposed publics, and damage local economies. To alleviate this looming crisis, the global community has begun discussing what forms of compensation are appropriate for climate-related loss and damages, and who is responsible for this compensation. Missing from this analysis, however, is any systematic effort to elicit the preferences and perceptions of publics in these threatened small-island states and territories. Here, we report results from a large-sample (n=20,026) cross-national survey of publics living in climate-vulnerable states and territories, conducted in June-July 2022. By quota sampling through Facebook's ad platform, we generate near-representative samples at the national or territorial level for publics in 56 small-island states, territories, and subnational regions in the South Pacific, Indian Ocean, and Caribbean. We find widespread awareness and concern about the threat posed by climate change and sea-level rise, in contrast to what existing research finds in the Global North. We find limited support for the ``common but differentiated responsibilities'' principle; instead, climate-vulnerable publics believe their home governments, large polluters, and former colonial powers are all responsible for helping to manage the climate crisis, irrespective of these actors' relative carbon emissions. These findings fill an important gap by depicting climate beliefs among the communities at the frontlines of climate change.
“Perceived costs dominate objective costs in predicting carbon pricing opposition” (with Alice Lépissier, Chloe Boutron, Erick Lachapelle and Kathryn Harrison)
Economists view carbon pricing as a cost-effective way to reduce carbon pollution, but extant carbon pricing policies have often generated significant political opposition from both interest groups and national publics. Often, these political debates revolve around the potential policy costs and benefits - both objective and subjective. Here, we investigate whether Canadians accurately perceive the costs and benefits of the country's existing carbon tax and dividend policy. Using surveys fielded before, during and after policy implementation, we find stronger opposition to carbon pricing among those who drive to work and spend more on transportation fuels. However, partisanship and ideology dominate assessments of cost. Conservative party supporters overestimate the impact of carbon pricing on gas prices by more than other parties' voters. Moreover, perceived price changes better predict carbon tax opposition than actual changes in the price of gasoline and other fuels. Our results suggest that, partisan contestation can undermine public support for carbon pricing, even with a progressive policy design.
“How constituent contact reinforces the status quo: Evidence from administrative records on contact to Congress” (with Olivia Quinn, David Broockman, Alexander Hertel-Fernandez, and Leah Stokes)
Citizens communicating to their representatives is a key mechanism for representation. However, who contacts politicians, what they express, and how this may affect representation remains unclear. We offer an unprecedented window into these questions based on a collaboration with a constituent communications software vendor to the United States Congress. Analyzing data from over 3.4 million constituent contacts from 14 Congressional offices over four years, matched with an original survey of voters, we document three biases that lead contact with Congress to reinforce the status quo. First, we find \textit{demographic bias}, with socioeconomically advantaged voters more likely to contact Congress. Second, we uncover \textit{organizational bias}, with organizations mobilizing the vast majority of constituent contact. Third and most originally, we document \textit{reactive bias}, wherein opponents of changes to the status quo are especially likely to contact Congress. We show how these biases distort which issues and viewpoints Congress hears about.