- Bowling with Guns: Grievance, resentment, and political action in the milita movement and American right
Ariel Perkins, Department of Government, LSE
Year: 2018-19
This research addresses three puzzles emerging from our accumulated knowledge of the US militia movement. First, does it make sense to assume militia members aretriggered by the same structural grievances as wider partisan bases? Is there a connection betweenpartisan extremism and political action in the US case? Second, what explains ‘extremist’ forms ofmobilization (e.g. armed paramilitary drills) without ‘extremist’ outcomes (e.g. political violence)?Are militias meeting more for coffee than guns, and if so, how and why is such engagementpolitically coded? Third, nearly all primary accounts suggest recruits view membership as a civicduty and public good (Cooter 2013, Shapira 2013, Aho 1990). If this is the case, why does suchactivism manifest in non-traditional forms of democratic political engagement? Are enlisteesinfluenced by shared background characteristics or experiences (e.g. military service)?
Read the final report of Ariel's summer grant project here and her interview with the LSE Research team here.
- Parklet City: Governing American Public Space
Frida Timan, Department of Geography and Environment, LSE
Year: 2019-20
In 2010, local planners in San Francisco transformed two parking spaces into a sidewalk park called a “parklet”, and started a global movement of parklet building. Currently, parklets exist on all continents of the world, reshaping public space in cities such as London, Johannesburg and Melbourne. Through building parklets, San Francisco, known as a liberal hub in the American political context, once again put its name on the global map for cutting-edge local politics and planning. Parklets are public spaces, but managed, maintained and paid for by nearby businesses, a governance arrangement that has accompanied the implementation of parklets elsewhere in the world. My research aims to explore the implications of this space governance model on the many different social groups that inhabit San Francisco’s public space, and additionally research the process through which the parklet space governance model has been implemented beyond the borders of America.
- Negative partisanship in multi-party systems
Katharina Lawall, Department of Government, LSE
Year: 2019-20
What happens when politicians and parties start justifying anti-immigration policies with women’s protection and women’s rights? I argue that such genderimmigration messages make anti-immigration views and parties more acceptable and popular. To test this, I conducted survey experiments, varying whether respondents are exposed to a gender-immigration message, an immigration message, a gender message or no message. I find that gender-immigration messages can increase the acceptability of anti-immigration views, particularly among female voters. These findings show that gender equality rhetoric can be used be political actors to normalise anti-immigration views. Talk about “protecting our women” can be a powerful legitimising device for anti-immigrant agendas.
Read the final report of Katharina's summer grant project here.
- Group-orientated politics: Using group identities and orientations to better understand and predict vote choices, perceptions of candidates, and election results
Denise Baron, Department of Methodology
Year: 2020-21
Among both Democrats and Republicans, the current levels of gender and racial representationin the US Congress are unprecedented. Despite an increase in diverse representation, people of colour and women face particular challenges as political candidates, especially in terms of controlling and shaping their public images. While previous research has investigated the role of demographic traits or partisan affiliation in shaping perceptions of politicians, the role of candidates’ ideology, specifically group orientations such as national identity, authoritarianism, and egalitarianism, is less clear. This study investigates the relative influence of political candidates’ various attributes, including demographics and ideology, on how voters perceive them, importantly assessing how multiple identities can intersect and produce positive or negative perceptions. Using a conjoint experiment, we investigate the causal relationship between voters’ group orientations and their perceptions of candidates of varying identities and ideologies.
Read the final report of Denise's summer grant project here.
- Populism in parties, politicians and public opinion
Julia Leschke, Department of Government
Year: 2020-21
To succeed in elections, parties and politicians adapt different strategies of framing the current divisionsin society – reaching from the extremist right-wing illiberal populism of Trump, over the socially liberal and unifying appeals of Biden, to the left-wing populist rhetoric of Sanders or Ocasio-Cortez. But how exactly do political parties and actors in the US and Western Europe persuade voters to support their pluralist, radical left- or right-wing worldviews in times of entrenched political polarization? And who are these voters which find extremist, illiberal or anti-establishment appeals so enticing? My PhD seeks to answer these questions by creating and analyzing an unprecedently rich and fine-grained dataset of political communication of more than 6.2 million speeches from the US Congress and multiple West European parliaments, along with almost 900 election manifestos covering the last 60 years.
Read the final report of Julia's summer grant project here.
- Short-circuiting Protest Deterrence: Repression, Fear Alignment and Social Networks
Agnes Yu, Department of International Relations
Year: 2020-21
The US recorded over 10,600 protests events between May-August 2020, centred around the Black Lives Matter movement catalyzed by the killing of George Floyd. The government response was disproportionately forceful, with President Trump first threatening then applying militarized federal forces against demonstrators in places such as Seattle, Portland, Oregon, and Washington DC. Under this context, this project aims to develop a theoretical and methodological framework to understand how repression deters protest in the US. How do perceptions of state repression affect protest non-participation, and under what conditions? What are the wider implications for how dissent occurs and how (democratic) states choose to repress?
Read the final report of Agnes' summer grant project here.
- Power of Perception: The Impact of Candidate Characteristics on Voting Behaviour
Asli Ceren Cinar, Department of Government
Year: 2021-22
It is well-known that women candidates work on their voice pitch to overcome gender stereotypes and signal specific qualities to voters or the media. This study project will explore how nonverbal communication and voice pitch influence today's political leader preferences. As gender norms shift in the US, we might expect effects to be different today than a decade ago.
I plan to analyse how verbal presentation on various policy issues interacts with a candidate's age and gender to affect voters' perception formation. My core research question is "to what extent does a candidate's voice pitch and facial attractiveness affect voters' perceptions and vote choice?"
Read the final report of Asli Ceren's summer grant project here.