In this project I test my theory of the effects undemocratic institutions and electoral behavior in Malaysia.  First, through an algorithmic process, I decipher systematic exclusion in the 2013 GE maps. To better undertand how voters respond psychologically to this systematic exclusion, I conducted a survey experiment in 2023. I theorize that those who are advantaged (e.g. ethnic Malay and rural dwellers) will not experience anger and will be less likely to engage in activities to make elections more fair when they learn of their institutional advantage. On the other hand, those disadvantaged (e.g. urban Chinese) by the same undemocratic institution will experience anger and increase their engagement.  This project is funded by the National Science Foundation's Dissertation Improvement Grant and based on field interviews and a survey experiment in August of 2023.

This project investigates how collective memory of historical disputes in South Korea fuels political participation through emotional mechanisms. While existing research emphasizes material interests and elite framing, I argue that unresolved historical grievances—particularly over Japanese colonialism and wartime abuses—activate anger that translates into sustained political engagement. Drawing on survey experiments and observational data, I test whether exposure to reminders of these disputes intensifies anger and increases willingness to participate politically, from protesting to voting. By highlighting how emotions link historical memory to contemporary mobilization, this project advances our understanding of the psychological foundations of participation in a consolidated democracy. More broadly, it shows how historical disputes continue to shape political behavior long after the events themselves, underscoring the enduring role of anger in democratic politics.

This project examines how institutional suppression activates cognitive and emotional mechanisms that shape political participation. In my dissertation, I show that anti-democratic policies provoke powerful emotional reactions with downstream effects on turnout. Using geospatial analysis, survey experiments, and quasi-experimental designs in Malaysia and the United States, I find that similar suppressive tactics produce different emotional pathways: anger drives participation in Malaysia’s democratizing context, while both anger and fear mobilize citizens in the backsliding United States. Building on this work, fieldwork commencing in Winter 2025–26 will extend the framework to South Korea (a consolidated democracy) and Cambodia (a competitive authoritarian regime), advancing a comparative spectrum of democratization and a more generalizable theory of how citizens respond when democracy itself is at risk.This research is supported by the NSF APSA Dissertation Improvement Grant.

In this paper I find that when a person is advantaged by suppressive district lines, they are less likely to participate and even feel enthusiastic about their advantage. For those targeted by suppressive lines, they experience heightened senses of anger and choose to turnout more. Interestingly, partisanship does not seem to matter when we consider the effects of being advantaged by institutional suppression. 

Partisan polarization in the United States has intensified, fueling hostility toward partisan out-groups and eroding political and social trust. This divide has often been compared to the fervent loyalty of sports fans, where competition and ``team spirit'' dominate behaviors. Despite this comparison, research has not systematically explored how views on fairness and competitiveness in partisan competition predict support for anti-democratic policies. This paper addresses this gap by developing a novel survey battery, grounded in social identity theory, that uses sports as a conceptual proxy to measure these attitudes. We test this survey battery, and further refine it, on two U.S. samples. Using dimensional analysis we recover two latent dimensions: fairness and the competitiveness. Using a novel measure---a gerrymandering map-choice---we find that these dimensions are highly predictive of anti-democratic behavior. This study illustrates how individuals' partisanship and underlying psychology lead to undemocratic outcomes in the context of partisan competition.

In this project, we find that attention to teaching about white privilege in schools matters when it induces anger in respondents. We test this theory through a novel survey experiment fielded with YouGov in the spring of 2023. We find that anger is a significant conditioning factor explaining white participation in local school board politics when we cue race.

In the 2020 Georgia Senate elections, many voters were forced to wait in long lines to cast their ballots. We document through a quasi-experiment that individuals who experienced these polling place delays were more likely to turn out again just weeks later in the subsequent runoff election than those who did not, challenging the conventional wisdom that suppression tactics simply depress participation. To explain this pattern, we develop a theory in which psychological responses—specifically anger—translate targeted institutional disadvantage into greater political engagement. We test this mechanism with two large-scale survey experiments in which respondents are randomly assigned to scenarios highlighting the experience of being disadvantaged by long lines at the polls. Those exposed to these scenarios report higher levels of anger and greater intent to participate politically. Together, these findings suggest that suppressive electoral tactics can provoke an emotional backlash, partially counteracting their intended demobilizing effects and highlighting a psychological mechanism of democratic resilience.

The United States has the largest incarcerated population in the world and among the highest rates of police brutality, especially compared to other developed democracies. While racial disparities in policing are widely acknowledged, the role of class in shaping exposure to and perceptions of police violence remains less understood. Evidence shows that victims of police violence and the incarcerated disproportionately come from lower-income backgrounds across racial groups, yet support for law enforcement remains high among working-class white Americans. This paper seeks to explain this puzzle. Using a mixed-methods approach that combines survey experiments and interpretive interviews, we examine how class dynamics intersect with race to shape both vulnerability to police violence and attitudes toward policing. Our findings suggest that working-class white Americans often fail to perceive themselves as potential victims of police brutality, despite evidence of heightened exposure. By highlighting the understudied role of class, this project advances understanding of the complex social foundations of policing and state violence in the United States.

Since the US Supreme Court overturned abortion rights with the Dobbs decision in June 2022, states have used ballot initiatives to enshrine abortion access. In 2022, four states passed measures amending their constitution to secure abortion rights and in 2024 another 10 states will vote on similar initiatives. While attention has been given to how advocacy groups organized around abortion to achieve these outcomes, we know little about how healthcare providers themselves, whose jobs and patients’ health were impacted, were mobilized post-Dobbs. How do gender and medical specialty impact physician mobilization? We measure physician mobilization in two ways: 1. Engagement in a physician-led get-out-the-vote (GOTV) drive with their patients; and 2. Turnout in the 2022 midterms. Using a novel dataset of a healthcare-based GOTV campaign and voter file data, we demonstrate that compared with 2020, the percentage of participants who specialize in women’s health increased by 50% in 2022. We utilize linear probability models to show that providers of women’s health were more likely to vote in 2022 than other types of healthcare providers. Furthermore, female providers of women’s health were more likely to vote than male providers of women’s health. Our findings have implications for mobilization research and GOTV strategies by highlighting that individuals directly impacted by policy changes are motivated to engage politically.

Voter turnout in the United States remains low, especially among young and non-white Americans. Healthcare-based voter engagement has emerged as a promising strategy to address these gaps, yet no randomized controlled trial has tested its effectiveness. In partnership with Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, we conducted the first RCT in a clinical setting to evaluate whether brief physician–patient conversations about voting increase turnout. During the lead-up to the 2024 presidential election, physicians rolled a die before entering each patient room to randomize delivery of a short, nonpartisan message encouraging caregivers to vote and discuss voting with family and friends. All rooms displayed neutral signage with voting resources. Household addresses were linked to the public voter file to measure turnout, and machine learning methods estimated heterogeneous effects. This study provides novel causal evidence on the role clinicians can play in fostering civic participation, particularly among marginalized groups.