"All the President's Nukes: Public Opinion, Partisanship, and Sole Launch Authority." Invited to revise & resubmit to the Journal of Conflict Resolution​.

ABSTRACT

In the United States, the president has sole authority to launch nuclear weapons, placing the fate of millions in a single individual’s hands. Yet we lack systematic evidence on the extent to which public opinion serves as a constraining or enabling factor for reform. Existing theories of partisanship and presidential unilateralism suggest reform should face resistance, as the public should be less likely to support imposing limits on co-partisan presidents, especially when proposed constraints originate from out-partisan lawmakers. However, I find no significant evidence that this is the case in a preregistered experiment on the American public. Respondents likely realize that imposing restrictions on an out-party president today would also limit a future in-party president tomorrow, and vice-versa. This puts even the strongest and most polarized partisans in a bind, diminishing partisan bias. Overall, this project demonstrates that there are limits to the impact of partisanship in foreign policy.

​"Hegemonic Fluctuation and Its Consequences for International Order" (with Daniel Silverman). Invited to revise & resubmit to ​European Journal of International Relations.

abstract

Many scholars agree that the world order is witnessing substantial change given the dramatic political shifts in the American hegemon, especially with the disruption caused by Donald Trump’s rise and re-election. However, there is little consensus about how these dynamics will impact the behavior of other states specifically and international order more broadly. We develop a theoretical framework outlining how “hegemonic fluctuation” in the United States will produce a variety of responses by other states to exploit, manage, and even influence the hegemon’s oscillations. We conceptualize hegemonic fluctuation as a condition where a state retains hegemonic capabilities and intentions, but there is frequent alternation in which faction is in power and whether they support a relatively liberal or illiberal foreign policy. In response, we expect other states will exploit hegemonic fluctuations by delaying illiberal action in the short-term when a liberal faction controls the hegemon and indulging in such action when the illiberal faction regains control; manage hegemonic fluctuations by hedging against the hegemon’s abandonment or coercion by becoming more independent militarily and economically; and even shape hegemonic fluctuations by engaging in partisan electoral and economic interventions. We provide initial empirical evidence that states are behaving in accordance with our argument. The cumulative effect is to leave us with a persistent—but significantly less stable, liberal, and effective—international order. While some argue that the U.S.-led liberal international order will collapse entirely and others that it will be revived, we advance a new framework that posits a third, more intermediate possibility.

"Engineering Illusions: When Is Military Technology Exaggeration Credible?" (with Justin Key Canfil).

abstract

States frequently exaggerate military-technological breakthroughs. Why do some claims gain traction while others are dismissed? We first distinguish mild exaggerators, who overstate genuine programs, from wild exaggerators, who bluff with a shell program or no program at all. We then develop a theory of how observers evaluate such claims. Our core argument is positing the existence of a setback paradox: Wild exaggeration can be more credible in the short-to-medium term than mild exaggeration. Military research and development (R&D) is highly secretive by design, yet only real programs run the risk of visibly failing. As a result, authentic programs encountering temporary setbacks can appear less credible than baseless bluffs that never emit visible signs of failure. In the long term, however, wild exaggerators are likely to be caught, causing reputational harm that makes their future technological claims less credible. States therefore face an intertemporal tradeoff that helps explain the existence, but also limited prevalence, of wild exaggeration. We formalize these expectations and test them in a preregistered survey experiment, showing that audiences award a silence premium in the absence of evidence, while treating visible setbacks as evidence of absence. They also heavily punish states—and their allies—that are caught in a lie. Our project addresses a gap in the literature on capability (rather than resolve) signaling, and helps explain why there is variation in exaggeration rather than states always or never bluffing. Although we scope our analysis to high-stakes military technologies, the logic applies broadly to competition under involuntary information leakage.

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​"Sexual Orientation and Audience Costs: The Conditional Discrimination Gay Commanders-in-Chief Face."

ABSTRACT

Given the growth of openly gay political leaders, this paper investigates an increasingly salient question at the nexus between domestic and international politics—the effect of sexual orientation on audience costs. I argue that when gay male leaders back down from threats, they activate stereotypes about their lack of toughness and competence in foreign policy, leading to greater levels of domestic disapproval than when heterosexual male leaders take identical actions. This hypothesis is tested in survey experiments in the United States and United Kingdom. I find no significant evidence of discrimination in the aggregate. However, per the logic of conditional stereotyping, I uncover a strong double standard faced by out-partisan gay male leaders. This indicates the nuanced ways in which stereotypes related to sexual orientation influence public opinion. The project contributes to international relations scholarship on audience costs, in addition to American and comparative politics research on LGBTQ discrimination.

​"Beyond Meating Climate Goals: Masculinity and Climate Policy Backlash" (with Christopher W. Blair and Sabrina B. Arias).

abstract

Political debates over climate change mitigation are inflected with gendered language. While prior work has shown a connection between individual gender and climate-related attitudes, little evidence exists regarding the gendered nature of climate policy itself. We theorize that climate change mitigation policies perceived as "masculinity-threatening'" elicit more public opposition than gender-neutral climate policies. We further argue that women leaders face a higher penalty when they advocate climate policies that threaten masculine-coded norms and behaviors. To test our theoretical expectations, we fielded three pre-registered survey experiments on representative samples of the US public. While we find that masculinity-threatening policies face substantially more opposition—suggesting that proposing them is politically fraught—we do not find that women policymakers face a disproportionate penalty for advocating them. These results underscore the nuanced ways gender dynamics shape public attitudes on climate change and bear key implications for our understanding of political communication on climate policy.

"Immune, Immune, Immune: Presidential Immunity and Public Support for Democratic Norms" (with John J. Chin).

abstract

Scholars have vigorously debated the impact of Supreme Court decisions on public opinion and whether the public is more tolerant of violations of democratic norms by co-partisan politicians. We intervene in these debates by assessing the impact of the Supreme Court’s presidential immunity decision via a pre-registered survey experiment on the U.S. public. We find limits to the court’s power to shape public opinion, as priming the Supreme Court’s immunity decision does not significantly impact aggregate public support for anti-democratic actions. However, we find disturbing evidence of partisan hypocrisy. The public is 13.5 percentage points more likely to support even extreme actions now plausibly immune from criminal prosecution—such as ordering the military to assassinate a political rival or plotting a self-coup—when carried out by a co-partisan president. These kinds of extreme anti-democratic actions have not been studied in prior literature and present a hard test for finding evidence of partisan bias. Our results indicate that the removal of criminal prosecution as a check on presidential abuses combined with the public’s polarized and hypocritical reaction to norm violations potentially provides an opening to presidents with authoritarian impulses to get away with severe anti-democratic behavior.